News from the National Academy of Sciences

DATE: January 23, 2015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Distinguished Young Scientists Selected to Participate in Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposia

WASHINGTON – Two hundred thirty-seven of the nation's brightest young scientists from industry, academia, and government were selected to take part in the National Academy of Sciences' U.S. and international 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.  Attendees at these symposia are designated Kavli Fellows.

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 5,000 young scientists have attended to date, 179 of whom have been elected to the NAS and ten of whom have been awarded the Nobel Prize.

In 2014, the National Academy of Sciences held five Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia that included the US national symposium and international bilateral symposia with Germany, Japan, China and Indonesia.

The Japanese-American symposium was co-organized by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and was held December 4-7, 2014 in Tokyo, Japan.  The meeting  covered a variety of topic in sessions focusing on climate change and food security, cells in computers, metrology and standards, biomimicry / biomimetics, the metabolism of cities, origami, advanced chemical imaging and the human microbiome.  A complete symposium program with videos of presentations may be found here www.nasonline.org/jakfos2014.

The following scientists were selected for the Japanese-American symposium:

Arash Bashirullah, University of Wisconsin (Participant)
Luis M. Bettencourt, Santa Fe Institute (Speaker)
Jennifer Cherrier, Florida A&M University (Participant)
Jose Clemente, Mount Sinai School of Medicine (Participant)
Laura Cox, New York University (Speaker)
Peter Dodds, University of Vermont (Planning Group)
Adam P. Eisele, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Participant)
Shelly Flagel, University of Michigan (Participant)
David Hanson, University of New Mexico (Participant)
Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, University of Washington (Participant)
Jacob Hooker, Harvard Medical School (Planning Group)
Thomas Hull, Western New England University (Speaker)
Mona Jarrahi, University of California, Los Angeles (Participant)
Alan Pradip Jasanoff, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Speaker)
Jeffrey Karp, Harvard Medical School (Speaker)
Jonathan Karr, Mount Sinai School of Medicine (Speaker)
Mark Keller, U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (Introductory Speaker)
Dan Knights, University of Minnesota (Introductory Speaker)
Mathias Kolle, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Introductory Speaker)
LaShanda Korley, Case Western Reserve University (Planning Group)
Sebastien Lahaie, Microsoft Research (Planning Group)
Yu-Ru Lin, University of Pittsburgh (Participant)
Randall McEntaffer, University of Iowa (Participant)
David H. McNear, University of Kentucky (Planning Group)
Emilia Morosan, Rice University (Planning Group)
Geoff Morris, Kansas State University (Participant)
Carrie Newman Ferrario, University of Michigan (Participant)
Jon R. Pratt, U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (Speaker)
Rodney Priestley, Princeton University (Participant)
Alyssa Rhoden, NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center (Participant)
Anne Schaefer, Mount Sinai School of Medicine (Participant)
Gonzalo E. Torres, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (Planning Group)
Joy K. Ward, University of Kansas (Planning Group)
Elizabeth Wilson, University of Minnesota (Participant)

The U.S. symposium took place on Nov. 17-19 at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering in Irvine, California. The meeting covered a variety of topics in sessions focusing on black holes, brain connectome, collective intelligence, paleogenomics, primoridial gravity waves, regeneration, self-healing polymers, slow slip earthquakes, and visualization.  .  A complete symposium program with videos of presentations may be found at the following link www.nasonline.org/uskfos2014.

