[Sci-tech-public] Knight Science Journalism at MIT - Seminars - Tuesday, Sept. 27 and Thursday, September 29

[Eric Strattman]

September 27 - 4pm, Knight Seminar Room, MIT Room E19-623
Why Humans Cook and the Inadequacies of the Atwater Convention
Richard Wrangham, Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology, Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
Richard Wrangham is the Ruth Moore Professor of Anthropology at and Chair of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and is an honorary lecturer at Makerere University, Kampala. Professor Wrangham received a Ph.D. in Zoology from Cambridge University, where he studied under the renowned ethologist Robert Hinde. He served as a faculty member in departments of Anthropology, Psychology and Biology at several universities including Bristol University, Stanford University, King's College Cambridge and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

For several decades, Professor Wrangham has studied primates in the wild including several species of baboon and Vervet monkeys but his work on the ecological and behavior comparisons of chimpanzees and humans has been his greatest contribution to the animal behavior literature. His insights into the cultural similarities between humans and chimpanzees--including our unique tendencies to form murderous alliances and engage in recreational sexual activity--has had profound affects on how scientists analyze primate behavior, non-human and human alike. In addition to his exhaustive peer-reviewed journal publications, as author of Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, Chimpanzee Cultures, and as co-editor of Primate Societies, Professor Wrangham's important observations and theoretical contributions to the field of primate socio-behavior are covered in a variety of works, which range from the textbook to popular science manual. In recent years, Professor Wrangham has been named as a trustee to several important primatological research organizations, including the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, the Jane Goodall Institute and is Chair of the Great Ape World Heritage Species Project. He is the current president of the International Primatological Society and his most recent awards and fellowships include the Baron-von-Swaine Award (University of Würzburg, 2000), American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow (1993), Royal Anthropological Institute, Rivers Medal (1993).

  

September 29 - 3:30pm, Knight Seminar Room, MIT Room E19-623

Using Biology to Build Nanomaterials for Energy & The Environment
Angela Belcher, W.M. Keck Professor of Energy, Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering, MIT 

This seminar will begin at 3:30pm!

Dr. Belcher is a material scientist, biological engineer, and professor at MIT. She attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she received her Bachelor's degree from the College of Creative Studies in 1991 and her Ph.D. in chemistry in 1997. Dr. Belcher was awarded the 24th annual MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and the 2004 Four Star General Recognition Award. In 2006 she was named Scientific American’s Research Leader of the Year. Her work has been published in many prestigious scientific journals including Science and Nature, and has been reported in the popular press including Fortune, Forbes, Discover, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Dr. Belcher: "We seek to understand and harness nature’s own processes in order to design technologically important materials and devices for energy, the environment, and medicine. Ancient organisms have evolved to make exquisite nanostructures like shells and glassy diatoms.  Using directed evolution, we are engeineering organisms to grow and assemble novel hybrid organic-inorganic electronic and magnetic materials.  In doing so, we have capitalized on many of the wonderful properties of biology–using only non-toxic materials, employing self-repair mechanisms, self-assembling precisely and over longer ranges, and adapting and evolving to become better over time.  These materials have been used in applications as varied as solar cells, batteries, medical diagnostics and basic single molecule interactions related to disease."

    web.mit.edu/knight-science      knight-info at mit.edu
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