President's Address

James J. McCarthy, Ph.D.

AAAS President; Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University

McCarthy's research interests relate to the regulation of plankton productivity in the sea and focus on regions that are strongly affected by seasonal and inter-annual variation in climate. He teaches courses on biological oceanography and biogeochemical cycles, marine ecosystems, and global change and human health, and oversees Harvard's program in Environmental Science and Public Policy. From 1982 until 2002, he was the director of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. McCarthy has served on and led many national and international groups charged with planning and implementing studies of global change, including as chair of the international scientific committee that establishes research priorities and oversees implementation of the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program; founding editor for the American Geophysical Union's Global Biogeochemical Cycles; co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Working Group II, which had responsibilities for assessing impacts of and vulnerabilities to global climate change for the Third IPCC Assessment; lead author of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment; and vice-chair of the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment. He received his Ph.D. degree from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and B.S. degree in biology from Gonzaga University.

Sean B. Carroll, Ph.D.

Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species

Until recently, scientists studying evolution relied on fossil records and animal morphology to painstakingly piece together a picture of how animals evolved. Today, scientists are now using DNA evidence collected from modern animals to find new clues. Molecular biologist Sean Carroll focuses on the way new animal forms have evolved, and his studies of a wide variety of animal species have dramatically changed the face of evolutionary biology. Using genetics and the tools of molecular biology, he is looking back to the dawn of animal life some 600 million to 700 million years ago. Major discoveries from his laboratory have been featured in Time, US News & World Report, The New York Times, Discover, and Natural History. Dr. Carroll is author of The Making of the Fittest (2005) and Endless Forms Most Beautiful (2005). His most recent book, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species, will be published in 2009. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a AAAS Fellow. He received his bachelor's degree at Washington University and his Ph.D. degree in immunology from Tufts University.

Susan W. Kieffer, Ph.D.

Walgreen Endowed Chair of Geology and Physics
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Celebrating the Earth: Its Past, Our Present, a Future?

Planetary scientist Susan Kieffer has degrees in math, physics, geology, and planetary science, which is apparent in the interdisciplinary nature of her work. She is internationally renowned and a leading authority on the mechanisms of meteorite impact, geyser dynamics, volcanic eruptions, and river floods. She was the first scientist to describe the physics and chemistry involved in the eruptions on Jupiter's moon Io, the lateral blast associated with the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the dynamics of Old Faithful as seen by a micro video camera lowered into the geyser between violent eruptions, and the hydraulics of the rapids of the Colorado River. With colleagues, she described the dynamics of the Chixculub meteor impact that caused vaporization of limestone, which resulted in massive amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and ultimately resulted in a major extinction event 65 million years ago. Kieffer is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a MacArthur Fellow, and has received numerous awards and honors. She attended Caltech, University of Colorado, Boulder, and Allegheny College.

Svante Pääbo, M.D., Ph.D.

Director, Department of Genetics
Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Leipzig, Germany

A Neanderthal Perspective on Human Origins

A biologist specializing in evolutionary genetics, Svante Pääbo is known as one of the founders of paleogenetics, a discipline that uses the methods of genetics to study early humans and other ancient populations. He is conducting some of the most exacting work ever attempted on the DNA of human and nonhuman primates. His track record of discoveries began in 1985 when he isolated DNA from a 2,400-year-old Egyptian mummy. In 2006, after decoding fragments of DNA from the remains of Neanderthal, he announced plans to reconstruct the entire genome. In 1992, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research. Pääbo's department in August 2002 published findings about the evolution of the "language gene," FOXP2, which is lacking or damaged in some individuals with language disabilities. He was born in Stockholm and earned his Ph.D. degree from Uppsala University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.