Fall 2008 Series
November 18, 2008
Dr. Kenneth Olden
Dr. Kenneth Olden is the Founding and Acting Dean of the proposed School of Public Health at the City University of New York, and a tenured faculty member at Hunter College. Dr. Olden is a cell biologist and biochemist by training, and has been active in cancer research for over three decades. He earned a doctorate in cell biology and biochemistry at Temple University, and performed postdoctoral work at the Harvard Medical School. From 1979 to 1991, Dr. Olden worked at Howard University in several roles, ultimately as director of the Howard University Cancer Center and Chairman of the Department of Oncology. I n 1991, Dr. Olden became director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Program, with a concurrent scientific post as chief of the Metastasis Section of the NIEHS Environmental Carcinogenesis Program.
Dr. Olden has maintained his research interests throughout his administrative career. Much of his work has focused on the role of glycoproteins in cancer. Working with Ken Yamada and others at the National Cancer Institute, he studied the glycoprotein fibronectin, and its possible role in inhibiting metastasis.
Listen to Dr. Olden's Science Cafe lecture: Cancer Susceptibility: Genetics Loads the Gun but Environment Pulls the Trigger
December 1, 2008
Dr. Michio Kaku
Dr. Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist and the Henry Semat Professor at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he has taught for more than 30 years. He is a graduate of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and earned his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley.
Dr. Kaku is one of the founders of string field theory, a field of research within string theory. String theory seeks to provide a unified description for all matter and the fundamental forces of the universe; its key idea is that all particles in the universe are manifestations of the same type of minuscule, vibrating building block called a string. String field theory is an approach seeking to meld the new ideas of string theory with the powerful language used to describe elementary particles to yield a complete description of string dynamics.
Dr. Kaku is a tireless popularizer of science. He has written several best-selling popular books, including
Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension
, selected as one of the best science books of 1994 by both the New York Times and The Washington Post, and
Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
, a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize. His latest,
Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
, is a New York Times best-selling book. He is active in both television and radio, working with the BBC and the Discovery Channel and hosting two weekly radio programs which reach 130 cities.
Listen to an earlier presentation by Dr. Kaku on
"Impossible" Possibilities
Spring 2009 Series
February 2, 2009
Dr. Sanjoy Banerjee
In March 2008, the Grove School of Engineering at The City College of New York welcomed its newest faculty member when Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering Sanjoy Banerjee arrived from his previous academic home at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). In addition to his faculty appointment, Professor Banerjee will serve as Director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Technologies at CCNY (soon to be renamed the Energy Institute).
His research focuses on developing technology and enhancing existing infrastructure to efficiently store electricity that comes from renewable but intermittent sources (the sun and wind are two such sources). Initially, the goal is to meet the energy needs of the residential (and possibly industrial) sectors. But Professor Banerjee also sees possibilities for these storage technologies to influence the transportation sector, since more efficient electricity storage will allow for better hybrid and electric vehicles than we have currently. The trick, he says, is to "make electricity readily transportable, like gasoline." For these research purposes, he says, New York City, with its strong commitment to solar power and low-emissions transportation systems, amongst other factors, is a particularly hospitable environment.
March 2, 2009
Dr. Charles Vörösmarty
Charles Vorosmarty's research interests focus on the development of
computer models and geospatial data sets used in synthesis studies of
the interactions among the water cycle, climate, biogeochemistry and
anthropogenic activities. His studies are built around local, regional,
and continental to global-scale modeling of water balance, discharge,
constituent fluxes in river systems, and the analysis of the impacts of
large-scale water engineering on the terrestrial water cycle.
As a distinguished member of the global scientific community, Dr.
Vorosmarty serves on several national and international scientific
panels including the National Research Council Committee on Hydrologic
Science (Chair), the United States Arctic Research Commission
(Commissioner-Presidential appointment), the Global Water System
Project (Co-Chair), and the NASA Earth Science Subcommittee among
others. He was a Convening Lead Author on global fresh water resources
for the recently completed Millennium Assessment and has assembled
regional and continental-scale hydro-meteorological data compendia,
including the largest single such collection.
Dr. Vörösmarty's complete Serving Science presentation can be viewed
HERE
or heard
HERE
.
April 6, 2009
Dr. Marie Filbin
Marie T. Filbin is a Distinguished Professor and Director of the Specialized Neuroscience Research Program at Hunter College, City University of New York in Manhattan. She received both her BSc and PhD degrees from the University of Bath, UK. During a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Gihan Tennekoon at Johns Hopkins Medical School she began working on myelin formation at the molecular level. She showed that the myelin protein Po was a homophilic adhesion molecule and then went on to characterize the adhesive interactions of this molecule in detail and to correlate those findings with structure function studies with mutated forms of Po found in human diseases.
In 1990 she joined the Biology Department at Hunter and in 1994 made the observation that another myelin protein, MAG, was a potent inhibitor of axonal regeneration. Since then she has continued to investigate the role of MAG and myelin in general in preventing axonal regeneration after injury. More recently she devised molecular approaches to overcoming these inhibitors. Currently, she is testing these findings in animal models of spinal cord injury, as well as continuing to identify novel molecular targets for potential therapeutic intervention.
Listen to Dr. Filbin's Serving Science presentation at the CUNY Lecture Series archive
HERE
.
May 4, 2009
Dr. Jeffrey Halperin
For more than two decades Jeffrey Halperin, Professor of Psychology and Educational Psychology at The Graduate Center and Queens College, has been conducting research examining behavioral, cognitive, neuropsychological, and neurochemical functioning in children with AD/HD. A substantial proportion of this research has been based on the premise that AD/HD is not a unitary disorder, and the thrust has been the identification of more homogeneous subgroups of children who might have distinct treatment responses or outcomes.
Currently, Professor Halperin is funded by NIMH to re-evaluate a large sample of clinically-referred children who were diagnosed with AD/HD between 1990 & 1997 using structured diagnostic interviews and a variety of neuropsychological instruments.
Listen to Dr. Halperin's Serving Science presentation at the CUNY Lecture Series archive
HERE
.
