DE*SYN: Provocateurs

Lou Allamandola
Founder-Director of the Astrochemistry Laboratory, NASA Ames Research Center

Dr. Allamandola is listed as one of ISI's Most Highly Cited Authors in Space Science. He established the new Astrochemistry Laboratory at NASA’s Ames Research Center in 1984 after 20 years of experience in pioneering laboratory studies of ices of interstellar and planetary interest. Formally trained as a specialist in low temperature spectroscopy at the University of California at Berkeley under the tutelage of Professor George C. Pimentel, followed by postdoctoral research on energy transfer at cryogenic temperatures with Professor Joseph W. Nibler at Oregon State University, Lou worked for seven years in the Astrophysics Laboratory at Leiden University in the Netherlands where he developed the techniques required to prepare and study laboratory analogs of interstellar/pre-cometary ice grains using spectroscopic methods. At Leiden, from 1976 until 1983, he directed the research of six Ph.D. students. He opened up the field of interstellar polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) with Xander Tielens and John Barker, and is heavily involved in the laboratory studies of PAHs under appropriate interstellar conditions. He also participated in astronomical measurements of infrared spectra using the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, and the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope. Dr. Allamandola has served on several NASA advisory councils and is a former member of the Origins Subcommittee at NASA Headquarters. He has served on several scientific organizing committees and as proceedings editor for international symposia. He received NASA-Ames’ H. Julian Allen Award for Best Scientific Paper from Ames in 1985, NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1992, and was named an Ames Associate Fellow in 1995.

Mark A. Bedau
Co-Founder, European Center for Living Technology; Editor-in-Chief, Artificial Life (MIT Press Journal); Professor, Reed College

Mark A. Bedau is an internationally recognized leader in the interdisciplinary study of complex adaptive systems. He has pioneered the field of quantifying and comparing the evolutionary activity in artificial and natural systems, developing novel methods for quantifying the diversity and the environment for adaptation in evolving systems. Because he combines training in analytical philosophy with over a decade of experience in artificial life, he is internationally recognized as a uniquely qualified expert in the philosophical foundations of complex adaptive systems, and has published over 80 research papers, co-authored or co-edited 6 books, and given over 200 lectures in more than 18 countries to audiences in artificial life, computer science, biology, philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, economics, physics, and mathematics, on a variety of philosophical and scientific topics including emergence, evolution, life, mind, and the social and ethical implications of creating life from scratch. His work has been supported by the European Commission Future and Emerging Technologies program, the US Department of Energy, many foundations (Culpeper, Mellon, Murdock, Sloan, Howard Hughes, Hewlett), the Oregon Council for the Humanities, and the Center for the Humanities at OSU. He is is a Coordinator for the EU-funded Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution (PACE) program and he co-organized the last four international conference on artificial life, and he has been elected as the founding President of the International Society for Artificial Life. Most recently, he has co-founded a start-up company, ProtoLife SRL, located in Venice, Italy, a start-up company with the long-term aim of creating useful artificial cells. He also recently co-founded the European Center for Living Technology, a research institute in Venice, Italy, that investigates theoretical and practical issues associated with living systems, of which he is currently the Chair of the Science Board.

Sheldon Breiner
CEO, NEW Ventures West (venture capital company), with key roles in a range of start-ups, e.g. ESP Inc., Founder’s Fund (biotech), Geometrics, PML Inc., Solis Therapeutics, Wireless Note Systems. Band of Angels member.

Sheldon Breiner, who holds BA, MA, and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford in Geophysics, was a founding shareholder in CISCO, Nellcor, Myriad Genetics and others. He invented a magnetometer used for remote sensing for mineral and cultural resources through airborne, oceanographic and land based geophysical surveying. A member of the Explorers’ Club, he has used his invention for the National Park Service to search the waters and adjacent land areas of Drakes Bay, Point Reyes National Seashore for the San Agustin, which sank in 1595; to find Ming dynasty china on Limantour spit at Point Reyes; discover Indian sites in Isabel Valley near Mt. Hamilton; find old tools and artifacts in and around a little known lime kiln and residence, circa 1830, possibly of Russian occupation associated with Fort Ross. Breiner's best known achievement with his magnetometer is the discovery of 3,000 year old colossal Olmec heads in the jungles of Southern Mexico and his work as a member of the team that discovered the ancient Greek city of Sybaris in Italy. He currently co-leads a team searching for a 500-year-old shipwreck off the coast of Mexico. After successfully commercializing his own inventions, Breiner established his venture capital company, New Ventures West, and high tech business incubator and has started a range of technology companies. He is a co-founder and former trustee of the Peninsula Open Space Trust, a conservation group preserving lands in the San Francisco Bay area and a director for 10 years of the Career Action Center (formerly Resource Center for Women). He is a member of the Advisory Council of the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University.

