Speaker Bios

Robert Brandenberger, Canada Research Chair and Professor of Physics at McGill University

His field is Theoretical Cosmology with particular emphasis on theories of the very early universe. After earning his diploma in physics in Zurich Switzerland he went on to gain his Ph.D. in physics at Harvard University (1983). Following postdoctoral fellowships held at the ITP in Santa Barbara and at Cambridge University he joined Brown University as a faculty member where he remained until moving to McGill in 2004. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (1988 - 1992) and a Killam Research Fellowship (2009 - 2011). He is the winner of the 2011 CAP/CRM Prize for Mathematical Physics. He has made major contributions to inflationary cosmology, to the theory of cosmic strings, and to superstring cosmology.

Edward Frenkel, Professor of Mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley

His research focuses on various aspects of symmetry in mathematics and physics. A native of Russia, Prof. Frenkel was invited to Harvard University as a Visiting Professor when he was 21 and stayed there to earn his Ph.D, eventually becoming an Associate Professor.  He was appointed Professor at UC Berkeley in 1997. In the last few years he has been investigating the geometric Langlands Program and its relationship to quantum physics. He has published two books; most recently, the monograph Langlands Correspondence for Loop Groups. Not only a mathematician, Edward Frenkel co-wrote and co-directed (with Reine Graves) as well as acted in the film Rites of Love and Math which he presented at the Cannes Film Festival. His screenplay The Two-Body Problem (with Thomas Farber) was adapted for the stage at the Aurora Theater in Berkeley and produced as a book by Andrea Young Arts. Among his awards are the Hermann Weyl Prize and Eilenberg Visiting Professorship at Columbia University (Spring 2012).

Sylvester James (Jim) Gates, Jr., the John S. Toll Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, Director of the UMD Center for String and Particle Theory and a member of President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)

Marcelo Gleiser, the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth College.

Professor Gleiser graduated from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and obtained his Ph.D. from King's College London in 1986.  After postdoctural appointments at Fermilab and The Kavili Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, he joined the faculty at Dartmouth College in 1991. In 1994 he received the Presidential Faculty Fellows Award (PFF) from the White House and NSF.  He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was recently elected as General Council.  Author of over 100 peer-reviewed articles, Gleiser is a world-renowned cosmologist.  His research focuses on the physics of the early universe, the emergence of complexity, and the origin of life. His latest book, A Tear at the Edge of Creation: A Radical New Vision for Life in an Imperfect Universe (Free Press 2010) was published in 12 languages. He is a frequent presence in science documentaries in the U.S. and abroad and is the co-founder of the Natural Public Radio blog 13.7 on science and culture.

Kristen Hawkes, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah

She is known for her studies of human ecology and the evolution of human behavior among hunter-gatherers in Africa and South America. She is  working on human life history evolution, guided by the hypothesis that grandmothering is a fundamental shift in our genus underlying a suite of key features that distinguish humans from other great apes. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and serves on the scientific executive committee of the Leakey Foundation. Recently, Hawkes has been developing collaborative projects to measure aspects of aging in captive chimpanzees. Results of a systematic quantitative observation had suggested that, contrary to long-standing expectation, men's hunting was aimed more at status competition than at provisioning mates and offspring.

Andrea Hayes-Jordan, M.D., Director of Pediatric Surgical Oncology and Associate, Professor of Surgical Oncology and Pediatrics at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas

Gary King, Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Pennsylvania State University

His research interests are using national databases to study American smoking behavior and comparative international tobacco consumption in France and West Africa the reporting practices of child abuse. Dr. King earned his Ph.D at Boston University in 1987. The department he teaches in at The Pennsylvania State University is an interdisciplinary program that allows students to explore the biological, behavioral and social environment that influence the health of individuals and cultural groups.

