Cahill Professor in Biochemistry , Emeritus, and Director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine, Emeritus

I was born in New York on June 30, 1926 and my formative years were spent in a small, gated community named Sea Gate, at the southernmost tip of Brooklyn. By the time I reached Jr. high school I had already formed a strong ambition to be a scientist, in part stimulated by my readings about medical scientists: "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis and "Microbe Hunters" by Paul DeKruif. An inspiring high school "teacher", Sophie Wolfe, whose job was to supervise the stockroom that supplied the classes in chemistry, physics and biology, nurtured that ambition. Her love of young people and interest in science led her to start an after school program of science clubs. Rather than answering questions we asked, she encouraged us to seek solutions for ourselves, which most often turned into mini research projects. Sometimes that involved experiments in the small lab she kept but sometimes it meant going to the library to find the answers. The satisfaction derived from solving a problem with an experiment was a very heady experience, almost addicting. Looking back, I realize that nurturing curiosity and the instinct to seek solutions are perhaps the most important contributions education can make. With time, many of the facts I learned were forgotten but I never lost the excitement of discovery.

  

I graduated from high school (1943) just a year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and enrolled at New York’s City College to study chemical engineering. But the prospects of designing chemical plants for industrial scale chemical processes seemed far less interesting than the chemical events that occur in biological systems. But I felt it necessary to be part of the war effort and I enlisted in the Navy to be a flyer. While waiting to be called to pre-flight training, I enrolled at the Pennsylvania State University to study biochemistry. After a few months I was called to active duty but allowed to remain at Penn State for pre-flight training. After a year at Penn State and six months training at sea I served on a submarine chaser through the end of the war. I returned to the university in the fall of 1946 and completed my undergraduate degree in biochemistry two years later.

As a project during the senior year, I studied a group of papers that dealt with the application of newly available radioisotopes as tracers for the study of intermediary metabolism. Particularly fascinating were a succession of papers from Western Reserve University that showed how compounds labeled with isotopic carbon and/or heavy nitrogen atoms could be tracked during their conversion from foodstuffs to cellular materials. That seemed exciting and although I had never heard of Western Reserve University it was my next destination.

That was a fortunate choice; in fact, it changed the course of my career. Because of its pioneering work in this new field, the department had by the late 1940’s become one of the important biochemistry centers in the country. Harland Wood, the department head, was an inspiring scientist and teacher but he was also devoted to his students and colleagues. My doctoral thesis concerned what is today referred to as C1 metabolism, more specifically the conversion of formic acid, formaldehyde and methanol to the fully reduced state of methyl groups in methionine. I was among the first to demonstrate, in vitro, that folic acid and vitamin B12 cofactors participated in these processes. (1952). By that time I was hooked on a career in academic research instead of one in the pharmaceutical industry that I had originally considered in deciding to get a PhD.

Seeking more experience with enzymes, I studied for a year in Copenhagen with Herman Kalckar at the Institute of Cytophysiology and for a second year with Arthur Kornberg at Washington University in St. Louis. Both were very productive and enjoyable experiences. In Copenhagen, Wolfgang Joklik and I discovered a new enzyme that created the nucleoside triphospates for nucleic acid assembly and the next year in Kornberg’s lab, I discovered a previously unknown class of biological compounds - acyl adenylates - intermediates in the formation of fatty acyl-CoAs from fatty acids, ATP and CoA. This type of reaction, I discovered, was also central to the way amino acids are activated as amino-acyl adenylates prior to being linked to tRNAs. By then, I was making the slow transition from classical biochemistry to molecular biology and becoming increasingly preoccupied with how genes act and how proteins are made.

After 6 years in St. Louis, I moved to Stanford University’s Medical Center (1959) to help Kornberg set up the new department of biochemistry. In time, my interests shifted from studies with microorganisms to mammalian cells and I spent a year experimenting with Polyoma and SV40 tumor viruses in mammalian cell culture with Renato Dulbecco at the Salk Institute. Soon after I returned to Stanford, I conceived of using SV40 as a means for introducing new genes into mammalian cells much in the way that bacteriophage transduce cellular DNA among infected cells. My colleagues and I succeeded in developing a general way to join two DNAs together in vitro; in this case, a set of three genes responsible for metabolizing galactose in the bacterium E. coli was inserted into the SV40 DNA genome. That work led to the emergence of the recombinant DNA technology thereby providing a major tool for analyzing mammalian gene structure and function and formed the basis for me receiving the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Education

1948 B.S., Pennsylvania State University 1952 Ph.D., Western Reserve University

Professional Background

1950-52 Predoctoral Research Fellow, National Institutes of Health.
1952-54 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, American Cancer Society
Dr. H. M. Kalckar, Institute of Cytophysiology, Copenhagen, Denmark
Dr. Arthur Kornberg, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, M
1954 Scholar in Cancer Research, American Cancer Society, Department of Microbiology, Washington University School of Medicine
1955-59 Assistant to Associate Professor of Microbiology, Washington University School of Medicine
1959-60 Associate Professor of Biochemistry, Stanford University School of Medicine
1960-69 Professor, Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University School of Medicine
1969-74 Chairman, Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University School of Medicine
1970-94 Sam, Lulu and Jack Willson Professor of Biochemistry
1973-83 Non-Resident Fellow of Salk Institute
1985-2000 Director, Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine
1994-2000 Vivian K. and Robert W. Cahill Professor in Biochemistry and Cancer Research
2000-present Cahill Professor in Biochemistry , Emeritus, and Director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine, Emeritus

Honours

Eli Lilly Award in Biochemistry (1959) California Scientist of the Year (1963) National Academy of Sciences (1966) American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1966) Henry J. Kaiser Award for Excellence in Teaching at Stanford University School of Medicine (1969, 1972) Distinguished Alumnus Award, Pennsylvania State University V.D. Mattia Prize of the Roche Institute for Molecular Biology Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Science (1974) President, American Society of Biological Chemists (1975) Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Rochester and Yale University (1978) Sarasota Medical Awards for Achievement and Excellence (1979) Annual Award of the Gairdner Foundation (1980) Nobel Award in Chemistry (1980) Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (1980) New York Academy of Sciences Award (1980) Foreign Member, French Academy of Sciences (1981) American Association for the Advancement of Science Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award (1982) National Medal of Science (1983) American Philosophical Society (1983) Associate Member of EMBO (1984) Honorary Doctor of Science, Washington University, St. Louis (1986) National Library of Medicine Medal (1986) American Academy of Achievement (1988) Honorary Doctor of Science, Oregon State University (1989) Special Achievement Award, Odyssey Biomedical Corporation Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (1991) Honorary Member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of the Russian Federal Republic (1991) Foreign Member of the Royal Society, London (1992) Fellow, American Academy of Microbiology (1992) Honorary Member Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society (1992) Honorary Member AMBO/AMBL (1994) Honorary Doctor of Science, Pennsylvania State University (1995) Member, Pontifical Academy of Sciences (1996) Sustained Leadership at National Level, Research! America (2003), Biotechnology Heritage Award (2005)

Special appointments

Member, Board of Scientific Advisors of Jane Coffin Childs Foundation for Medical Research Member, Advisory Boards to National Institutes of Health, American Cancer Society, National Science Foundation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University Elected to the Council of National Academy of Science Member and Chairman, International Advisory Board of the Basel Institute of Immunology Chairman, Whitehead Institute Board of Advisory Scientists Chairman, National Advisory Committee, Human Genome Project Trustee, Rockefeller University Chairman, Board of Directors, National Foundation for Biomedical Research Chairman, Public Policy Committee, American Society for Cell Biology Advisory Editorial Board, Molecular Medicine Today Advisory Panel, Human Genome Education Program Chairman, Scientific Advisory Board, Beckman Foundation NAS-CSIS Roundtable on Biotechnology and Bioterrorism

Career history

B.S., 1967, Caltech
Ph.D., 1973, Cornell
Member of technical staff of AT&T Bell Laboratories, 1972-87
Head Solid State and Low Temperature Research Department 1981-87
Professor of Physics and Applied Physics 1987-present
J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Physics
Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Simon Memorial Prize 1976
Oliver E. Buckley Prize, 1981
MacArthur Prize Fellow, 1981
Walter J. Gores award for teaching, 1991
Co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1996

  

Research Interests

Research efforts center around studies of quantum fluids and solids and glasses at ultra-low temperatures. Current work in quantum fluids and solids includes studies of transport properties in nuclear magnetically ordered solid 3He, studies of the B phase nucleation in superfluid 3He, and experimental searches for new magnetically ordered two dimensional phases of both solid and liquid 3He on graphite surfaces. The work involving glasses is intended to elucidate the nature of two level systems in amorphous materials at ultra-low temperatures, and to develop new low heat capacity/high resolution thermometers for use in the 1 to 10 mK temperature range.
Experimental Condensed Matter
Specialty: ultra-low temperature physics

Autobiography

Ethnically, I come from a mixed family. My father was the son of Jewish immigrants who left Russia shortly after the turn of the century, and my mother was the daughter of a Lutheran minister whose parents were from what is now Slovakia. Mostly, however, I grew up in a medical family. My father's father and all his children either became physicians or married them. My parents had met in New York where my father was a medical intern and my mother was a nurse. At the end of World War II, my parents settled in Aberdeen, a small logging town on the west coast of Washington State, where medical doctors were in short supply. Surrounded by natural beauty, it was a perfect place to raise a family, and I was the second of five children.

To this day I grow pale at the sight of blood, and never for a moment considered a career in medicine. Despite this, my father, who was usually engrossed in his medical career, inspired in me passions for both photography and gardening, which were his hobbies when time permitted, as they are mine. Natural science interested me intensely from a very early age. When I was six I began tearing my toys apart to play with the electric motors. From then on, my free hours were occupied by a myriad of mechanical, chemical and electrical projects, culminating in the construction of a 100 keV X-ray machine during my senior year in high school.

