WASHINGTON – One hundred twenty-two of the nation's brightest young scientists from industry, academia, and government have been selected to take part in the National Academy of Sciences' U.S. and Chinese-American Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia. These three-day events bring together scientists who are 45 or younger and engaged in exceptional research in a variety of disciplines. A committee of NAS members selected the participants from among young researchers who have already made recognized contributions to science, including recipients of major fellowships and awards.

Beginning in 1989, the Frontiers of Science symposium series has provided a forum for the future leaders in U.S. science to share ideas across disciplines and to build contacts and networks that will prove useful as they advance in their careers. More than 4,500 young scientists have attended to date, 136 of whom have been elected to the NAS and eight of whom have been awarded the Nobel Prize.

The U.S. symposium will be held Nov. 17-19 at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering in Irvine, California. The meeting will cover a variety of topics in sessions focusing on catalyzing behavioral change, computational social science, epigenetics, finding extraterrestrial life, molecules that should not exist, nanotoxicology, quantum mechanics in macroscopic systems, and viruses and cancer

The following scientists were selected as general participants for the U.S. symposium:

Frank Alber; University of Southern California
Abigail Allwood; Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Yehuda Ben-Shahar; Washington University
Kay Bidle; Rutgers University
Elizabeth Boon; Stony Brook University
Jeremy Busby; Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Maria Cameron; University of Maryland, College Park
Lincoln Carr; Colorado School of Mines
Lee K. Cerveny; USDA Forest Service
Gavin Crooks; Lawrence-Berkeley National Lab
Lila Davachi; New York University
Robert Edwards; San Diego State University
Thierry Emonet; Yale University
Amit Etkin; Stanford University
Anna Frebel; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Arne Gennerich; Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Margot Gerritsen; Stanford University
Geoffrey J. Gordon; Carnegie Melon University
Jason Graetz; Brookhaven National Laboratory
Hartmut Haeffner; University of California, Berkeley
Elissa A Hallem; University of California, Los Angeles
Charles Kankelborg; Montana State University
Karrie Karahalios; University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
Munira Khalil; University of Washington
Helmut Koester; University of Texas, Austin
Amy Mainzer; Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Jennifer Martiny; University of California, Irvine
Nadya Mason; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Lorin Matthews; Baylor University
Patrick Paddison; Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Zhongli Pan; University of California, Davis
Heather W. Pinkett; Northwestern University
Desiree L. Plata; Duke University
Mary Putman; Columbia University
Nicholas Putnam; Rice University
Jeffrey Pyun; University of Arizona
Marylyn Ritchie; Vanderbilt University
Patricia Romero-Lankao; National Center for Atmospheric Research
Aaron D. Sadow; Iowa State University
Alex Sessions; California Institute of Technology
Ivan Smalyukh; University of Colorado at Boulder
Daphne Soares; University of Maryland
David Spiegel; Yale University
Robert Szilagyi; Montana State University
Jeanne VanBriesen; Carnegie Mellon University
Emily Weiss; Northwestern University
David Yoskowitz; Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
Jie Zhang; George Mason University

Speakers at the U.S. symposium are:

Tanzeem Choudhury; Dartmouth College
Blossom Damania; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Shawn Domagal-Goldman; NASA Headquarters
P. Lee Ferguson; Duke University
Kevin Hand; Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Todd Hare; University of Zurich
Ray Jayawardhana; University of Toronto
Siavash Kurdistani; University of California, Los Angeles
Jure Leskovec; Stanford University
Greg Lowry; Carnegie Mellon University
Maja Mataric; University of Southern California
Benjamin McCall; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Marie H. Monfils; The University of Texas at Austin
Joel Moore; University of California, Berkeley
John Morris; Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Clodagh O'Shea; The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Alex Ruthenburg; The University of Chicago
Tara Sabo-Attwood; University of South Carolina
Geoff Schoenbaum; University of Maryland School of Medicine
Keith Schwab; California Institute of Technology
Chris Sullivan; University of Texas at Austin
Dean Tantillo; University of California, Davis
Choudhury Tanzeem; Dartmouth College
Senthil Todadri; Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jessica Tyler; The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

The organizers of the 2011 U.S. symposium are:

Erin Adams; University of Chicago
R. Alison Adcock; Duke University
N. Peter Armitage; Johns Hopkins University
Mu-Hyun Baik; Indiana University
Mya Breitbart; University of South Florida
Charles Isbell; Georgia Institute of Technology
Eliza Kempton (Miller-Ricci); University of California, Santa Cruz
Christopher Reddy; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Erin Adams; University of Chicago

The Chinese-American symposium is co-organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the National Academy of Sciences and will be held Nov. 5-7 in Shenzhen, China. The meeting will cover a variety of topics in sessions focusing on autonomous intelligent systems, brain-computer interaction, collisions in the solar system, environmental nanomaterials, genetics and genomics of behavior, induced pluripotent stem cells and reprogramming, particle physics in the Large Hadron Collider era, and self-assembly.

The following U.S. scientists were selected as general participants:

Kristin Baldwin; Scripps Research Institute
David Borrok; University of Texas, El Paso
Benjamin Bostick; Columbia University
Sarah Brosnan; Georgia State University
Martin D. Burke; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Clara Chan; University of Delaware
Katherine Copic; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Juan Estrada; Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Eric Gilbert; Georgia Tech University
Enrique Gomez; Pennsylvania State University
Daniel S. Hussey; National Institute of Standards and Technology
David Johnston; Harvard University
Chris Kim; Chapman University
Rachel Mastrapa; NASA Ames Research Center
Sam McClure; Stanford University
Pamela Nagler; U.S Geological Survey
Nicholas Priebe; University of Texas at Austin
Jeremy Reiter; University of California, San Francisco
Tamara Rogers; University of Arizona
Christopher Walter; Duke University

The U.S. speakers at this year's event are:

Yehuda Ben-Shahar; Washington University
Paul Nealey; University of Wisconsin
Reinhard Schwienhorst; Michigan State University
Mark Campbell; Cornell University
Zoe Donaldson; N.Y.S.P.I. Kolb Research Annex
Benjamin Gilbert; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
David Gracias; Johns Hopkins University
Colleen Hansel; Harvard University
Stephen M. LaConte; Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute
Zhenguo Liu; Ohio State University
Margarita Marinova; NASA Ames Research Center
Junjie Zhu; University of Michigan

The U.S. organizers of the 2011 Chinese-American symposium are:

Jennifer Brisson; University of Nebraska
Greg Druschel; University of Vermont
Darren Gergle; Northwestern University
Sabine Lammers; Indiana University
Lynn Loo; Princeton University
Peter Mohler; Ohio State University
Read Montague; Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute
Emily Schaller; NASA, National Suborbital Education and Research Center

The Kavli Frontiers of Science symposium is sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences. Major support is provided by the Kavli Foundation, with additional funding from the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare. It was established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation signed by Abraham Lincoln that calls on the Academy to act as an official adviser to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of science or technology.

Meeting programs and more information about Kavli Frontiers of Science are available at http://www.nasonline.org/kfos.