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Gregory Good

Gregory Good received a B.S. in physics from St. Vincent College (Latrobe, PA) in 1974, and a Ph.D in history of science from the University of Toronto, Canada in 1982. His historical interests include the history of physics and of the earth sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries, in particular questions of disciplinary identities, shifting research programs, and diverse commitments (social, institutional, and political). Among his published works is The Earth, the Heavens and the Carnegie Institution of Washington (1994). He has served as editor of the two-volume, Sciences of the Earth encyclopedia. Good is currently serving as the director of the American Institute of Physics’ Center for History of Physics in College Park, Maryland.

Evan Widders

Professor Evan Widders is the director of the Multidisciplinary Studies Program at West Virginia University. He holds a Ph.D. in the history of science from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Bachelor of Arts in English literature and history from the University of California Berkeley. His research interests center on the instrumental role of science, medicine, and Enlightenment philosophy in the development of a Mexican national identity during the late-colonial period. He waded through archives in Seville, Spain and Mexico City, Mexico while researching his topic. He remains particularly interested in the interplay between the European explorers, Mexican creoles, and indigenous ways of knowing in Latin America.

Jay D. Wexler

Before going to law school, Jay D. Wexler studied religion at the University of Chicago. “I’ve always been fascinated by religion, so it was natural that I would continue to be interested in the subject after studying law,” he says. “I like to think and write not only about how the law ought to treat religious beliefs and practice, but also about what role religion should play in the legal process. I’m particularly interested in how public schools ought to treat religion, and my goal is to articulate a balanced position that respects both the importance of religion to individual believers and the rights of non-believers to be free of religious indoctrination and endorsement by the state.”

A member of the Boston University School of Law faculty since fall 2001, Professor Wexler teaches law and religion, administrative law, environmental law, and natural resources law. He has published articles, essays, and book reviews on these topics in publications such as the Georgetown Law Journal, the V_anderbilt Law Review_, the George Washington Law Review, the William and Mary Law Review, and the Washington University Law Review. He is currently writing a book, under contract with Beacon Press tentatively entitled Free Exercise, Expensive Gas: A Church State Road Trip, which involves traveling to various places in the United States where prominent church-state controversies and cases have originated.

Prior to coming to BU Law, Professor Wexler clerked for Judge David Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court. He also spent two years as an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, advising components of the Justice Department and other executive branch actors on statutory and constitutional issues. His 2005 study of Supreme Court oral argument humor was the subject of a front page article in the New York Times and a segment on ABC’s Nightline, but it has not resulted in funnier jokes being told from the bench.

Douglas M. Strong

Douglas M. Strong is dean and professor of the history of Christianity at Seattle Pacific University (SPU) in Seattle, Washington. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Houghton College in 1978; a M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1981; and a Ph.D., from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1990. Strong came to SPU from Wesley Theological Seminary, in Washington, D.C., where he taught church history for 18 years and was also the associate dean for church relations.

His field of study is American religious history, particularly the history of 19th-century revivalism and social reform. He is a past president of the Wesleyan Theological Society, a co-convener of the History of Methodism Working Group of the Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies, and is on the Steering Committee of the Wesleyan Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion.

Since 1999, Strong has led students on numerous trips to Russia. He has taught four times at the Theological Seminary of the Russian Methodist Church, and served on that school’s board of trustees. He has also taught at two theological schools in Korea.

William Provine

William Provine, Andrew H. and James S. Tisch Distinguished University Professor at Cornell, is a staunch opponent of creationism and intelligent design. He is well-known for engaging in debates about the existence of god, free will, and the viability of intelligent design as a theory to explain the mechanism of evolution. He argues that teleological aspects, the personalization of the theory of evolution with the belief that purpose and design are a part of or are apparent in nature, should be ejected from science.

Provine, is a professor of history and biology and teaches in Cornell’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and in the Department of History. He is the Charles A. Alexander Professor of Biological Sciences. A member of the Graduate Fields of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, History, and Science and Technology Studies, he began his career at Cornell as assistant professor of history in 1969, joined the Division of Biological Sciences in 1974 and became a member of the Section of Ecology and Systematics in 1986. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has held a Guggenheim Fellowship. He holds a bachelor’s, masters and doctoral degree from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Leroy Hood

Dr. Leroy Hood’s research has focused on the study of molecular immunology, biotechnology, and genomics. His professional career began at Caltech where he and his colleagues pioneered four instruments (the DNA gene sequencer and synthesizer and the protein synthesizer and sequencer) which comprise the technological foundation for contemporary molecular biology. In particular, the DNA sequencer has revolutionized genomics by allowing the rapid automated sequencing of DNA, which played a crucial role in contributing to the successful mapping of the human genome during the 1990s. In 1992, Dr. Hood moved to the University of Washington as founder and chairman of the cross-disciplinary Department of Molecular Biotechnology. In 2000, he co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington to pioneer systems approaches to biology and medicine.