My projects often involved an element of danger, but my parents never seemed too concerned, nor did they inhibit me. Once a muzzle loading rifle I had built went off in the house, putting a hole through two walls. On another occasion a make-shift acetylene 'miners' lamp blew up on my chemistry bench in the basement, embedding shards of glass in the side of my face, narrowly missing my right eye. With blood running down my face, I came up the stairs cupping my hands to keep the blood off the carpet. My mother was by then at the top of the stairs. Knowing my propensity for practical jokes, she exclaimed loudly "If you're kidding I'll kill you! " As usual, my father lectured me about safety as he sewed the larger wounds closed, and there was always an unspoken understanding that that particular phase of my experimentation was over.

In high school I was a good student, but only really excelled in physics and chemistry classes. While I liked physics much more than chemistry, the chemistry teacher, William Hock, had spent quite a bit of time telling us what physical research was all about (as opposed to my experimentation), and that effort made a deep impression on my young mind. My interest in experimentation helped me to develop excellent technical skills, but I did not feel motivated to do independent reading in those areas of physics or chemistry associated with my projects. I was intellectually rather lazy, and in high school I would always take one free class period so that I could get my homework out of the way, freeing the evenings for my many projects.

My parents were generous, and the home for me was filled with scientific toys and gadgets. In addition, their children were allowed to attend any university to which they could get admitted. I chose Caltech over Stanford to avoid a continuing comparison of my academic record with that of my older brother, then a Stanford undergraduate.

It was a good time to be at Caltech, as Feynman was teaching his famous undergraduate course. This two-year sequence was an extremely important part of my education. Although I cannot say that I understood it all, I think it contributed most to the development of my physical intuition. The Feynman problem sets were very challenging, but I had the good fortune to know Ernest Ma, who was an undergraduate one year ahead of me. Ernest would never tell me how to solve problems, but would give obscure hints when I got stuck, at least they seemed obscure to me at the time.

It was a shock to suddenly have to work so hard in my studies. I had the most trouble in math, and only through considerable trauma did I gradually improve my performance from a grade of C+ to A+ over a three-year period. Years later, when Caltech was offering me a faculty position, I confided that I did not have a very illustrious career as an undergraduate. To this remark the division chair replied "That's OK Doug, we are not hiring you to be an undergraduate."

The pressure at Caltech was extreme, and I am not sure I would have survived had I not joined a group of undergraduates working with Gerry Neugebauer on his famous infra-red star survey during my junior year. This experience made me recognize how satisfying research could be, and how different it was from doing endless problem sets. In my senior year, in order to get out of a third term of senior physics lab, I also began working in David Goodstein's low temperature lab (David was in Italy). Two professors, Don McCullum from U.C. Riverside and Walter Ogier from Pamona College, were spending their sabbatical leaves there trying to reach a temperature of 0.5K by pumping on a helium bath in which the superfluid film had been carefully controlled. They filled my mind with the wonders of the low temperature world, and I decided I would go into solid state physics.

I chose to attend Cornell for graduate school largely because it was so far away from the Pasadena smog. In the end, it was a good choice, and a good time to be at Cornell. Soon after my arrival I met two people who were to become very important in my life. While still looking for housing, I met Phyllis Liu, a pretty young woman from Taiwan, who had also just arrived in Ithaca. We dated a bit, but then she found herself too busy with her studies for such diversions. We met again three years later, and were married in August, 1970, two weeks after she obtained her Ph.D. The other person was David Lee, the head of the low temperature laboratory at Cornell and the professor under whom I was to work as a teaching assistant my first year. Dave seemed to think that I was bright, and encouraged me to join the low temperature group.

Low temperature physics seemed even more exciting at Cornell than it had been at Caltech. New technologies and interesting physics made the field easy to choose, and I found myself thoroughly enjoying every minute of my work. In the spring of my fourth year Dave Lee asked me to talk to the Bell Labs recruiter, who came to campus in the fall and spring of each year. I was not ready to graduate, but we talked a bit, especially about making tiny electrical plugs to be used throughout the Bell Telephone system. It seemed interesting to me, although not really physics. In the fall, Dave suggested I start interviewing in earnest. I first talked with General Electric, who seemed to have no jobs whatsoever. I then talked to Bell Labs again, but this time to a new recruiter, Venky Narayanamurti, who had recently received his Ph.D. in physics at Cornell. Venky was enthusiastic about what I was doing, and felt that I might be able to get a postdoc doing Raman spectroscopy. I didn't confess that I knew nothing about the subject.

We discovered our mysterious phase transitions in my Pomeranchuk cell in November 1971, and almost by magic, Venky called me up in early December with good news. The hiring freeze which had been in place for almost two years at Bell had been lifted. How soon could I be ready to come down for a job interview? I told Venky that we had stumbled on to something that was pretty exciting, and we fixed the date: January 6, 1972.

At Bell Labs, a job interview began with a thesis defence, and it could at times turn nasty. I was lucky that no one questioned my association of the A and B features with the solid. In particular, Dick Werthamer was in the audience, and he had done early work on the p-wave BCS state soon to be associated with the B phase. I think my enthusiasm carried the day, and ultimately Bell Labs offered me not a postdoc position in Raman spectroscopy, but a permanent position, which would allow me to continue my studies on 3He.

Phyllis and I moved to New Jersey in September, 1972; Phyllis to a postdoc position at Princeton University, and I to Bell Laboratories at Murray Hill. This was the golden era at Bell Labs. The importance of the transistor, invented in the research area there, made management extremely supportive of basic research. The only requirement was that work done should be 'good physics' in that it changed the way we thought about nature in some important way. I joined the Department of Solid State and Low Temperature Research under the direction of C. C. Grimes, and began purchasing the equipment I would need to continue what I by then knew were studies of superfluidity in 3He. Some instrumentation was even purchased before I arrived in New Jersey. Yet I knew it would take at least a year to set up my laboratory, and I feared that most of the important pioneering work would be done before my own lab became operational.

I was surprised to find that by the time my laboratory did become operational, few of the studies that interested me had been done. Indeed, there seemed to be some question as to whether or not these new phases were all p-wave BCS states. In addition, theorists Phil Anderson and Bill Brinkman at Bell Labs had become interested in the theory of superfluid 3He. This set the stage for what was to be an extremely productive period in my career. Over a five year period, beginning in 1973, we measured many of the important characteristics of the superfluid phases which helped identify the microscopic states involved. We found the superfluid phases to be almost unbelievably complex, and at the same time extremely well described by the BCS theory and extensions to that theory developed during that period.

In about 1977 I began to feel pressure from Bell Laboratories management to go on to study other physical systems. I decided to study solid 3He, my original thesis topic, and at the same time Gerry Dolan and I began a modest program to test some of the ideas that David Thouless had discussed on electron localization in disordered one-dimensional systems. This latter study had to fit within the extremely slow time scale of the solid 3He work. By late 1979, both of these efforts had succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. We discovered antiferromagnet resonance in nuclear spin ordered solid 3He samples which we grew from the superfluid phase directly into the spin-ordered solid phase. At the same time, the low temperature group at the University of Florida also discovered these resonances, but because we cooled our samples by adiabatic nuclear demagnetization of copper rather than Pomeranchuk cooling, only we were able to form and study single crystals, and could thus identify the allowed magnetic domain orientations. In the end, Mike Cross, Daniel Fisher and I were able to determine the symmetry of the magnetic sub-lattice structure, and correctly guessed the precise ordered structure, later confirmed by polarized neutron scattering. The frequency shifts resulting from this antiferromagnetic resonance have made solid 3He an extremely useful model magnetic system, and to understand them theoretically, we had borrowed some of the same formalism which Leggett used to understand the frequency shifts in superfluid 3He.

At almost the same time that Cross, Fisher and I made our breakthrough in our solid 3He studies, Dolan and I discovered the log(T) temperature dependence to the electrical resistivity in disordered 2D conductors which Phil Anderson and his 'gang of four' had just predicted would exist, as a result of what they termed 'weak localization'. I did not continue the work on weak localization, as I only had one cryostat, and to do so would have meant that I could not continue my studies on nuclear spin ordering in solid 3He, since the two sets of experiments would have vastly different time scales. Somewhat ironically, I got a second cryostat two years later.

In 1987, after fifteen years, I left Bell Laboratories to accept a position at Stanford University. I had received informal offers of university positions periodically while at Bell Labs, but always found Bell to be the ideal place to do research. The combination of in-house support for basic science and first rate collaborators made Bell Labs unbeatable as an environment for doing research. However, my wife recognized in me a teacher waiting to be born. In addition, she was not happy with her job in New Jersey, and we agreed that she would apply for positions elsewhere. When she received offers from two biotech companies in California, Amgen and Genentech, I suggested that she accept the Genentech offer and that I would start talking to Stanford and U.C. Berkeley. Stanford, which has a small physics department, had just begun a search for a low temperature physicist. Ultimately, I received offers from both institutions, and chose Stanford because we liked the atmosphere better, and it was a better commute for Phyllis.

At Stanford my students and I have continued work on superfluid and solid 3He, studying how the B superfluid phase is nucleated from the higher temperature A phase and diverse properties of magnetically ordered solid 3He in two and three dimensions. In addition, we have developed a program to study the low temperature properties of amorphous solids. Our work has shown that interactions between active defects in these systems create a hole in the density of states vs. local field, just as is seen in spin-glasses. In amorphous materials, it may be possible to measure the size of coupled clusters of such defects, something which has been difficult in spin-glasses.

I have thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of university life, except for having to apply for research support. In particular, I have been fortunate to have had excellent graduate students, and to be able to teach bright undergraduates. Of course, with undergraduates one always has a few students who do not appreciate the professor's efforts. In 1988, after teaching my first large lecture course, one student wrote in his course evaluation: "Osheroff is a typical example of some lunkhead from industry who Stanford University hires for his expertise in some random field." Despite this minority opinion, in 1991 Stanford presented me their Gores Award for excellence in teaching. From 1993-1996 I served as Physics Department chair, and stepped down in September 1996, hoping to spend more time with my graduate students. The day I learned I was to receive the Nobel Prize, after just two and a half hours sleep the night before, I taught my class on the physics of photography, although the lecture was not on photographic lenses, but the discovery of superfluidity in 3He.

