Seminars—Spring 2009
Our regularly scheduled seminars are on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 4:00–6:00 pm in MIT E19-623, unless otherwise noted. With the exception of those marked "Fellows Only," our seminars are open to guests.
February 3
Conversation with Harvard naturalist, entomologist, sociobiologist E.O. Wilson
At the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Knight Fellows Only
February 5
David Sinclair and Bruce Yankner of the Department of Pathology at Harvard Medical School
Topic: Aging
Location: TBD
February 10
Paul Levy, CEO at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital
Topic: Revolution in medicine meets reality in the hospital
At Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, Leventhal Conference Room
Knight and Nieman Fellows only
February 12-16
Annual meeting of the AAAS in Chicago
(no seminar February 12)
Nancy Kanwisher, MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research
Topic: brain imaging using functional MRI
February 17
Discussion among Knight Fellows
(Knight Fellows only)
Note: Rebecca Saxe will no longer be joining us for this seminar. We will try to reschedule her for another date.
February 19
TBC
February 24
Marc Hauser, Harvard University professor of Psychology, Organismic & Evolutionary Biology and Biological Anthropology
Topic: Neuroscience
Location: Harvard William James Hall, Room 1550
Fellows Only
February 26
Esther Duflo of MIT Department of Economics and founder of MIT's Poverty Action Lab
Topic: Making sure development projects work
March 3
Sam Bowring, MIT professor of geology
Topic: Measuring deep time in the earth
March 5
Robert Langer, MIT institute professor, chemical engineering
Topic: Nanotechnology and drug delivery
March 10
Mark Lewis, Professor in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland and Former Chief Scientist of the United States Air Force (USAF)
Topic: Military versus civilian science: how and why are they different?
March 12
Joe McCannon, Vice President at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Topic: Reducing medical errors in developing countries
March 17
Seth Teller, Head of the Robotics Vision and Sensor Networks Group at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL)
Topic: Robotic vehicles for the future city
March 19
Claude Canizares, MIT Professor of Physics, and Associate Director for MIT of the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center
Topic: The Chandra space telecope and tour of the control center
Fellows only
March 23–27
Food Boot Camp
March 31
Leonard Guarente, MIT professor of biology
Topic: The nature of aging
April 2
Richard Wrangham, Harvard professor of biological anthropology
Topic: Diet in Human evolution
April 7
Matthew Wilson, MIT professor, Picower Institute
Topic: The role of sleep and dreaming in memory formation
April 9
Hany Farid, Professor of Computational Science, Dartmouth
Topic: Digital Forensics—how to tell a fake image
April 14
Ronald Prinn and Henry Jacoby, co-directors of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
Topic: Climate change
April 16
William R. Rodriguez, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School
Topic: Diagnosis in developing countries
April 21
No seminar
Patriots' Day holiday
April 23
Jeff Lichtman, Harvard Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology
Topic: Neurons in color
Note: this seminar will be held at Lichtman Lab
Knight Fellows only
April 28
Phillip Sharp, MIT Institute professor, Nobel laureate
Topic: New ways to treat cancer
April 30
Marc Lipsitch, of the Department of Epidemiology and the Department of
Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard School of Public Health
Topic: Epidemic disease
Note: Lipsitch has been called to Atlanta to work on the swine flu epidemic. His colleague, Ted Cohen, Assistant Professor in Medicine, Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital, will visit in his stead.
May 5
Steven Laken, president of Cephos Corp
Topic: Lie detection and fMRI
May 7
Michael Specter, The New Yorker
Shop Talk: Science and Health Writing
May 12
Knight Fellows present "Nuggets from the classroom"
May 13
4:00pm Graduation Ceremony with Susan Hockfield
May 14
Dinner with Dean Fitzgerald (Knight Fellows only)