Most recently, Dr. Hood’s lifelong contributions to biotechnology have earned him the prestigious 2004 Biotechnology Heritage Award, and for his pioneering efforts in molecular diagnostics the 2003 Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) Award for Excellence in Molecular Diagnostics. In 2006 he received the Heinz Award in Technology, the Economy and Employment for his extraordinary breakthroughs in biomedical science at the genetic level. In 2007 he was elected to the Inventors Hall of Fame (for the automated DNA sequencer).

He has published more than 600 peer-reviewed papers, received 14 patents, and has co-authored textbooks in biochemistry, immunology, molecular biology, and genetics and is just finishing a text book on systems biology. In addition, he coauthored with Dan Keveles a popular book on the human genome project-The Code of Codes.

Dr. Hood is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering. Indeed, Dr. Hood is one of seven (of more than 6000) scientists elected to all three academies (NAS, NAE and IOM). Dr. Hood has also played a role in founding more than 14 biotechnology companies, including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Systemix, Darwin, and Rosetta. He is currently pioneering systems medicine and the systems approach to disease.

Leila Gómez

Leila Gómez (Ph. D, Johns Hopkins University, 2004) is a professor of Latin American Literature in the Spanish and Portuguese Department of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Professor Gómez specializes on scientific travel narratives in South America in the 19th Century and the dialogue established between travelers and local intellectuals, their mutual appropriation and conflicts. She has published several articles, volumes, and two books on the topic. Her books are La piedra del escandalo: Darwin en Argentina 1845-1909 _(Simurg 2008) and _Iluminados y tránsfugas: Relatos de viajeros y ficciones nacionales en Argentina, Paraguay y Perú (Iberoamericana, in press). She is currently working on an edited book on William Henry Hudson.

Kevin A. Jarrell

Kevin A. Jarrell, Ph.D., is a co-founder and president of Modular Genetics. He is a recognized expert in RNA splicing and gene assembly. In his academic career at Harvard University, Boston University, and Ohio State University, his research resulted in numerous publications and contributed significantly to the current understanding of how living organisms manipulate their genetic information. Of specific interest are the limitations associated with the current genetic engineering tools available to the scientist as well as the emergence of high-throughput technologies aimed at increasing the size and diversity of genetic libraries under study through the use of automation and efficient design. In addition, Dr. Jarrell’s work has resulted in five U.S. issued patents and five pending applications.

J. Philippe Rushton

J. Philippe Rushton received all his degrees from the University of London, including a Ph.D. in social psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of five books and over 200 scholarly articles published in peer-reviewed journals.

Rushton is a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American, British, and Canadian Psychological Associations. He is also a member of the Behavioral Genetics Association and the Society for Neuroscience. Rushton has summarized his research for journals of opinion such as Liberty, the National Review, and the Washington Times’s Insight on the News, and discussed it on TV talk shows such as Donahue, Geraldo Live, and Connie Chung. His major published work is Race, Evolution, and Behavior.

Professor Rushton began his career by researching the basis of altruism. The question of why one individual aids another, thereby exposing himself to risk, has long posed a challenge to evolutionary theories of human development. Rushton’s early work focused on the social learning of generosity in seven to 11-year-old children. After writing a book, Altruism, Socialization, and Society (1980), which examined the influence of the family, the educational system, and the mass media, he broadened his perspective to include sociobiological and behavioral genetic factors.

Studying behavioral genetics and sociobiology led Rushton to explore the dilemma of why, throughout the natural world, “birds of a feather flock together.” He found that genes incline people to marry, befriend, associate with, and help others like themselves. Typically, individuals learn to identify and prefer their own ethnic group, rather than others, for largely genetic reasons. Rushton’s Genetic Similarity Theory expanded the kin-selection theory of altruism (a fundamental theorem of sociobiology) to explain why the pull of that factor is so powerful across human relationships and how it provides an explanation for ethno-centrism and ethnic competition.

V. Betty Smocovitis

V. Betty Smocovitis is a professor of Zoology and History in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida. Smocovitis studies the history, philosophy, and social study of the 20th-century biological sciences, especially evolutionary biology, systematics, ecology, and genetics. She also explores the history of the botanical sciences in America.

Much of her research concentrates on gaining a better understanding of the evolutionary synthesis, which saw the establishment of the modern theory of evolution. To that end, her first book, Unifying Biology:The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology, explores that topic. She currently is completing a book-length project that is a biography of the botanical architect of evolutionary synthesis G. Ledyard Stebbins.