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

Brian Anderson, West Virginia University (Participant)
Julien Ayroles, Harvard University (Participant)
Jake Bailey, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities (Participant)
Zhenan Bao, Stanford University (Speaker)
Jessica Belser, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Participant)
Kelly Benoit-Bird, Oregon State University (Organizer)
Karl Berggren, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Participant)
Michael Bernstein, Stanford University (Introductory Speaker)
Magdalena Bezanilla, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Organizer)
Gabriel Bowen, University of Utah (Participant)
Kevin Briggman, U.S. National Institutes of Health, NINDS (Participant)
Carlos Bustamante, Stanford University (Speaker)
Li Cai, University of California, Los Angeles (Participant)
Gregory Characklis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Participant)
Lilian Childress, McGill University (Participant)
Adam Clark, University of Oklahoma (Participant)
Amy Clarke, Los Alamos National Laboratory (Participant)
Baratunde Cola, Georgia Institute of Technology (Participant)
Daniel Colón-Ramos, Yale University (Participant)
Charlie Conroy, Harvard University (Participant)
Tom Crawford, University of Chicago (Speaker)
Neal Dalal, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Participant)
Benjamin de Bivort, Harvard University (Participant)
Jason Dexter, University of California, Berkeley (Speaker)
Jun Ding, Stanford University (Participant)
Tuan Do, University of Toronto (Speaker)
Robin Dowell, University of Colorado (Participant)
Gurudev Dutt, University of Pittsburgh (Participant)
Cora Dvorkin, Harvard University (Introductory Speaker)
Aaron Esser-Kahn, University of California, Irvine (Introductory Speaker)
Rong Fan, Yale University (Participant)
Evelina Fedorenko, Massachusetts General Hospital (Participant)
Max Fletcher, University of Tennessee Health Science Center (Participant)
Matthew Foster, Rice University (Participant)
Marla Geha, Yale University (Organizer)
Jessica Gill, National Institutes of Health (Participant)
Julie Golomb, The Ohio State University (Participant)
Ed Green, University of California, Santa Cruz (Introductory Speaker)
Justin Hagerty, USGS Astrogeology Science Center (Participant)
Daryl Haggard, Northwestern University (Introductory Speaker)
Alan Haynie, NOAA Fisheries, Alaska Fisheries Science Center (Participant
Jeffrey Heer, University of Washington (Introductory Speaker)
Eric Huff, The Ohio State University (Participant)
William Irvine, University of Chicago (Participant)
Jason Kalirai, Space Telescope Science Institute (Participant)
Jeremy Kay, Duke University (Participant)
John Kessler, University of Rochester (Participant)
Niki Kittur, Carnegie Melon University (Speaker)
Arash Komeili, University of California, Berkeley (Participant)
Takaki Komiyama, University of California, San Diego (Participant)
Genevieve Konopka, UT Southwestern Medical Center (Organizer)
Daniel J. Kronauer, The Rockefeller University (Organizer)
Sarah Loebman, University of Michigan (Participant)
Marko Loncar, Harvard University (Organizer)
Janis Louie, University of Utah (Organizer)
Wallace Marshall, University of California, San Francisco (Speaker)
Francis McCubbin, University of New Mexico (Participant)
Tamara Moore, Purdue University (Participant)
Jennifer Morgan, Marine Biological Laboratory (Speaker)
Jeremiah Murphy, Physics Department, Florida State University (Participant)
Yunsun Nam, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Participant)
Saskia Neher, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Participant)
Walter Ogburn, Stanford University (Speaker)
Daniela Oliveira, University of Florida (Participant)
Zhigang Peng, Georgia Institute of Technology (Speaker)
Manu Prakash, Stanford (Participant)
Sohini Ramachandran, Brown University (Participant)
Sebastien Roch, University of Wisconsin-Madison (Participant)
Alejandro Rodriguez, Princeton University (Participant)
Labib Rouhana, Wright State University (Introductory Speaker)
Stuart Rowan, Case Western Reserve University (Speaker)
Aravinathan D.T. Samuel, Harvard University (Introductory Speaker)
Lisa Schulte Moore, Iowa State University (Participant)
Beth Shapiro, University of California, Santa Cruz (Speaker)
David Shelly, United States Geological Survey (Introductory Speaker)
Hari Shroff, National Institutes of Health (Speaker)
Desney Tan, Microsoft Research (Organizer)
Sarah Tuttle, McDonald Observatory (Participant)
Bret Victor, Worrydream (Speaker)
Laura Wallace, University of Texas at Austin (Speaker)
Leo Wan, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Participant)
Rebecca Washenfelder, University of Colorado / National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Participant)
Duncan Watts, Microsoft Research (Speaker)
Adam Weber, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Participant)
Michael Wetz, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (Participant)
Heather Whitley, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Participant)
Bang Wong, Broad Institute (Speaker)
QI Wu, Baylor College of Medicine (Participant)
Nadia Zakamska, Johns Hopkins University (Participant)
Hongkui Zeng, Allen Institute for Brain Science (Speaker)
Christina Warinner, University of Oklahoma (Participant)