Awarded the Nobel Prize at 34 years of age, a remarkable feat by any standards, but a remarkable person.

B.Sc. degree in physics and mathematics from the Case Institute of Technology(1946).
Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (1949).
Instructor at the University of Michigan and promoted to professor (1957).
Professor of Physics, University of California, Berkeley (1959)
Professor of Molecular Biology, University of California, Berkeley (1964).
Professor of Physics and Neurobiology in the Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley (1989).

  

Donald Arthur Glaser was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 21, 1926, the son of William J. Glaser, a businessman, and his wife Lena. He received his early education in the public schools of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and took his B.Sc. degree in physics and mathematics at the Case Institute of Technology in 1946. His first original research is described in his bachelor's thesis and consists of an electron diffraction study of the properties of thin metallic films evaporated onto crystalline metal substrates.

After serving as a teacher of mathematics at the Case Institute of Technology during the spring of 1946, he began his graduate study at the California Institute of Technology in the autumn of the same year, finishing his Ph.D. work in the autumn of 1949, and receiving his degree in physics and mathematics officially in 1950. His doctoral thesis research was an experimental study of the momentum spectrum of high energy cosmic ray and mesons at sea level.

Glaser began his career of full-time teaching and research in the Physics Department of the University of Michigan in the autumn of 1949, being promoted to the rank of Professor in 1957. In 1959 he became Professor of Physics at the University of California, at Berkeley. His main research interest during this period was the elementary particles of physics, particularly the strange particles. He examined various experimental techniques that seemed useful in this research and constructed a number of diffusion cloud chambers and parallel-plate spark counters before finally beginning to develop the ideas that led to the invention of the bubble chamber in 1952. Since then he has worked on the development of various types of bubble chambers for experiments in high energy nuclear physics, besides carrying out experiments on elementary particles at the Cosmotron of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and the Bevatron of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in California. These experiments gave information on the lifetimes, decay modes, and spins of the ?° hyperon, K° meson and ?° hyperon as well as differential cross-sections for the production of those particles by pions.

Other experiments yielded information on pion-proton scattering, parity violation in non-leptonic hyperon decay, and the branching ratios in positive K meson decay.

All these experiments and technical developments of the past six years were carried out in collaboration with a number of his thesis students and colleagues at the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley, where he worked from 1959. Among his associates in research were J. Brown, H. Bryant, R. Burnstein, J. Cronin, C. Graves, R. Hartung, J. Kadyk, D. Meyer, M. Perl, D. Rahm, B. Roe, L. Roellig, D. Sinclair, G. Trilling, J. van der Velde, J. van Putten and T. Zipf.

These researches were supported originally by the University of Michigan and later by the National Science Foundation of the United States and the United States Atomic Energy Commission.

Glaser has received many honours for his work, among which can be mentioned the Henry Russell Award of the University of Michigan, 1953, for distinction and promise in teaching and research; the Charles Vernon Boys Prize of the Physical Society, London, in 1958, for distinction in experimental physics; the American Physical Society Prize (sponsored by the Hughes Aircraft Company) for his contributions to experimental physics in 1959; and the award, in the same year, of the honorary degree of Doctor of Science by the Case Institute of Technology.

1960, the year in which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, also saw Professor Glaser's marriage to Miss Ruth Bonnie Thompson.

From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1942-1962, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964

This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

Addendum, March 2005

Glaser turned away from physics in 1962 to explore the new field of molecular biology, which had fascinated him from his time in graduate school at Caltech. In those days, Professor Max Delbrück, another physicist, led a very exciting seminar on the work he and others were doing on the genetics of microorganisms, which previously had been thought to have no genetics. It turned out that the genetic molecules, DNA and RNA, in those organisms were the same as those in human cells, thereby establishing the scientific basis for the biotechnology industry. In addition to studying the control of DNA synthesis in bacteria, Glaser and his students showed that certain mutations in cultivated Chinese hamster ovary cells caused abnormal sensitivity to ultraviolet light which could convert these mutated cells into cancer cells. The seven genes involved in this process are also found in humans, where the same defects lead to a human cancer called xeroderma pigmentosum in which patients can lead normal cancer-free lives only if they avoid exposure to daylight.

In about 1970, the new field of molecular biology was producing remarkably detailed knowledge which had not been very extensively applied to medical and other applications. Motivated by this observation, Glaser and two friends co-founded the first biotechnology company, thus starting an industry that is having great success in bringing the fruits of molecular biology to applications in medicine and agriculture.

As molecular biology became industrialized and came to depend on very sophisticated biochemical and molecular technologies, Glaser began to work in neurobiology, another long term interest of his. The human visual system is the best known part of the brain, accounting for about one third of all the neurons in the cerebral cortex. Since its "wiring diagram" is known in considerable detail, computational models of human vision can be used to make predictions about human and monkey visual abilities which are testable by psychophysical and electrophysiological methods. These models have yielded descriptions of the perception of motion and depth and have made predictions concerning two surprising illusory motion effects that are being tested now by Glaser and his research group by psychophysical methods in humans and by collaboration with other groups by electrophysiological methods in monkeys.

In the years since 1960, Glaser has been a consultant and advisor to many governmental organizations, industrial boards of directors, non-profit groups, and a member of the editorial boards of several scientific publications.

He has two children by his first marriage, Louise Ferris Addison, a paediatrician, and William Thompson Glaser, CEO of a computer-related company. The family now includes four granddaughters. In 1975 he married Lynn Bercovitz, a painter. They reside in Berkeley, California.

B.A. - Rice University (1954)
Ph.D. - University of California, Berkeley (1957)

I was born in Alice, Texas on August 23, 1933. My father was a Methodist minister, and my mother was what we then called a housewife. I have a sister, Mary, who is some years my elder. In those days, Methodist ministers moved often, and as a child I lived in a succession of mostly small towns in south Texas: Alice, Brady, San Antonio, Kingsville, Del Rio, Brownsville, McAllen, Austin, then back to San Antonio. During this time the church hierarchy recognized that my father was an able administrator capable of organizing people to get things done and gifted at resolving conflicts. From the time I was about nine my father was no longer pastor of a church but rather a supervisor of church activities over a district. This was a great relief to me as I was spared being the center of judgmental attention as the "preacher's kid."

  

By the time I reached adulthood my father was universally revered as a fair, kind, and gentle man with an acute mind. His most enduring monument will be the San Antonio Medical Center as he worked hard and effectively to start the Methodist Hospital there, which really started the center.

When I was nine years old, my parents gave me a chemistry set. Within a week, I had decided to become a chemist and never wavered from that choice. As I grew my interest in chemistry grew more intense, if not more sophisticated. Of course there was no chemistry in the school program until high school.

I was not a particularly distinguished student as a child. My grades were good but obtained more by steady work than any brilliance on my part. I vividly remember my father telling me that one of my elementary school teachers had told him that I was not brilliant but I was a steady hard worker. Somehow the further I progressed in school, the easier it became to do well.

It was a great delight when I finally got to study chemistry in high school. My teacher, Mrs. Lorena Davis, saw that I was keenly interested and did her best to foster and nourish that interest. As only one year of chemistry was offered then, I had no formal course in the subject to take my final year in high school. Mrs. Davis offered me special projects to satisfy my appetite for chemistry. I remember most constructing a Cottrell Precipitator. I was shocked to see Mrs. Davis, who didn't smoke, light up a cigarette and blow smoke into the precipitator to demonstrate that it worked.

When it came time to choose a college, I got interested in Rice Institute. It had an excellent reputation as being a good school for a dedicated student. I was also impressed by how well its football team was doing. My parents loved my choice because at that time Rice charged no tuition, and they would have been hard pressed to send me to a university that did. While my father held the highest administrative office, not counting the Bishop, in the Southwest Texas Conference, he did not make much money.

At that time there was a high failure rate at Rice. With no tuition, students were expected to prove themselves worthy or make way for someone else. However, I was ready for the challenge that Rice presented and prospered academically. Socially, my fellow students were ready for the challenge that I presented and worked hard to convert a rather straight-laced, serious boy into someone they could stand to be around.

By a quirk of fate, the most colorful professors I encountered in my first years taught subjects other than chemistry. I liked my first and second year chemistry professors (in fact I later developed a closer relation with my second year professor, John T. Smith), but they were not particularly colorful. It was not until my third year when I had John E. Kilpatrick for Physical Chemistry and George Holmes Richter for Organic Chemistry that the chemistry department began to pull ahead in the colorfulness race. John Kilpatrick came to class, sat in the middle of the table in front, lit a cigarette, took an enormous drag, and began to speak. No smoke came out! Richter enlivened his lectures by describing the pharmacological effects of various organic chemicals. Richter was a fine teacher of Organic Chemistry, but that was of little use to me since I had an almost unnatural aversion to Organic Chemistry. Kilpatrick was the most welcoming to students of any person I ever encountered with absolutely no regard for the amount of time he spent with a student. This, happily for him, made the time he devoted self-limiting, because I would think about whether I had an hour or two to spare before dropping by to see him.

The most impressive chemistry teacher I had was Richard Turner, whom I first encountered in a senior Natural Products course. (The curriculum was cleverly constructed so that it was impossible to avoid a second encounter with Organic Chemistry.) It was his enthusiastic discussion of barriers to internal rotation and the pioneering work of Kenneth Pitzer in the area that made me resolve to go to University of California, Berkeley, and work with Pitzer. This is a decision I have never regretted.

While I was at Berkeley, Pitzer was the Dean of the College of Chemistry and a very busy man. Nevertheless he was always completely accessible to his graduate students, and always genuinely delighted to see me when I interrupted his work. When our conversation reached its conclusion, he graciously got me out of his office. I was grateful for this as well because at the time, as you can see from my comments about visiting John Kilpatrick, I had trouble with leave-takings. I think that I received an excellent education in how to do research from Pitzer. The most important work I did at Berkeley was on Pitzer's extension of the Theory of Corresponding States. Over the years, I have remained in contact with Ken and Jean Pitzer. Indeed, we were able to collaborate again in research some years later when he was president of Rice University.

