Science and Society | Making Sense of the World Around Us
Join us online each month for the library’s “Science and Society – Making Sense of the World Around Us” lecture series. These talks are co-organized and moderated by Fred Dylla, Executive Director Emeritus of the American Institute of Physics and author of Scientific Journeys, Linda Dylla, former public information officer at the Jefferson Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy, and Colin Norman, the former News Editor at Science.
Science and Society | The Science Breakthroughs of 2021
Tuesday, February 1 | 5:00 PM Eastern Time | Online
Each year Science magazine selects a scientific advance as the Breakthrough of the Year. Join us for a conversation with Science’s News Editor, Tim Appenzeller, who will discuss the magazine’s pick for 2021 along with nine other advances Science’s editors and writers considered especially important. It will be a tour through some of the hottest areas of research, in a year when Covid19 affected much of science worldwide.
As Science’s News Editor, Tim Appenzeller directs a global team of writers and editors covering scientific research and the international community of scientists. His previous positions included Chief Magazine Editor at Nature, Executive Editor at National Geographic, and editorial posts at U.S. News and World Report and Scientific American.
Science and Society | Lone Survivors: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Us
Tuesday, March 1 | 5:00 PM Eastern Time | Online
In the past decade, new studies of ancient DNA from fossils have shown that, until as recently as 40,000 years ago, our ancestors shared the planet with two close relatives, the Neanderthals and a mysterious group called the Denisovans. Both of those groups became extinct, but traces of their DNA remain in the genomes of modern humans. Join us for a discussion with Ann Gibbons about new research that has changed perceptions of the Neanderthals, shed new light on the mysterious Denisovans, and showed we were not alone on Earth until recently.
Ann Gibbons is a Contributing Correspondent for Science magazine. She is an award-winning writer on human evolution and the author of The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors. In addition to Science magazine, she has written for numerous publications, including National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Slate. She teaches science writing at Carnegie Mellon University.
Science and Society | Immunotherapy: Unleashing Your Body’s Immune System to Fight Cancer
Tuesday, April 5 | 5:00 PM Eastern Time | Online
The tools for fighting various forms of cancers, until recently, have not changed much since the development of chemotherapy and radiation therapies decades ago. However, in the past decade immunotherapy has revolutionized the treatment of some forms of cancer by unleashing the human body’s own defense systems to fight cancer cells. Dr. Donald Lawrence was on the forefront of this development during the clinical trial stages of using immunotherapy for melanoma, a once almost uncurable form of skin cancer. Dr. Lawrence will describe this new form of treatment, how it works in the body, its role in cancer treatment today and what the future holds for the use of immunotherapy in many different cancers of the body.
Dr. Donald Lawrence’s research focuses on the development of novel therapies for melanoma. He leads numerous melanoma clinical trials within the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. He is the principal investigator of two National Cancer Institute-funded, multicenter clinical trials evaluating targeted cancers selected by prospective genotypic analysis. He is a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and the Clinical Director of the Center for Melanoma at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center.
Science and Society | The Universal Timekeeper: Reconstructing History Atom by Atom
Tuesday, May 3 | 5:00 PM Eastern Time | Online
By utilizing the basic building blocks of matter as imperturbable little clocks, we are now able to reconstruct in quantitative detail a remarkable range of human and natural events. From detecting art forgeries to dating archeological sites, and from laying out a detailed history of human diet and the Earth’s climate to revealing the events surrounding the origin of life, of the Solar System and of the Universe itself, atoms provide us with a precise chronology from the beginning of time to the moment humans emerge to contemplate such questions.
David J. Helfand, a faculty member at Columbia University for 44 years, served nearly half of that time as Chair of the Department of Astronomy. He is the author of over 200 scientific publications and has mentored 22 PhD students, but most of his pedagogical efforts have been aimed at teaching science to non-science majors. He instituted the first change in Columbia’s famed Core Curriculum in 50 years by introducing the course “Frontiers of Science”, now required for all first-year students. In 2005, he joined an effort to create Canada’s first independent, non-profit, secular university, Quest University Canada, where he served as President & Vice-Chancellor from 2008-2015. He also recently completed a four-year term as President of the American Astronomical Society, and is currently Chair of the American Institute of Physics. His first book, A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age, appeared, appropriately, in 2016.
Science and Society | Perseverance On Mars
Tuesday, June 7 | 5:00 PM Eastern Time | Online
On February 18, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on the surface of Mars, after a 7-month journey and a nail-biting descent through the thin Martian atmosphere. Since then, it has been exploring Jezero crater, collecting rock samples, looking for signs of ancient life, and partnering with the Ingenuity helicopter, the first-ever drone to fly on another planet. Join us for a discussion with Dr. Kathryn Stack Morgan on what Perseverance has discovered so far, and how the findings extend our knowledge of Martian history, geology, and prospects for life.
Kathryn Stack Morgan is a research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the Deputy Project Scientist of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission. She has a Ph.D. in geology from Caltech, is the recipient of numerous NASA awards, and was named one of Forbes magazine’s “30 under 30” in science and healthcare in 2013.