The Chinese-American symposium was co-organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the National Academy of Sciences and was held Oct. 11-13, 2014 in Beijing, China. The meeting covered a variety of topics in sessions focusing on big data, bioorthogonal chemistry, communicating science to the public, extreme weather, galactic center: probing our black hole SgrA, human microbiota and its microbiome, long non-coding RNA, neural basis of emotion and quantum communication.  A complete symposium program with videos of presentations may be found at the following link www.nasonline.org/cakfos2014.

The following U.S. scientists were selected for the Chinese-American symposium:

Jovica Badjic, The Ohio State University (Organizer)
Jeffrey Basara, University of Oklahoma (Speaker)
Yehuda Ben-Shahar, Washington University in St. Louis (Organizer)
Magali Billen, University of California, Davis (Participant)
Jennifer Brisson, University of Nebraska (Organizer)
Randal Burns, Johns Hopkins University (Introductory Speaker)
Mark Campbell, Cornell University (Organizer)
Aaron Clauset, University of Colorado at Boulder (Participant)
Brady Cox, University of Texas (Participant)
Michael Dahlstrom, Iowa State University (Introductory Speaker)
Gautam Dantas, Washington University in St Louis, School of Medicine (Speaker)
Anthony Dudo, The University of Texas at Austin (Speaker)
Josef Dufek, Georgia Institute of Technology (Participant)
Eduardo Fernandez-Duque, Yale University (Participant)
Christopher Gerbi, University of Maine (Organizer)
Katalin Gothard, University Of Arizona (Speaker)
Daryl Haggard, Amherst College (Introductory Speaker)
Alexander Hayes, Cornell University (Participant)
Sarah Horst, Johns Hopkins University (Organizer)
Ahmad Khalil, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (Speaker)
Michael Kirby, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Organizer)
April Kloxin, University of Delaware (Participant)
Rafael Lang, Purdue University (Participant)
Jessica Lu, University of Hawaii (Speaker)
Matteo Mariantoni, Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) (Participant)
Alex Parker, Southwest Research Institute (Participant)
Annika Paukner, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Organizer)
Jarmila Pittermann, University of California (Participant)
Tom Purucker, US Environmental Protection Agency (Participant)
Jani Radebaugh, Brigham Young University (Participant)
Jennifer Reed, University of Wisconsin, Madison (Participant)
June Round, University of Utah (Introductory Speaker)
Julienne Rutherford, University of Illinois at Chicago (Participant)
Lisa Scott, University of Massachusetts Amerst (Participant)
Graeme Smith, IBM TJ Watson Research Center (Speaker)
Leigh Stearns, University of Kansas (Participant)
Hakim Weatherspoon, Cornell University (Speaker)
Peng Wu, Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Speaker)

The Indonesian-American symposium was co-organized by the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (IAS) and the National Academy of Sciences and was held June 22-24, 2014 in Medan, Indonesia. The meeting covered a variety of topics in sessions focusing on artificial intelligence, big data, biomaterials / bioenergy, ethno-botany / tropical medicine, natural disaster mitigation, omics / genomics.   A complete symposium program with videos of presentations may be found at the following link www.nasonline.org/idakfos2014. 