My years at Berkeley were some of the happiest of my life primarily because it was during this time that I met and married my wife, Jonel. Our union seemed pre-ordained when we discovered that our ancestors came from the tiny town of Center Point, Texas (pop. 300).

At that time, there seemed to be an unwritten rule that Pitzer's students should do experiment as well as theory. This suited me, because I had always been interested in experiments. Pitzer suggested that I investigate the matrix isolation infrared spectrum of disiloxane in order to establish whether the SiO-Si bond was linear or bent. If I had tried to do these experiments involving liquid hydrogen without help, I believe there is a good chance an explosion would have resulted. However, a fellow student, Dolphus Milligan, helped me tremendously with these experiments and with his aid I was able to collect the necessary data, which indicated that Si-O-Si is somewhat bent from linearty.

Pitzer was able to help me get a post-doctoral position with E. Bright Wilson at Harvard. At that time, Wilson had developed a method for measuring barriers to internal rotation using microwave spectroscopy and I was still interested in internal rotation barriers. It seemed a perfect situation. I enjoyed Harvard scientifically. Wilson's personality was very different from Pitzer's. Although he was born in Tennessee, he personified the New England virtues of upright integrity and serious concern about all aspects of life. His disapproval of superstition in all forms was well-known; none of us would dare mention in his presence the gremlins we all suspected inhabited his microwave spectrometer. Wilson above all was a fine, decent, caring person who wanted the best for his students.

The atmosphere in Mallinkrodt Laboratory at Harvard was somewhat different from that of Lewis Hall at Berkeley. Perhaps it was because the graduate system and expectations for graduate students were different. At that time, a student was expected to complete his Ph.D. at Berkeley in three years while at Harvard it took many students five or even more years. Compared with the laid-back Berkeley graduate students of my day, Harvard students seemed intense and often eccentric. The big exception was Dudley Herschbach, who was modest, relaxed, and friendly, and the most brilliant intellect I had encountered in someone my own age.

In those days faculty hiring was done with few formalities. Somewhat out-of- the-blue, I got an offer to come back to Rice as an Assistant Professor. The prospect of returning to a warm climate and familiar surroundings full of many happy memories was delightful and with no negotiations I happily accepted.

I inherited George Bird's graduate students and his microwave spectrometer, which was more sensitive than Wilson's. Of these two strokes of good luck, Bird's students proved the greater treasure. My very first student was Jim Kinsey. He accomplished so much in the first year that I was at Rice that he graduated. The work we did together on the microwave spectrum of ClO2 and the treatment of fine and hyperfine structure set me up for a productive period of studying the spectra of stable free radicals.

I have remained at Rice from 1958 until today. In my professional and research career, I have played a variety of roles and worked in several areas of Physical Chemistry, too varied to describe further. A great deal of my research has been collaborative involving other principals both at Rice and elsewhere. I have enjoyed quite a few very pleasant research associations over the years. Outside Rice I have collaborated with C.A. Coulson, Roger Kewley, Takeshi Oka, Ken Evenson, John Brown, Eizi Hirota, Shuji Saito, Anthony Merer, Wolfgang Urban, Harry Kroto and Leon Phillips. Among the Rice Faculty, I have enjoyed collaborations with John Kilpatrick, Frank Tittel (for the last 25 years), Phil Brooks, Rick Smalley, Graham Glass and Bruce Weisman. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Rick Smalley, Harry Kroto, and myself for the fruits of one of these collaborations, the discovery of the fullerenes.

I must point out that we do not claim this discovery is ours alone. James Heath and Sean O'Brien, who were graduate students at the time, have equal claim to this discovery. Both Jim and Sean were equal participants in the scientific discussions that directed the course of this work and actually did most of the experiments. The early experiments that Sean and Jim did not do were carried out by Yuan Liu and Qing-Ling Zhang. At an early stage, Frank Tittel became involved in this work. At a later stage, F.D. Weiss and J.L. Elkind did the shrink wrap experiments, which were among the strongest evidence for the fullerene hypothesis.

Dr. Bai Chun-li is Professor of Chemistry at the Key laboratory of Molecular Nanostructure and Nanotechnoloy, Institute of Chemistry of The Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

Born on Sept., 26, 1953 in Liaoning Province. B.S., 1978, Department of Chemistry, Beijing University. M.S., 1981, and Ph.D., 1985, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Postdoctoral, 1985-87, California Institute of Technology. Academician of CAS and the Third World Science Academy. Now, deputy president of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Scanning Probe Microscopy and its Applications
Physical and Chemical Properties of Single Molecules Nanodevice
Construction and Characterization of Nanostructures Structures and Nanolithography of Surface and Interfaces of Material Single Molecular Technology and Study of Biomolecular interactions

Professor Bai Chun-li, Academician of CAS, has contributed substantially to the developing and promoting SPM related research activities in China, and the emerging nanometer scale science and technology. He has also served as a member of several international series conferences including International Conference on Scanning Tunneling Microscopy, Scanning Microscopy International, etc.

Chun-li Bai is Executive Vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Director of Division of Chemistry and member of Executive Committee of the Presidium. He graduated from the Department of Chemistry, Peking University in 1978 and received his MS and Ph.D. degrees from CAS Institute of Chemistry in 1981 and 1985, respectively. During 1985-1987, he was at Caltech, the US for advanced study, conducting research work in the field of physical chemistry as a post-doctorate associate and visiting scholar. After his return home in 1987, he continued his research at CAS Institute of Chemistry. From Oct. 1991 to Apr. 1992, he was a visiting professor at Tohoku University in Japan.

His research areas involve the structure and properties of polymer catalysts, X-ray crystallography of organic compounds, molecular mechanics and EXAFS research on electro-conducting polymers. In the mid-1980s, he shifted his research orientation to the field of scanning tunneling microscopy, and molecular nanotechnology.

Professor Bai has won 10 national, CAS-awarded or ministerial prizes. He has received "International Medal" by the Society of Chemical Industry (London-based) , TWAS 2002 Medal Lecture in Chemical Sciences, HLHL Chemistry Prize.

Because of his outstanding achievements and meritorious service, Bai was elected a member of CAS and a fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) in 1997, a foreign member of the Mongolian National Academy of Sciences in 2005, and a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2006. Prof. Bai now serves as the chief scientist for the National Steering Committee for Nanoscience and Related Technology and Director of China National Center for Nano science and technology. In addition, he is the president of the Graduate School of CAS.

In his social activities, he is vice-president of the China Association for Science and Technology, president of Chinese Chemical Society, Bureau member of Executive Committee of IUPAC.

Dr. Erich Bloch is the former Director of the National Science Foundation and the only NSF Director from industry has become an Honorary Member of the WIF.

Amongst many distinguished honours Bloch in his life-time he has been awarded the Vannevar Bush Award for Long-Running Contributions to S&T. This is the highest award for scientific achievement and statesmanship from The National Science Board (NSB).

Bloch is a Principal of The Washington Advisory Group, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Competitiveness, a former National Science Foundation (NSF) director, and an outspoken supporter of fundamental research in leading innovation. He received 2002 Vannevar Bush Award on May 7 in Washington, D.C. in tribute to his long-standing reputation in research and innovation, and his senior statesman status in science and engineering.

Bloch, a standout electrical engineer at IBM early in his career, was a key figure responsible for IBM's STRETCH Computer Systems Engineering project and in the groundbreaking developments of the IBM 360. Charged with the technology for the IBM Systems 360, Bloch's accomplishments on the system revolutionized the computer industry and led to Bloch's 1985 National Medal of Technology.

"Erich Bloch is a visionary innovator of enormous stature - in both high technology for the private sector - and in the organization and objectives of science and engineering research, and science and mathematics education programs funded by the Federal government. He has been an exceptionally effective communicator of the benefits of public funding for science and technology, and a leader in establishing widely emulated mechanisms for productive partnerships in research and education across public, academic and private sectors," Eamon Kelly, NSB chair, said.

In his six-year term (1984-1990) as NSF director - NSF's only director from industry - Bloch built national support for advances in high-performance computing and networking. Bloch's bold step in transitioning the NSFNET to a commercialized Internet has had immense economic and societal impact from the 1990s to today. He also established NSF's Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate.

Bloch's creation of NSF engineering research centers and science and technology centers reflected his belief in knowledge transfer - to bring together university scientists with appropriate industry researchers to extend the benefits of fundamental research to industry, and to provide added educational benefits.

In education, Bloch also oversaw NSF's support of system wide reform for K-12 math and science education. During his tenure, the budget for education and human resources more than tripled, and NSF's overall budget increased from $1.3 to 2.0 billion.

As a distinguished fellow with the Council on Competitiveness, a private organization, Bloch continues to promote policies that allow the effective use of innovation in the development of the U.S. economy. The council brings together a cross-section of American business, labor and universities to advance U.S. economic competitiveness.

Bloch is also a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

In 1935 when Dr. Norman Hackerman graduated from The Johns Hopkins University with a Ph.D. in chemistry in the Depression, he couldn’t find a full-time job. So he took three part-time jobs. He taught at Hopkins and Loyola University and worked at Colloid Corp., a company developing equipment to homogenize milk. The company came up with a good product, but it wasn’t good enough to beat the competition.

“I learned my lesson,” Hackerman, professor emeritus at The University of Texas at Austin, said. “While we were doing it, someone else was doing it better.” The lesson: Being active isn’t enough. You have to be successful.

On March 1, friends and colleagues gathered to testify that Hackerman learned that lesson well as they helped him celebrate his 93rd birthday. Over his 70-year career, they said, Hackerman has been active and successful as teacher, researcher and administrator. Dr. Larry F. Faulkner, president of the university and a chemist, called Hackerman the most important figure in science in Texas because he laid much of the foundation for science in the state.