Zann Gill
Director, ESAC, POC for DE*SYN

Zann Gill (M.Arch. Harvard) studies how design thinking affects hypothesis construction in scientific discovery and technology innovation. Her book, If Microbes begat Mind, focuses on hypothesis construction in the origin and synthesis of life and its sequel, What Daedalus told Darwin, examines how Darwin's dilemma and Garrett Hardin's hypothesis of The Tragedy of the Commons are linked. Her applied work focuses on augmenting the effectiveness of cross-disciplinary teams. Zann first became interested in “design method” while finishing her degree at Harvard. She began then what became a multi-decade study of the creative process. She hypothesized that individual creativity had an analog in effective cross-disciplinary teams working on complex problems, where the creative process could be cultured and observed. She began to systematize an approach to “design method” to promote innovation in cross-disciplinary teams. While working for Buckminster Fuller on research on lightweight, collapsible tensegrity configurations, she absorbed his ideas on “anticipatory design science” and saw how design method enables scientific discovery and technology innovation. Later, with a DAAD Research Fellowship in Germany (work published in Architectural Design and l’Architecture d’Aujourd ‘hui) she carried out meta-level research on how to promote cross-disciplinary innovation. She brought her research on how to make cross-disciplinary teams more innovative and her method, developed over several decades, to NASA, where she championed several testbeds for cross-disciplinary fusion at NASA Ames Research Center, seeding BEACON think tank, which became a bio-info-nano initiative and developing a plan for NASA U (Incentive Award for Outstanding Performance). More at her website.

Lizbeth Goodman
Professor and Founder/ Director of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute, Knowledge Dock, University of East London

Lizbeth Goodman (BA, MA, MLitt, PhD, Cambridge University) leads a practice-based PhD Programme in New Media Arts and also directs the MAGIC Multimedia and Games Innovation Centre. Prior to founding SMARTlab, Goodman founded and directed the Institute for New Media Performance Research at the University of Surrey and directed ground-breaking multimedia creativity research groups for the BBC Open University. Lizbeth Goodman is the author and editor of some 13 books, has written and produced a wide range of multimedia programmes, ranging from educational CD ROMs and video/media packs to live/telematic and webstream events. Dr. Goodman has worked extensively for the BBC as a researcher, writer and presenter of Learning and Arts/Media Programmes. Dr. Goodman is Principal Investigator of the SMARTshell Project (creating innovative tools for synchronous and asynchronous online/integrated performance and learning), and the European Commission's RADICAL project (Research Agendas Developed in Creative Arts Labs). She is PI of several major international research teams and projects, including TRUST, SafetyNET, and the Microsoft Community Affairs Clubtech programme (European outreach phase), and is editor of the new MIT Press series, Emergenc(i)es, on technology, art and culture.

Dr. Richard Johnson
Former Acting Science Advisor to the President of the United States, Advisor to NASA, Chairman of the Board of BASIC, (Basic and Applied Spatial Information Collaborative)

Dr. Johnson received the 1986 Space Sciences Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics for research "culminating in the discovery of large fluxes of energetic oxygen ions in the magnetosphere, thereby showing that the ionosphere is a major source of space plasmas." He was a member of the Board of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the National Academy of Sciences (1988-1990) and Vice Chairman of the White House Committee on Earth Sciences (1987 - 1990), twice invited speaker at Nobel Symposia on Space Plasma Physics, and Editor/ Contributor to a book on the composition of energetic ions in the Earth's magnetosphere. He was employed as a Consultant by RIACS (Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science) at NASA Ames Research Center to provide strategic direction, which included formulating recommendations for a "Disaster Infosphere." Since Hurricane Katrina, he has focused how the state of California can lead in prototyping a rapid responder system for natural and human-produced environmental catastrophes. He has conducted studies on global environmental issues and related inter-institutional relationships and research through the Aspen Global Change Institute and former Acting Science Advisor to the President (Reagan).

Stuart A. Kauffman
Director, Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics, and Professor at the University of Calgary.

Kauffman is an emeritus professor of biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, a MacArthur Fellow and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He won the Borden Prize for Research (1968), the Weiner Gold Medal of the American Cybernetic Society (1971), Gold Medal of the Academia Lincea Rome and The Herbert A. Simon Award (2000). Kauffman received his B.A. from Dartmouth College (1961), a Marshall Scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford University (1961-1963), followed by an M.D. Though originally a medical doctor, Dr. Kauffman's primary work has been as a theoretical biologist studying the origin of life and molecular organization. Thirty-five years ago, he developed the Kauffman models - random networks exhibiting a kind of self-organization that he terms "order for free." Dr. Kauffman was the founding general partner and chief scientific officer of The Bios Group, a company (acquired in 2003 by NuTech Solutions) that applies the science of complexity to business management problems. He is the author of The Origins of Order, Investigations, and At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization.

Chris McKay
Lunar Robotic Exploration Program Scientist, NASA Ames Research Center.

received his Ph.D. in AstroGeophysics from the University of Colorado in 1982 and has been a research scientist with the NASA Ames Research Center since that time. His current research focuses on the evolution of the solar system and the origin of life. He is also actively involved in planning for future Mars missions including human settlements. Chris has been involved with polar research since 1980, traveling to the Antarctic dry valleys and more recently to the Siberian and Canadian Arctic to conduct research in these Mars-like environments.

His current research activities include field studies in extreme arid environments, drilling for microorganisms in ancient frozen ground, and studies of ice-covered lakes. On the theory side he is involved in radiative transfer studies of Titan and climate models of past and future Mars.