The following U.S. scientists were selected for the Indonesian-American symposium:

Daniel Abrams, Northwestern University (Participant)
Collin Becker, United States Army Research Lab (Participant)
Daniel Bond, University of Minnesota (Speaker)
Erin E. Carlson, Indiana University (Introductory Speaker)
Cara Carty, Center for Translational Science (Participant)
Patricia L. Clark, University of Notre Dame (Organizer)
Dana Crawford, Vanderbilt University (Organizer)
Brooke Fridley, University of Kansas Medical Center (Participant)
Ryan Gutenkunst, University of Arizona (Speaker)
Christopher Haiman, University of Southern California (Participant)
Ashfia Huq, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Participant)
Scott Miles, Western Washington University (Introductory Speaker)
Tom Purucker, US Environmental Protection Agency (Participant)
Cassandra L. Quave, Emory University (Speaker)
Marylyn Ritchie, Pennsylvania State University (Introductory Speaker)
Justin Runyon, US Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station (Participant)
Jeff Sakamoto, Michigan State University (Organizer)
Cheryl D. Seals, Auburn University (Speaker)
Devavrat Shah, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Organizer)
William Shih, Harvard Medical School (Participant)
Nicholas Tatonetti, Columbia University (Participant)
Susannah Green Tringe, U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (Organizer)
Steve Vollmer, Northeastern University (Organizer)
May Dongmei Wang, Georgia Institute of Technology (Speaker)

The German-American symposium was co-organized by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH) and the National Academy of Sciences and was held April 4-6, 2014 in Irvine, California. The meeting covered a variety of topics in sessions focusing on bio-mimicry - bio-inspired technical solutions, bio-orthogonal chemistry, cell-cell communication and signaling, condensed matter confined in nanoporous materials, neuroplasticity and development, plasticity / trait adaptation and its relevance to climate change and quantification of uncertainty in scientific computing.  A complete symposium program with videos of presentations may be found at the following link www.nasonline.org/gakfos2014. 

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

Victoria Auerbuch Stone, University of California Santa Cruz (Participant)
Marina Bedny, Johns Hopkins University (Organizer)
Troy Butler, University of Colorado Denver (Speaker)
Daniel Cooley, Colorado State University (Participant)
Sonya Dyhrman, Columbia University (Participant)
Matthew Francis, University of California, Berkeley (Speaker)
Michael Frank, Stanford University (Speaker)
Hyowon Gweon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Chair)
Susan Harbison, Laboratory of Systems Genetics, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health (Participant)
Jamie Hestekin, University of Arkansas (Participant)
Brenton Hoffman, Duke University (Participant)
Brian Hopkinson, University of Georgia (Speaker)
Ania Jayich, University of Calfornia, Santa Barbara (Organizer)
Zackary Johnson, Duke University (Organizer)
Kristopher Kilian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Participant)
David Kisailus, University of California, Riverside (Speaker)
Jennifer Kohler, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Organizer)
Mei Kong, Beckman Research Institute at City of Hope Cancer Center (Participant)
Kostas Konstantinidis, Georgia Institute of Technology (Participant)
Wyndham Lathem, Northwestern University (Organizer)
Melvin Leok, University of California, San Diego (Organizer)
Noa Ofen, Wayne State University (Participant)
Mary O'Riordan, University of Michigan Medical School (Chair)
Alexander Orlov, Stony Brook University (Participant)
Joseph Pomerening, Indiana University (Organizer)
Jenn Prescher, University of California Irvine (Chair)
Manuela Raffatellu, University of California, Irvine School of Medicine (Speaker)
John-Demian Sauer, University of Wisconsin Madison (Participant)
Derek Stein, Brown University (Speaker)
Alexandre Tartakovsky, University of South Florida and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Participant)
Sarah Veatch, University of Michigan (Participant)
Daniel Villeneuve, US EPA Mid-Continent Ecology Division (Participant)
Clayton Webster, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Chair)
Gleb Yushin, Georgia Institute of Technology (Participant)

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.