Among Hackerman’s honors are the American Institute of Chemists’ Gold Medal, the Charles Lathrop Parsons Award of the American Chemical Society, the Vannevar Bush Award of the National Science Board and the National Medal of Science. He served seven years as president or de facto president of The University of Texas at Austin and for 15 years as president of Rice University.

Through his years of administration, Hackerman continued research and teaching. He is an emeritus professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and conducts a freshman chemistry seminar.

It was clear from Hackerman’s talk at the celebration that he knew how to take action and take advantage when the action came to him. Hackerman said 1945 was significant for him and not just because it was his first year at the university. In December 1945, he and two other chemistry professors formed the Texas Chemical Society and organized their own symposium. The American Chemical Society was not sending speakers, so they would arrange for their own. It lasted a day and a half and cost them $6.50 each. They persuaded others to pitch in, too. “We got Pearl Beer to give us beer for nothing,” he said. Hackerman said that symposium was the progenitor of regional symposiums now held around the country. The Southwest Regional Conference marks its 60th year in 2005.

Also in 1945, his research in surface chemistry and corrosion attracted attention from outside the university. A representative of Mobil Oil came to his lab and asked Hackerman to be a consultant for the company. It would pay him $200 for two days of work per month. “That was as much as I was making for the academic year,” he said. He went to the university president to see if it was OK to consult. “Why would you want to prostitute your science?” the president asked. “I might learn something from them,” Hackerman  said. “The president said, ‘Oh, that’s different’ and let me do it.” Hackerman also received a $5,000 research grant from the Office of Research and Inventions, which became the Office for Naval Research. “They kept sending me money every year until 1970 (when he became president of Rice),” he said. “So I had the first outright basic research grant in the state. I had the reputation for knowing how to get money because a guy came to see me.”

Over the years many more men and women, colleagues and students have come to see Norman Hackerman. They have found, as Faulkner noted, Hackerman “brings passion, discipline and personal integrity to everything he does.”

James Hansen is the lead climate scientist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science. His primary interests are radioactive transfer and climate modelling.

History

He was born in Iowa in 1941. Hansen studied at the University of Iowa under James Van Allen. On June 23, 1988, as director of the NASA Institute for Space Studies, Hansen testified before the House of Representatives that there was a strong "cause and effect relationship" between observed temperatures and human emissions into the atmosphere. This bold statement garnered him a front-page story on the New York Times and national attention.

Convictions

A global tipping point will be reached in 10 years if levels of greenhouse gases like methane and CO2 are not reduced. Global warming at this point becomes unstoppable. Global warming is 0.5–0.75 °C in the past century, and about 0.3 °C or more in the last 25 years
climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling is 3±1 °C

Publications

In 2000 he authored a paper called Global warming in the twenty-first century: an alternative scenario[3] in which he presents a more optimistic way of dealing with global warming focusing on non-CO2 gases in the short run, giving more time to make reductions in fossil fuel emissions. This is a result both of the fact that CO2 is responsible for a minority of greenhouse gas warming, and because fossil fuels also emit climate-cooling aerosols which offset the effect of CO2.

Thus, assuming only that our estimates are approximately correct, we assert that the processes producing the non-CO2 GHGs have been the primary drive for climate change in the past century.

In 2004 he wrote a paper called Defusing the global warming time bomb containing:

At present, our most accurate knowledge about climate sensitivity is based on data from the earth’s history, and this evidence reveals that small forces, maintained long enough, can cause large climate change. Human-made forces, especially greenhouse gases, soot and other small particles, now exceed natural forces, and the world has begun to warm at a rate predicted by climate models.
The stability of the great ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica and the need to preserve global coastlines set a low limit on the global warming that will constitute “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with climate.
Halting global warming requires urgent, unprecedented international cooperation, but the needed actions are feasible and have additional benefits for human health, agriculture and the environment.

He also commented on the past usefulness of extreme warming scenarios to obtain political and policy actions.

Opposing Greenhouse Skeptics

He has taken an active part in the debate around global warming, and has argued that:

Some "greenhouse sceptics" subvert the scientific process, ceasing to act as objective scientists, rather presenting only one side, as if they were lawyers hired to defend a particular viewpoint. But some of the topics focused on by the sceptics are recognized as legitimate research questions, and also it is fair to say that the injection of environmental, political and religious perspectives in midstream of the science research has occurred from both sides in the global warming debate.

He has charged that Patrick Michaels misrepresented his work to Congress in 1998, and lists a number of areas where he disagrees with Richard Lindzen.

In 1998 Hansen argued that uncertainties in climate forcings have supplanted global climate sensitivity as the predominant issue.

In 2005 and 2006, Hansen claimed in interviews with the Washington Post and the New York Times that NASA administrators have tried to influence his public statements about the causes of climate change. Hansen claims that NASA public relations staff were ordered to review his public statements and interviews after a December 2005 lecture at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

In response to Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear, which attempted to disprove global warming, Hansen offered a rebuttal. It centered on a claim made by Crichton that Hansen in 1988 made predictions about global warming that ended up being "300% too high", claiming that Crichton and others cherry-picked data from his research.

Rewriting The Science

James Hansen has also appeared on 60 Minutes claiming that the White House has been editing climate related press releases reported by federal agencies to make global warming seem less threatening. He is unable to speak "freely", without the backlash of other government officials. "In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," he says.

He makes claims that the tipping point (also known as the runaway effect) is upon us, and that if in 10 years the human population is unable to reduce greenhouse gases, that the oceans might rise as much as 10 feet by 2100.

Schahram Dustdar is Full Professor of Computer Science with a focus on Internet Technologies at the Distributed Systems Group, Information Systems Institute, Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) where he is director of the Vita Lab. He is also Honorary Professor of Information Systems at the Department of Computing Science at the University of Groningen (RuG), The Netherlands.

He received his M.Sc. (1990) and PhD. degrees (1992) in Business Informatics (Wirtschaftsinformatik) from the University of Linz, Austria. In April 2003 he received his Habilitation degree (Venia Docendi in Angewandte Informatik) for his work on Process-aware Collaboration Systems - Architectures and Coordination Models for Virtual Teams. His work experience includes several years as the founding head of the Center for Informatics (ZID) at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz (1991-1999), Austrian project manager of the MICE EU-project (1993 - 97), and director of Coordination Technologies at the Design Transfer Center in Linz (1999 - 2000). While on sabbatical leave he was a post-doctoral research scholar (Erwin-Schrödinger scholarship) at the London School of Economics (Information Systems Department) (1993 and 1994), and a visiting research scientist at NTT Multimedia Communications Labs in Palo Alto, USA during 1998.

Since 1999 he works as the co-founder and chief scientist of Caramba Labs Software AG (CarambaLabs.com) in Vienna, a venture capital co-funded software company focused on software for collaborative processes in teams. Caramba Labs was nominated for several (international and national) awards: World Technology Award in the category of Software (2001); Top-Startup companies in Austria (Cap Gemini Ernst & Young) (2002); MERCUR Innovationspreis der Wirtschaftskammer (2002). Currently, Prof. Dustdar is on the advisory board of Smart Information Systems and Sanaga Labs, two Austrian Start-up companies as well as on the management board of the Association of the alumni of the TU Wien.

He has published some 120 scientific papers as conference-, journal-, and book contributions. He has written 3 academic books as well as one professional book. His latest book, co-authored with H. Gall and M. Hauswirth, is on software architectures for distributed systems (2003), Springer-Verlag. In 1997 he co-authored a book on Multimedia Information Systems, Kluwer and co-edited the book Telekooperation in Unternehmen, Gabler Verlag. He has published in various journals including Distributed and Parallel Databases, Data and Knowledge Engineering, Journal of Grid Computing, WWW Journal, IEEE Multimedia, Business Process Management Journal, Journal of Systems Architecture, Journal of Organizational Computing, Kluwer Multimedia Tools and Applications, Wirtschaftsinformatik, and Journal of Computing and Information Technology. He co-organized several scientific workshops and conferences (e.g. BPM 2006, DiSD 2005 colocated with RE; Teamware colocated with SAINT; CSSE colocated with ASE; UMICS 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, colocated with CAiSE; DMC 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 colocated with IEEE WETICE) and has been serving on some 150 international program committees as well as on editorial boards of 10 scientific journals. His research interests include collaborative computing, workflow systems, Internet technologies, software architecture, distributed systems, distributed multimedia systems, and mobile collaboration systems. He is charter member of the Association of Information Systems (AIS), member of the IEEE Computer society, ACM, GI, and Austrian Computer Society. He was an invited expert evaluator for the IST 6th Framework (FP6) of the European Commission as well as an invited expert for the 7th Framework roadmap definitions for some working groups. He has been a scientific reviewer for a number of National Science Foundations (e.g. NWO (Netherlands), EPSRC (UK), SFI (Ireland), NSERC (Canada)).

Schahram Dustdar is Full Professor of Computer Science with a focus on Internet Technologies at the Distributed Systems Group, Information Systems Institute, Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) where he is director of the Vita Lab. He is also Honorary Professor of Information Systems at the Department of Computing Science at the University of Groningen (RuG), The Netherlands.

He received his M.Sc. (1990) and PhD. degrees (1992) in Business Informatics (Wirtschaftsinformatik) from the University of Linz, Austria. In April 2003 he received his Habilitation degree (Venia Docendi in Angewandte Informatik) for his work on Process-aware Collaboration Systems - Architectures and Coordination Models for Virtual Teams. His work experience includes several years as the founding head of the Center for Informatics (ZID) at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz (1991-1999), Austrian project manager of the MICE EU-project (1993 - 97), and director of Coordination Technologies at the Design Transfer Center in Linz (1999 - 2000). While on sabbatical leave he was a post-doctoral research scholar (Erwin-Schrödinger scholarship) at the London School of Economics (Information Systems Department) (1993 and 1994), and a visiting research scientist at NTT Multimedia Communications Labs in Palo Alto, USA during 1998.