George M. Langford, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University and Professor of Cell Biology and Neuroscience

Jaron Lanier, Computer Scientist, Composer and Inventor

He collaborates with a wide range of scientists in the fields of biomimetic information architectures, user interfaces, advanced information systems for medicine and computational approaches to the fundamentals of physics. In the early 1980's he founded VPL Research associated with Virtual Reality, a term he is reputed to have originated. After VPL research, Lanier was the Chief Scientist of Advanced Network and Services, and the Lead Scientist of the National Tele-immersion Initiative. From 2001 to 2004 he was Visiting Scientist at Silicon Graphics, Ince., and Scholar at Large for Microsoft from 2006 to 2009. He has received honorary doctorates from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Franklin and Marshall.  Lanier is also a well-known author and speaker and his book You are Not a Gadget was published in 2010 and named one of the ten best books of the year.  Since the '70s Lanier has been active in the world of new "classical" music and enjoys playing the wind and string instruments of Asia. The Encyclopedia Britannica includes him in its list of history's 300 or so greatest inventors.

João Magueijo, Professor in Theoretical Physics at the Imperial College London

His interest is in the varying speed of light (VSL) theory and he teaches courses in General Relativity and Advanced General Relativity. He studied physics at the University of Lisbon and earned his Ph.D. at Cambridge University.  He was awarded a research fellowship at St. John's College, Cambridge before accepting a position at Imperial College.  His publications include a 2009 account of the life and science of the vanished physicist Ettore Majorana, A Brilliant Darkness and an account of his pursuit of VSL in 2003, Faster Than the Speed of Light. In May of 2008 he hosted a Science Channel special, João Magueijo's Big Bang where he explored modern physics' controversial theories.

Philip W. Phillips, Professor of Physics and Bliss Faculty Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

He primarily works in theoretical condensed matter and is the inventor of various models for Bose metals, Mottness, and the random dimer model. His research focuses on challenging the standard paradigms of electron transport and magnetism in solid state physics. Dr. Phillips received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1982.  After a Miller Fellowship at Berkeley he became a faculty member at MIT from 1984 to 1993 when he then came to Illinois. In 2005 he was elected the Bliss Faculty Scholar following an election in 2004 as University Scholar.

Lee Smolin , Theoretical Physicist at the Perimeter Institute

He works mainly on the problem of quantum gravity and has also contributedto cosmology, the foundations of quantum mechanics, astrophysics, theoretical biology, philosophy of science and, recently, economics. In quantum gravity, he was one of the initiators of  two research programs: loop quantum gravity and deformed special relativity. He earned his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1979 and has been a professor at Yale, Syracuse and Penn State Universities as well as the Imperial College London, Cambridge and Oxford. He is presently an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo. He is an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and in 2009 received the Klopsteg Memorial Award from and American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) for extraordinary accomplishment in communicating the excitement of physics to the general public.

David Spergel, Charles A. Young Professor of Astronomy on the Class of 1897 Foundation, and Chair, Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University

He is an award winning theoretical astrophysicist and his interests range from the search for planets around nearby stars to the shape of the Universe. He is part of the new Princeton Center for Theoretical Science and is a co-founder of the Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU) in Tokyo. He is working with others to develop new technologies that may enable the direct imaging of earth-like planets.  Over the last decade, the main focus of his research has been the WMAP Satellite, which was successfully launched in 2001. He is the author of over 225 refereed papers with over 45,000 citations. His first author 2003 and 2007 WMAP papers are the two most cited papers in astronomy and physics. He was elected in 2012 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and currently chairs the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)  Committee on  Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Duane Valz, Esq., member of the Patent Team at Google, Inc.

He creates legal and business solutions for the development and value extraction from technology and intellectual property.  He advises clients in the Information Technology, Digital Media and Energy industries on a variety of matters, including business planning, the protection, commercialization and enforcement of intellectual property assets, corporate transactions, litigation and technology policy & regulation. Prior to joining Google in 2011 Duane was Counsel at the International Law firm Chadbourne & Parke LLP.  As VP and Associate General Counsel at Yahoo! Inc, he focused primarily upon patent filings and portfolio management and reinvigorated the company's patent function. Duane comes from a private practice background but has been working with patent development, digital media, and intellectual property issues for various software companies since 2003. He received his JD from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law after earning his BA from the same institution.