Smocovitis earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Western Ontario and her Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Cornell in 1988. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Botanical Society of America, and the History of Science Society, which has its executive office headquartered at the University of Florida. Smocovitis has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Jay Labov

Jay Labov serves as Senior Advisor for Education and Communication for the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Research Council. He has been the study director for ten NRC reports on many aspects of science education. He also directed a committee of the NAS and the Institute of Medicine which authored Science, Evolution, and Creationism (2008) and oversees the NAS’s efforts to confront challenges to teaching of evolution in the nation’s public schools.

Prior to assuming his position at the National Academies in 1997, Dr. Labov was a member of the biology faculty at Colby College in Maine. He received a B.S. in biology from the University of Miami , an M.S. in zoology, and Ph.D. in biological sciences from the University of Rhode Island. He was elected as a Fellow in Education of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2005.

Meave Leakey

Meave Leakey obtained her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from the University of North Wales. First interested in following a career in marine zoology, she initially undertook a joint-honors in zoology and marine zoology. However, her career would soon take another path.

In 1965, while studying for her Ph.D., she took a position at the Tigoni Primate Research Centre, a small facility under the auspices of Louis Leakey and located just outside of Nairobi. In 1968, she finished her Ph.D. and a year later was invited by Richard Leakey to join his field expedition investigating the newly discovered palaeontological site at Koobi Fora on the eastern shore of Kenya’s Lake Turkana. This would mark the beginning of her long-term involvement with the highly successful Turkana Basin Koobi Fora Research Project, which she now heads.

In 1970, Meave and Richard Leakey were married. They have two children: Louise, born in 1972, and Samira, born in 1974. In addition to her field work at Turkana, Meave’s research has focused on the evolution of East African fossil mammals and mammalian faunas as documented in the Turkana Basin. Her special interests include monkeys, apes, and hominids. The richly fossiliferous Turkana Basin sites cover a time interval dating from 27 million years ago until the recent past.

In 1989, Richard Leakey left his job as director of the National Museum to take over management of Kenya’s wildlife, and Meave became the coordinator of the palaeontological field research in the Turkana Basin. She initially focused her field research at Turkana on finding evidence of the very earliest human ancestors, concentrating on sites between eight and four million-years-old.

Currently the field project, which is co-directed by Meave Leakey and her daughter Louise Leakey, is searching for clues about the origins of our own genus Homo and the emergence of Homo erectus, the first human ancestor to move out of Africa.

In 1994, remains of some of the earliest hominids known were discovered at Kanapoi, a 4.1 million-year-old site to the south west of the present lake. Not only do these finds represent a new species, Australopithecus anamensis, (a likely ancestor to Australopithecus afarensis, the earliest hominid species previously recognized), but these finds also provide the earliest secure evidence of bipedality.

In 1999, Leakey’s research team found a 3.5 million-year-old skull and partial jaw said to belong to a new branch of our early human family. Leakey named the new genus Kenyanthropus platyops, or flat-faced man of Kenya. This amazing discovery, announced in the journal Nature, has profound implications in understanding the origins of mankind. In its front page story on March 22, 2001, The New York Times wrote that the discovery “threatens to overturn the prevailing view that a single line of descent stretched through the early stages of human ancestry.”

Meave Leakey has worked at the National Museums of Kenya since 1969 and was head of the division of paleontology from 1982 to 2001. She now continues her research as a research affiliate of the National Museums. She is also a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence in recognition of the 50-year relationship between “the National Geographic Society and the Leakey family dynasty of pioneering fossil hunters.” In addition to her work in Kenya, she is currently a research professor at Stony Brook University.

Thomas J. Carew

Thomas J. Carew is the Donald Bren Professor and Chair of the Neurobiology and Behavior School of Biological Sciences at the University of California Irvine. His research focuses on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of memory. His laboratory studies the neuronal basis of diverse forms of memory using a relatively simple animal, Aplysia, because its nervous system affords significant advantages for identifying synaptic, biophysical, and molecular changes underlying different stages of memory. The fundamental goal of his experiments is to achieve an understanding of the mechanisms by which the nervous system acquires, stores, and retrieves information. Carew’s research has led to the publication of over 150 scholarly articles and three books.

Carew received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Loyola University of Los Angeles and his doctoral degree in physiological psychology from the University of California at Riverside. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Dana Alliance, American Physiological Society, International Society of Neuroethology, International Brain Research Organization, Society of General Physiologists, International Union of Physiological Sciences, and the American Psychological Society. He currently serves as president of the Society for Neuroscience.