Since 1999 he works as the co-founder and chief scientist of Caramba Labs Software AG (CarambaLabs.com) in Vienna, a venture capital co-funded software company focused on software for collaborative processes in teams. Caramba Labs was nominated for several (international and national) awards: World Technology Award in the category of Software (2001); Top-Startup companies in Austria (Cap Gemini Ernst & Young) (2002); MERCUR Innovationspreis der Wirtschaftskammer (2002). Currently, Prof. Dustdar is on the advisory board of Smart Information Systems and Sanaga Labs, two Austrian Start-up companies as well as on the management board of the Association of the alumni of the TU Wien.

He has published some 120 scientific papers as conference-, journal-, and book contributions. He has written 3 academic books as well as one professional book. His latest book, co-authored with H. Gall and M. Hauswirth, is on software architectures for distributed systems (2003), Springer-Verlag. In 1997 he co-authored a book on Multimedia Information Systems, Kluwer and co-edited the book Telekooperation in Unternehmen, Gabler Verlag. He has published in various journals including Distributed and Parallel Databases, Data and Knowledge Engineering, Journal of Grid Computing, WWW Journal, IEEE Multimedia, Business Process Management Journal, Journal of Systems Architecture, Journal of Organizational Computing, Kluwer Multimedia Tools and Applications, Wirtschaftsinformatik, and Journal of Computing and Information Technology. He co-organized several scientific workshops and conferences (e.g. BPM 2006, DiSD 2005 colocated with RE; Teamware colocated with SAINT; CSSE colocated with ASE; UMICS 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, colocated with CAiSE; DMC 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 colocated with IEEE WETICE) and has been serving on some 150 international program committees as well as on editorial boards of 10 scientific journals. His research interests include collaborative computing, workflow systems, Internet technologies, software architecture, distributed systems, distributed multimedia systems, and mobile collaboration systems. He is charter member of the Association of Information Systems (AIS), member of the IEEE Computer society, ACM, GI, and Austrian Computer Society. He was an invited expert evaluator for the IST 6th Framework (FP6) of the European Commission as well as an invited expert for the 7th Framework roadmap definitions for some working groups. He has been a scientific reviewer for a number of National Science Foundations (e.g. NWO (Netherlands), EPSRC (UK), SFI (Ireland), NSERC (Canada)).

Professor (1993-), Department of Environmental Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Adjunct Professor (1991-), Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Associate Member (1994-), Biotechnology Research Centre, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Associate Professor (1986-1993), Department of Environmental Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Assistant Professor (1982-1985), Department of Environmental Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Member of University of Guelph Graduate Program in Biophysics (2001-).
Microbiology coordinator, applicant and member of management team for Canadian Foundation for Innovation Award 1999: Biological systems for terrestrial and space applications, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Member of Canadian Water Network (CWN) National Center of Excellence (awarded network status 2001).
Member of Canadian Foundation for Innovation Water Management Infrastructure Award. 2002: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Also acting as the microbiology sub-theme coordinator.
Member of Canadian Foundation for Innovation Biodiversity Infrastructure Award. 2002: University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

Co-editor-in-chief, The Environmentalist, Springer, The Netherlands, (2002-).
Editor-in-Chief, Water, Air and Soil Pollution Focus: International Journal of Environmental Pollution, Springer, The Netherlands, (2000-).
Editor-in-Chief, Water, Air and Soil Pollution, International Journal of Environmental Pollution, Springer, The Netherlands, (1997-).
Co-editor-in chief (1998-) Environmental Pollution Book Series, Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
Associate Editor, Water, Air and Soil Pollution-, Springer, The Netherlands, (1995-1997).
Editor, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek International Journal of General and Molecular Microbiology, Kluwer Academic Publishers (1996-).
Editor, Journal of Microbiological Methods, Elsevier, The Netherlands (1996-)

Microbial Ecology Section Editor -Canadian Journal of Microbiology, NRC Canada (1991-1993).
Co-editor-in-chief, The Environmentalist, Springer, The Netherlands, (2002-).
Editor-in-Chief, Water, Air and Soil Pollution Focus: International Journal of Environmental Pollution, Springer, The Netherlands, (2000-).
Editor-in-Chief, Water, Air and Soil Pollution, International Journal of Environmental Pollution, Springer, The Netherlands, (1997-).
Co-editor-in chief (1998-) Environmental Pollution Book Series, Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
Associate Editor, Water, Air and Soil Pollution-, Springer, The Netherlands, (1995-1997).
Editor, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek International Journal of General and Molecular Microbiology, Kluwer Academic Publishers (1996-).
Editor, Journal of Microbiological Methods, Elsevier, The Netherlands (1996-)
Microbial Ecology Section Editor -Canadian Journal of Microbiology, NRC Canada (1991-1993).

Reviewer for

Journal of Biological Physics
Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Plant and Soil
Biotechnology and Bioengineering
Biochimica et Biophysica Acta
Canadian Journal of Veterinary Research
Canadian Journal Forest Research
Biotechniques
Environmental Science and Technology
Biofouling: Journal of Bioadhesion and Biofilm Research
Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere
Biotechnology Progress, ACS
Microbiology
FEMS Microbiology Letters
Journal of Bacteriology
Archives of Microbiology
Canadian Journal Microbiology
Water, Air and Soil Pollution
CRC Press
Science of Total Environment
Soil Biology and Biochemistry
Water Research
Archives Environmental Contamination Toxicology
Geomicrobiology Journal
Encyclopedia of Microbiology
Hydrobiologia
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology
Journal of Industrial Microbiology
Proc. Soil Sci. Soc. Amer.

International reviewer for the Proceedings of the First and Second International Symposium on Toxicity Testing Using Bacteria.
Consultant to Blackwell Scientific on developing a new journal in the area of environmental genetics.

1990 – Director of THE ARCHIVAL PROJECT (an on-line historical studies group);
2000 - Professor of History at American Public University System; and
2005 – Professor of Education at American Public University (reg./nat. accreditation).

Dr. Carl Edwin Lindgren is currently Professor of History at American Military University. Lindgren teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in medieval religious military orders, ancient/medieval military history and medieval educational history.

He also serves as president of the Institute for Historical Research (1981).The Institute provides consulting services to a variety of private and public clients in the fields of history, oral history, educational history, genealogy, heraldry and research methodology.

In the 1970s he did research with Dr. J. B. Rhine on parapsychology and was a member of the Parapsychological Association. He was also a student of the noted psychologist, Dr. John Wolfe and medievalist Dr. Allen Cabaniss. Lindgren was an undergraduate and graduate student in Near Eastern history of Brigadier General Dr. James J. Cooke, FRHistS - Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Mississippi and former Visiting Professor of History and Strategy at the US Air Force War College. Dr. Cooke is the author of many books on 20th century war history. James Cooke has also collaborated with both Peter Liddle and Hugh Cecil in historical works and is a contributor to numerous journals.

Present

2004-2006 - Official Representative, (North America) Compania de Ballesteros Hijosdalgo de San Felipe y Santiago (honorary chief, His Majesty the King, Juan Carlos de Borbon y Borbon) (Spain);
2004-2006 - Academic Advisor, Academy of European Medieval Martial Arts (Canada);
2005-2006 - Official Delegate (USA), the Unione Monarchica Italiana (Italy);
2005-2006 - Advisor, HRH Prince Hso Khan Pha of Yawnghwe on Shan State relief matters (Burma);
2005-2006 - Advisor, Royal Crown of Rwanda;
2005 - Advisor, Ethiopian Distance Learning Association, Addis Ababa Univ. Alumni Network, and African Distance Learning Network (Ethiopia); and
2006 - Delegate, Prester John Association for Foreign Nobility of Portugal (Milan, Italy, 1 April 2006 (Portugal);
2006 - History Advisor, Advisory Council of the Georgian National Section of EUROSCIENCE;
2006 - Trustee, the FFF Foundation of the Shan State (funds are to be used for humanitarian and human rights issues);
Web designer/master using Velocity Micro Generator for sites on: King Kigeli, Egyptian Royal House, Georgian Royal House and dynastic law.  Knowledge: Fusion 8.0. HTML, Front Page, Windows, MicroSoft Business 2003

Past

1976-1979 - Coordinator of Handicapped Services,
1979 - Director of  Handicapped Services (U.S. Dept. for Health and Human Services
1980 - Operator,  Governor’s Office for Job Development and Training
1981 - Instructor of Health Services, United States Department of Labor  (program for teaching disadvantaged teenagers in health care and various disease prevention;
1981 - Instructor, Union Series (University of Mississippi) - Fellow of photography and art media);
2000 - University Vice President, Academic Affairs;
2003-2005 - Former Chief Representative, (North America) Foreign Delegation of the Brotherhood of the Royal Order of Saint Michael of the Wing under the Duke of Braganza (Portugal)
2004 - Former Chancellor, Imperial Order of the Dragon of Annam (Crown Prince Bao Long of Paris)
2005 - Advisor for diplomatic exchanges between the Royal and ;
2005 - Former Secretary General, Royal Crown of Rwanda

Professor Skrinsky is the recipient of the Robert R. Wilson Prize of the American Physical Society and his citation reads,

"For his major contribution to the invention and development of electron cooling and for his development and for his contributions to the physics of the electron-positron colliders at the Budker Institute."

His main scientific contributions include: Development of the electron-electron and positron electron colliding beam method in high energy physics; Development of the VEPP family of positron-electron colliders and the cycles of hadron physics studies in annihilation processes; Development of the electron cooling method; Ionization cooling development for muon-muon colliders and for neutrino factories; Development of linear collider approach for hundreds GeV energy range; Polarized beams in storage rings and their application; Beam dynamics and beam-beam effects; Synchrotron radiation sources and its application; Free electron lasers development. Publications: Over 300 research publications in the fields of accelerator physics and technology and high energy physics.

