Lene Vestergaard Hau

Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

Wizardry with Light: Freeze, Teleport, and Go!

Danish physicist Lene Hau led a Harvard University team who succeeded in slowing a beam of light to about 17 meters per second and eventually was able to momentarily stop a beam using a superfluid. Her formalized training is in theoretical physics but her interest moved to experimental research in an effort to create a new form of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. Ultra slow light creates a unique, new tool for probing the fundamental properties of Bose-Einstein condensates, which opens up a new territory of nonlinear optics at extremely low light levels. In 1989, Hau accepted a two-year appointment as a postdoctoral fellow in Physics at Harvard University. In 1991, she received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Aarhus in Denmark and joined the Rowland Institute for Science at Cambridge as a scientific staff member. Since 1999 she has held the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics and Professor of Physics at Harvard. She now is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard.

Ekaterina Dadachova

Sylvia and Robert Olnick Faculty Scholar in Cancer Research, and Associate Professor of Nuclear Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, Bronx, NY

New Approaches to the Therapy of Infectious Disease

Radionuclides are radioactive atoms which emit particles capable of destroying the cells extremely efficiently. Dadachova' research interests include targeted radionuclide therapy of cancer and infectious diseases. Her current research projects include radioimmunotherapy of infectious diseases and melanoma, and therapy of breast cancer with radioactive glucose. She received her BSc. and Ph.D. degrees from Moscow State University in Russia. She recently received an award by the Society's Young Professionals' Committee of the Society for Nuclear Medicine. The award is given in recognition of significant contributions to the fields of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging by young researchers.

Tim D. White

Professor of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley

Evolution of Early Humans

Tim White and his colleagues have been working for the last 25 years in the Afar desert of Ethiopia to assemble the planet's longest record of early hominid evolution (hominids comprise the branch of our family tree after the split of the last common ancestor we shared with chimpanzees). The research team has discovered a series of hominid fossils reaching nearly six million years back in time, and has positioned these remains in rich and detailed stratigraphic, geochronological, and ecological contexts. At Berkeley, he directs the Human Evolution Research Center, and is the Curator of Biological Anthropology at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. White grew up in the San Bernardino Mountains of southern California, and majored in biology and anthropology at the University of California, Riverside. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He is an AAAS fellow, member of the National Academy of Sciences, and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa.

Elizabeth Loftus

Distinguished Professor, University of California, Irvine

Illusions and Delusions of Memory

Elizabeth Loftus holds faculty positions in three departments—Psychology and Social Behavior; Criminology, Law, and Society; and Cognitive Sciences—and in the School of Law, and is also a Fellow of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. She received her Ph.D. degree in psychology from Stanford University. Since then, she has published more than 450 scientific articles and 22 books, including the award winning Eyewitness Testimony. Loftus's research over the last 30 years has focused on the malleability of human memory. In recogntion of her work, she has received six honorary doctorates and was elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. She is past president of the Association for Psychological Science, the Western Psychological Association, and the American Psychology-Law Society.

First delivered in 1990, the John McGovern Lecture honors prominent behavioral scientists from around the world. This lecture has been endowed by the John P. McGovern Foundation, to enable all scholars to learn and explore the accomplishments and challenges of the behavioral sciences. Dr. McGovern was an internationally recognized practicing physician, scientist, scholar, educator, and humanitarian. The lecture is delivered at the AAAS Annual Meeting.

Colin F. Camerer

Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Economics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena

Interface Between Cognitive Psychology and Economics

Colin Camerer is a behavioral economist whose doctorate program is considered one of the best economics and political science programs in the world. Behavioral economists study precise mathematical models of how willpower and computational limits and emotions work, and use these models to make predictions about behavior. Camerer's research is conducted at the interface between cognitive psychology and economics, seeking a better understanding of the psychological and neurobiological basis of decision-making in order to determine the validity of models of human economic behavior. He is the author of Behavioral Game Theory, published by Princeton University Press in 2003. Camerer earned a BA degree in quantitative studies from Johns Hopkins, and an MBA degree in finance and a Ph.D. degree in decision theory from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Before coming to Caltech in 1994, Camerer worked at the Kellogg, Wharton, and University of Chicago business schools.

Amory Lovins

Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute, Snowmass, Colo.

Profitable Solutions to the Oil, Climate, and Proliferation Problems

Physicist Amory Lovins is chairman and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute (www.rmi.org) and chairman emeritus of Fiberforge, Inc. Published in 29 books and hundreds of papers, his work has been recognized by the Blue Planet, Volvo, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, and Mitchell Prizes, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, 10 honorary doctorates, honorary membership of the American Institute of Architects, and the Heinz, Lindbergh, Right Livelihood, and World Technology Awards. He advises governments and major firms worldwide on advanced energy and resource efficiency, and has led the technical redesign of about $30 billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors to achieve very large energy savings at typically lower capital cost.

Jeannette Wing

Assistant Director, Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), National Science Foundation, Arlington, Va.

Computational Thinking

Jeannette Wing guides and manages CISE, which provides 86 percent of all federally funded research in computer science and contributes to the education and training of future generations of computer scientists and engineers. She is on leave from Carnegie Mellon University, where she is the President's Professor of Computer Science and was former Department Head of Computer Science. Wing is internationally known for her substantive contributions in promoting formal methods—the application of mathematical models and logics—to software. Her general research interests are in the areas of specification and verification, concurrent and distributed systems, programming languages, and software engineering. Her current focus is on the foundations of trustworthy computing. Wing was or is on the editorial board of 11 journals. She has been a member of many advisory groups including those formed under the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, National Research Council, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Microsoft, and Intel. She is a member of the Sloan Research Fellowships Program Committee and an AAAS Fellow, ACM Fellow, and IEEE Fellow.

Ken Alder

Professor of History and Milton H. Wilson Professor in the Humanities, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.

A History of the International Scientific Conference

Ken Alder studies the history of science and technology in the context of social and political change. Alder studied physics at Harvard University, where he also received a Ph.D. degree in the history of science in 1991. Since 1991, he has taught at Northwestern University, where he is Professor of History and Milton H. Wilson Professor in the Humanities, and directs the Science in Human Culture Program. He has published three books of history: Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France (1997, winner of the Edelstein Prize); The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World (2002, winner of the Davis Prize, the Dingle Prize, and the Kagan Prize, and translated into 13 languages); and The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession (2007). He has held research grants from the National Science Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Bar Foundation, and the American Philosophical Society. His current project examines the history of the forensic sciences in France and America from the Renaissance to the present.

George Sarton, professor of the history of science at Harvard from 1940 to 1951, is widely regarded as one of the key figures in the establishment of the history of science as a discipline in its own right. In 1960, the History of Science Society, under the auspices of AAAS, established the George Sarton Memorial Lecture. The lecture is coordinated through the AAAS History and Philosophy of Science Section and delivered at the AAAS Annual Meeting.