Background

Brief sketch of research activity
1959 - graduated the Physical Faculty of Moscow State University
1959 - 1961 junior researcher
1961 - … head of laboratory, INP
1971 - 1977 Deputy Director of INP
1978 - … Director of INP (Institute of Nuclear Physics, Russian Academy of Science)
1988 - … Chairman (Academician-Secretary) of Nuclear Physics Department., Russian Academy of Sciences
1965 - Doctor of Phys. Math. Science
1969 - Professor
1968 - Corresponding Member of Russian Academy of Science
1970 - Academician (Full Member) of Russian Academy of Science
1999 - Fellow of the American Physical Society
2000 - Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science
1981 - 1988 Member of International Committee on Future Accelerators (ICFA)
1986 - 1992 Member of Scientific Policy Council of CERN, Geneva
1989 - 1992 Chairman of Intern. Committee on Future Accelerators (ICFA)
1995 - … Member of Extended Scientific Council of DESY
1967 - Recipient of the Lenin Prize, USSR
1989 - Recipient of State Prize, USSR

Professor Portier is the Associate Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), Director, Office of Risk Assessment and Principle Investigator of Environmental Systems Biology.

He is also the Director of the Environmental Toxicology Program of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

With NIEHS putting more emphasis on systematically assessment of the Health Risks of Toxicants Portier was named Associate Director for Risk Assessment.

Portier assumed a new leadership role as Associate Director for Risk Assessment at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), one of the National Institutes of Health. He oversees and coordinate risk assessment activities within the NIEHS and apply the results of toxicological studies to national and international efforts dedicated to assessing the human health risks of chemical, drugs, and physical agents. This position is in line with the Institute's renewed interest in using environmental health sciences to understand human disease and improve human health, according to the NIEHS Director, Dr. David A. Schwartz.

In welcoming Portier the NIEHS Director stated, "We are very excited that Dr. Portier will lead this important effort," said Dr. Schwartz. "Dr. Portier has done an extraordinary job in overseeing the activities of the National Toxicology Program, and has developed strong relationships with scientists all over the world. This new NIEHS leadership role will allow him an opportunity to merge the fields of toxicology and environmental health sciences and prepare the world for tomorrow's health challenges."

He has served in many prominent positions within NIEHS since his arrival as a post doctoral student in 1981. Most recently Portier served as the Associate Director of the National Toxicology Program, the Director of the Environmental Toxicology Program, and the Head, Environmental Systems Biology, Laboratory of Molecular Toxicology at the NIEHS.

It was in 2001 when he was appointed to the prestigious position of the Associate Director of the National Toxicology Program (NTP). The NTP is an interagency program whose mission is to coordinate, conduct, and communicate toxicological research across the U.S. government. The NTP is administratively housed at the NIEHS.

The culmination of Portier's efforts at the NTP is exemplified by his role in developing the landmark document "A National Toxicology Program for the 21st Century: A Roadmap for the Future," which was released in 2005 as part of the NTP 25th Anniversary Celebration in Washington, D.C. The NTP Roadmap outlines a framework by which the NTP will modify, adapt, and improve its programs to better address its mandate in providing scientific information for protection of public health.

"The NIEHS remains fully committed to promoting the goals set forth in the NTP Roadmap," said the NIEHS Director. "The NTP has an extremely talented and dedicated staff that will keep the important work that the NTP does going strong."

Some of the many other accomplishments achieved by Portier while at the NTP include developing the first ever evaluation guideline for non-cancer endpoints as part of the NTP's Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction. The NTP has also played a lead role in developing a High Throughput Screening Initiative, which will enable large numbers of environmental substances to be screened for potential health hazards. Portier has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications; 50 book chapters, reports and agency publications in statistics, risk assessment and cancer research.

"Closely linking risk assessment processes to NIEHS research will improve the Nation's ability to make informed public health decisions," said Portier. "We will be better poised to answer the basic questions inherent to risk assessment, including: Is it possible that this substance poses a hazard to humans? If yes, how much is dangerous? Are humans exposed to this substance and in what ways? Given human exposures and knowing how much is dangerous, what levels would be safe? These are exciting times in health research and being able to focus on bringing cutting edge research into the risk assessment arena will be a challenging new role for me at NIEHS."

The primary mission of the NIEHS, one of 27 Institutes and Centers at the National Institutes of Health, is to reduce the burden of human illness and disability by understanding how the environment influences the development and progression of human disease. For additional information, visit the NIEHS Web site at http://www.niehs.nih.gov/home.htm

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) - The Nation's Medical Research Agency - includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases

Dr. Futrell is Director of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and the Willis F. Harrington Professor at the University of Delaware. He gained his Ph.D in 1958 from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Jean H. Futrell has been a driving force in addressing a number of fundamental questions in the field of mass spectrometry. He has worked in several areas of reaction kinetics and played a key role in extending our understanding of ion-molecule reaction. Dr. Futrell has made significant contributions with his work in spectroscopy, with particular interest in the development or modification of instrumentation for specialized research purposes, including high-pressure and chemical-ionization mass spectrometers, tandem and triple-quadruple instruments. Dr. Futrell's recent research has emphasized the use of molecular beam methods and with state-to-state reaction dynamics. Collision-induced dissociation of polyatomic ions and electron-transfer reaction dynamics (including dissociative charge-transfer reactions) are topics of special current interest. He has authored over 600 publications, including 381 refereed journal articles.

Dr. Jean H. Futrell became Battelle Fellow, Chief Science Officer, and Chair of the Council of Fellows at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in October 2002. Dr. Futrell served as Director of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) between 1998 and 2002. He is now Director Emeritus of the EMSL. Dr. Futrell has also served in many different arenas and areas throughout the science world. He is the past chairperson of the American Society for Testing Materials Subcommittee II (Fundamental Studies in Mass Spectrometry) and past president of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. Dr. Futrell also served as chairperson of the Long-Range Planning Committee of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Public Works Committee of the United States Senate from 1972 to 1974.

History

Before entering the U.S. Air Force as an officer in 1959, Dr. Futrell worked as a radiation chemist at the Humble Oil and Refining Company Research Center. He served in the Air Force for two years before becoming a civilian scientist at the Aerospace Research Laboratories, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. In 1968, he became a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Utah after only a year as an Associate Professor. In 1974 he was appointed Adjunct Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and in 1975 Adjunct Professor of Mining, Metallurgy, and Fuels Engineering at the University of Utah. From 1986-1997 he was Chairman and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Delaware and in 1990 was named the Willis F. Harrington Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry. In 1993 he was appointed Professor of Chemical Engineering (joint appointment primary appointment in Chemistry and Biochemistry). On February 1, 1999, he became the first permanent director of EMSL.

Recognition

Dr. Futrell was an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow from 1968 to 1972 and held an NIH Career Development Award from 1969 to 1974. In 1976, Dr. Futrell was named David P. Gardner Research Fellow at the University of Utah for and was Visiting Fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Dr. Futrell was Fulbright Professor of Physics at the University of Inssbruck, Austria, for the 1980 to 1981 academic year and Scientific Exchange Visitor at the Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry, Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1981. Dr. Futrell has traveled the world. He was Von Humboldt scholar at the Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin, Professor Associ? at the University of Paris, the Albright and Wilson Lecturer at the University of Warwick (England), and Max Cade Visiting Professor in the Department of Physics, University of Innsbruck, Austria. In 1995, Dr. Futrell received the ACS Delaware Section Research Award and the College of Arts and Science Distinguished Scholar Award in 1997. He is a member of the Executive Committee, and is immediate Post Chair of the Council for Chemical Research. In 2000, he received the Erwin Schrodinger Gold Medal awarded by the International Symposium on Atomic and Surface Physics for his research.

Publications

Dr. Futrell has authored over 600 publications, including 381 refereed journal articles.

Professor Krishtal is the Head of the Department of Cellular Membranology, Deputy Director of Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology.

University degree in Molecular Physics (1968), PhD (1971) and Doctor of Sciences (1981). Professor (1982). Corresponding Member of the Ukrainian (1985) and Russian (1987) Academies of Sciences. Member of Academia Europaea (1990).
Full Member of the National Academy of Ukraine (1997).
Research Fellow, Department of Biophysics and Physiology, Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology, Kyiv, 1968 - 1970.
Junior Scientist, Department of General Physiology of Nervous System, Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology, Kyiv, 1970 - 1975.
Senior Scientist of the above-mentioned department, 1975 - 1982.
Head of the Department of Cellular Membranology, 1982 - up to date.

Visiting professorships

University of Kyushu, Japan,1986.
Harvard University, USA, 1989.
Comlutense University, Madrid, Spain,1993.
niversity of Pennsylvania, USA, 1994.

Awards

State Prize of the USSR for Science, 1983.

Member of editorial boards

"European Journal of Neuroscience",
"Neuroscience",
"Autonomic Neuroscience".

Welcome Trust - A Ukraine brain gain

In Kiev, Professor Oleg Krishtal's fascination with the brain is manifest through neuroscience, philosophy and fiction.

As our understanding of human biology deepens, new doors are opening. Many lead to hope for people suffering from terminal and chronic illness.. and some lead to our age-old friend, temptation. The wish to be healthier and live longer can blur into a desire for immortality, while the urge to cure or alleviate disability slides into ambition: to be better, stronger and more intelligent.

This is the theme of Homunculus, a novel by Professor Oleg Krishtal, a Wellcome Trust-funded neuroscientist at the Bogomoletz Institute in Kiev, Ukraine, who recently joined the Trust's International Biomedical Interest Group. The central character, a neuroscientist, longs to be a genius, and suffers a huge blow to his ego when he realises his girlfriend, also a scientist, is more intelligent than he is. His obsession is reflected in his experiments: he implants embryonic tissue in rats' brains to see whether they become more intelligent. The experiment appears to work, and as he watches the experimental rats grow much cleverer than their peers, an audacious plan takes shape in his mind.

He convinces his girlfriend that he has Alzheimer's disease and can only be cured if stem cells from the embryo of his unborn child are implanted into his brain. Although the idea distresses her, she agrees to go along with his plan. After performing the operation on him, however, she leaves him and disappears.

The neuroscientist recovers from the operation and returns to his laboratory, eager to find out whether the transplant has worked. To his exultation he feels himself turning into the powerful, inventive scientist he had always longed to be, designing his experiments and making discoveries swiftly and surely. As he works, he feels as if he and his son are both living and working together inside his head.

This happy illusion is destroyed when he tracks down his girlfriend and finds her with a baby. The operation she performed on him was a sham and his new-found intelligence the progeny of belief, rather than any material difference in his brain. "This is a novel about strength of faith," explains Professor Krishtal, "which, as you know from the Bible, can move mountains."

His philosophical treatise, To the Singing of Birds, similarly explores the power of the mind, this time in the context of evolution. "In this book I conclude that biological evolution - the propagation of 'selfish DNA' whose only aim was to evolve and spread - resulted in the development of human consciousness. Our consciousness is what now enables us to make scientific advances and evolve a billion times faster. It has become the latest, ultimate tool of evolution."

In the meantime, Professor Krishtal has also been making significant contributions to the scientific literature in neuroscience. With Professor Dimitri Kullman at the Institute of Neurology, London, his partner in a Wellcome Trust Collaborative Research Initiative Grant (CRIG), he has been investigating the action of the neurotransmitter glutamate on receptors outside the synapse. The work is highly molecular but such studies will begin to tell us how the concerted and coordinated activities of neurons underlie the behaviour of characters such as Professor Krishtal's fictional researcher.

Professor Krishtal and his team are not the only Trust-funded researchers at the Bogomoletz Institute, an internationally renowned centre for studies of nerve physiology. Five other CRIGs and an International Research Development Award at the institute support collaborations with the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester, and the Institute for Medical Research, St George's Hospital Medical School and University College London.

Developed countries have access to a large market of new highly skilled young postdoctoral scientists, who train in the former Soviet Union then go abroad to work. "This happens on a large scale. At the moment, about 130 postdocs from the Bogomoletz Institute alone are working abroad, the majority of them in the USA and the European Union."

The Trust's collaborative grant schemes are designed to improve and sustain the capacity for high level research in an institute like the Bogomoletz, creating conditions conducive to the retention or return of talented scientists.

"The Wellcome Trust is one of the most significant funders here," says Professor Krishtal. "The Bogomoletz Institute is the main centre of excellence for neuroscience research in eastern Europe and these awards are helping to keep alive our tradition of excellent science. Although the brain drain has not been stopped, in several cases it has been reversed; people return home and establish their laboratories here."

Professor Koskela is professor of Theory Based Lean Project and Production Management at the University of Salford.

He is the EPSRC ‘Star Recruit’ to SCRI (Salford Centre for Research and Innovation in the built and human environment).  Before being nominated Professor at the University of Salford in January 2004, Dr. Lauri Koskela worked almost 25 years at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. His research interest is mainly focused on the theoretical foundations of project and production management. He is a founding member of the International Group for Lean Construction.

Academic qualifications

Master of Science in Technology, HelsinkiUniversity of Technology, 1976
Licentiate of Science in Technology, HelsinkiUniversity of Technology, 1996
Doctor of Science (Technology), Helsinki University of Technology, 2000 (with programme consisting of Industrial Management and Information Processing Science)

Editorial board memberships

Journal of Construction Research, Editorial Advisory Board, 2000

Memberships in scientific societies

International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC), founding member 1993, Web master, 1996
International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction (IAARC), member of Board, 1994
Project Management Association Finland
Finnish Society for Operations Research
Membership in scientific committees of conferences - 3rd Nordic Conference on Construction Economics and Organization, 2003

Areas of expertise

Project management, Lean construction, High-technology applications for construction, Teaching and Research
Current Research: project management, lean construction
Earlier Research: high-technology applications for construction, such as construction robotics, computer-integrated construction and expert systems
Senior Researcher, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, 1979 - 2004
Academic enterprise

Invited keynote lectures

The International Conference on Construction Process Re-engineering. Gold Coast, Australia
Encontro Nacional de Technologia do Ambiente Construido. Florianopolis, Brazil
Invited participant in the Berkeley-Stanford CE&M Workshop: Defining a Research Agenda for AEC Process/Product Development in 2000 and Beyond, Stanford
Invited participant in the Research Panel of the "Revaluing Construction" conference, Manchester

Visiting Scholar

Center for Integrated Facility Engineering, Stanford University

Guest lectures at universities

Helsinki University of Technology, Department of Construction Management
Tampere University
Tampere University of Technology, Department of Construction Management
Delft University of Technology
Purdue University
University of California, Berkeley
Salford University

I.B. Türksen received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Systems Management and Operations Research all from the University of Pittsburgh, PA. He joined the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto and became Full Professor in 1983. In 1984-1985 academic year, he was a Visiting Professor at the Middle East Technical University and Osaka Prefecture University. Since 1987, he has been Director of the Knowledge / Intelligence Systems Laboratory. During the 1991-1992 academic year, he was a Visiting Research Professor at LIFE, Laboratory for International Fuzzy Engineering, and the Chair of Fuzzy Theory at Tokyo Institute of Technology. During 1996 academic year, he was Visiting Research Professor at the University of South Florida,USA, and Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. Since December 2005, he is appointed as the Head of Department of Industrial Engineering at TOBB Economics and Technology University.

He was and/or is a member of the Editorial Boards of the following publications: Fuzzy Sets and Systems, Approximate Reasoning, Decision Support Systems, Information Sciences, Fuzzy Economic Review, Expert Systems and its Applications, Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence, Information Technology Management, Transactions on Operational Research, Fuzzy Logic Reports and Letters, Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, Failures and Lessons Learned in Information Technology, Applied Soft Computing. He is the co-editor of NATO-ASI Proceedings on Soft Computing and Computational Intelligence, and Editor of NATO-ASI Proceedings on Computer Integrated Manufacturing as well co-editor of two special issues of Robotics and Autonomus Systems.

He is a Fellow of IFSA and IEEE, and a member of IIE, CSIE, CORS, IFSA, NAFIPS, APEO, APET, TORS, ACM, etc.

He is the founding President of CSIE. He was Vice-President of IIE, General Conference Chairman for IIE International Conference, and for NAFIPS in 1990. He served as Co-Chairman of IFES'91 and Regional Chairman of World Congress on Expert Systems, WCES'91, WCES'94, WCES'96 and WCES'98, Director of NATO-ASI'87 on Computer Integrated Manufacturing and Co-Director of NATO-ASI'96 on Soft Computing and Computational Intelligence. He was General Conference Chairman for Intelligent Manufacturing Systems, IMS '1998, IMS '2001, IMS`2003.  He was the President of IFSA during 1997- 2001 and Past President of IFSA, International Fuzzy Systems Association during 2001-2003. Currently, he is the President, CEO and CSO, of IIC, Information Intelligence Corporation.

He received the outstanding paper award from NAFIPS in 1986, "L.A. Zadeh Best Paper Award" from Fuzzy Theory and Technology in 1995, "Science Award" from Middle East Technical University, and an "Honorary Doctorate" from Sakarya University. He is a Foreign Member, Academy of Modern Sciences.

His current research interests centre on the foundations of fuzzy sets and logics, measurement of membership functions with experts, extraction of membership functions with fuzzy clustering and fuzzy system modeling. His contributions include, in particular, Type 2 fuzzy knowledge representation and reasoning, fuzzy truth tables, fuzzy normal forms, T-formalism which is a modified and restricted Dempster's multi-valued mapping, and system modeling applications for intelligent manufacturing and processes, as well as for management decision support and intelligent control.

He has published near 300 papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings.

His book entitled "An Ontological and Epistemological Perspective of Fuzzy Theory" was published by Elsevier, The Netherlands, in January, 2006. (ISBN-10: 0-444-51891-6, ISBN-13: 978-0-444-51891-0)

Area of Research

• Knowledge/Intelligence Discovery
  Theoretical research : Foundations of Fuzzy Logic, Fuzzy Truth Tables, Fuzzy Canonical Forms, Type 2 Knowledge Representation and Inference, Intelligent Systems, Computational Intelligence, Neuro-Fuzzy Integration, Linguistics to Computations, Signs and Semiotic Systems, knowledge/intelligence-data mining, T-formalism, and Belief and Probabilities over Type 2 fuzzy sets.
  Applied Research : Development of an integrated knowledge representation and inference for industrial use, fuzzy cluster analysis, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, neural networks, supervised learning, neuro-fuzzy modeling, parametric t-norm and t-conorm selection, robotics and industrial process planning and control, production planning and scheduling, consumer preference analysis, client credit worthiness, client segmentation, intelligent manufacturing system development, intelligent pharmacology modeling, intelligent bandwidth allocation on networks and QoS routing for SLA's on the internet.
  
  
• Information Systems
  Data Mining : Data reduction, learning from data, statistical methods, cluster analysis, decision trees, neural networks, evolutionary computing, fuzzy logic, etc.
  Data Modeling : Object oriented and relational data models, development of normal forms, relational calculus and algebra, and data access languages, SQL, QBE, ACCESS, etc.
  Distributed Information Systems : Network infrastructures, fragmentation, decomposition and distribution methods, data access languages for distributed systems, transaction management and protocols

Ongoing Research Projects

• System Analysis, Diagnosis and Prediction
  • Scheduling of Industrial Processes such as continuous casting in steel plants.
  • Analysis and Diagnosis of Pharmacological data, such as alcohol dependence and lithium retention.
  • De-sulfurization of molten steel.
• Intelligent Manufacturing System Modeling
  • Control of Robotic Manipulators
  • Robust Robot Control
• Knowledge/Intelligence-Data Mining and Systems Modeling for financial data analysis, consumer preference and market share analysis, client credit worthiness, client segmentation "lift" analysis, etc.
• Image processing and diagnosis and treatment of cancer cells
• Information Technology, internet protocol, bandwidth allocation, routing, QOS provisioning for SLA's, etc.
• Network Simulations, fuzzy-reinforcement learning, etc.