Annual Meeting

Public Symposia

Each April, the National Academy of Sciences offers public symposia in Washington, DC, in conjunction with its annual meeting. Links to the audio, presentations, and publications from many of these symposia are provided below. To join the mailing list and receive updates about upcoming symposia, contact us at NAS-symposia@nas.edu; include your name and e-mail address.

Symposium: Darwin Would Be Amazed: Recent Developments in Evolutionary Biology
April 27, 2009 - 3:00 to 5:30 pm
National Academy of Sciences; Washington, DC
2009 is the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Evolutionary thought is central to modern biology, and many of the topics that Darwin first introduced are still actively being investigated. At the same time, advances in molecular biology, developmental genetics, and evolutionary theory have led to discoveries that are far beyond anything that Charles Darwin could have rightly imagined. This symposium explored some of these novel topics including the evolutionary genetics of developmental innovation, the role of symbiosis in lineage and genome evolution, lateral gene transfer in the origin of novelty, and exploration of the phylogenetic history of all branches of life.
>> View the Program

Kavli Frontiers of Science: The Expanding Universe
April 27, 2008 - 9:00 to 10:30 am
National Academy of Sciences; Washington, DC
This symposium, from the Academy's U.S. Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia organized by and for young scientists, introduced the cosmological model that researchers are investigating and addressed how recent observations have presented fundamental challenges to our understanding of gravity and particle physics.
>> View the Program

Symposium: Autism -- A Glance Back and A Long Look Ahead
April 28, 2008 - 3:00 to 5:30 pm
National Academy of Sciences; Washington, DC
Autism is a disabling, prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder. Autism is also a mysterious disorder involving many regions of the brain that contribute to our most human qualities including the ability to communicate with others. This symposium looked at the research that is being done, including the search for biomarkers that may help us advance beyond clinical characterization and the identification of genetic risk factors. Recent insights have come from the discovery of de novo mutations, from identification of heritable forms of autism, and from the analysis of epigenetic mechanisms. New hypotheses are needed about how, when, and where autism arises in the vulnerable, developing brain.
>> View the Program

Kavli Frontiers of Science: Prepare Immediately for Whatever Happens Next: Human Societies and Climate Change
April 30, 2007 - 3:00 to 4:30 pm
National Academy of Sciences; Washington, DC
This symposium, from the Academy's U.S. Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia organized by and for young scientists, highlighted the role of climate in shaping society. The session focussed on our understanding of regional climate changes drawing from the past and present, and the state of the art (and science) in the field of human adaptation to the effects of climate change and its application to public policy.
>> View the Program

Legal/Forensic Evidence and Its Scientific Basis (April 25, 2006)
The last 15 years mark a period of great flux in the legal system's approach to scientific evidence, for example, with the use of DNA evidence for identification. At the same time, our understanding of what makes a memory "true," a biometric identification "accurate," or a photograph "authentic" has undergone rapid change in recent years. This symposium illustrated the impact of scientific approaches to validating evidence for our justice system.
>> Audio and slide presentations

Kavli Frontiers of Science: Robot Learning (April 24, 2006)
As robot technology advances, we are approaching the day when robots will be used prevalently in uncontrolled, unpredictable environments: the proverbial "real world."  As this happens, it will be essential for these robots to be able to adapt autonomously to their changing environment.  This symposium presented three examples of machine learning on physical robots: a machine-learning approach to legged locomotion, with all training done on the physical robots; humanoid robots that learn to use normal social cues to interact with people; and space robotics, in which robust operations must occur in environments that are unknown, unexpected, and uncertain environments.
>> Audio and slide presentations 

Frontiers of Science: Computational Analysis of Social Networks (May 1, 2005)
The computational analysis of social networks has recently become a hot topic at the interface of computer science, the social sciences, and statistical physics -- in large part due to the explosive growth of both the Web and the Internet. The link structure on the Web allows us to examine the relationships among interests, topics, and people. Do we have six degrees of separation? What do "Web communities" look like? We can see the extent to which simple mathematical models capture its high-level properties. In addition, e-commerce has spurred exciting work in economics/game-theory in a graph or network setting. If we view entities as nodes in a network, with links representing opportunities for trade, then how do issues of connectity and "who is able to trade with whom" affect prices and equilibria? Approaches used by researchers in this area represent an appealing mixture of computational, mathematical, and social science methods.
>> Audio and slide presentations from the related Frontiers session held November, 2004

Frontiers of Science: Neutrino Physics (April 18, 2004)
Neutrinos are extremely light, weakly interacting elementary particles first postulated by Pauli in the 1930s to account for energy conservation in nuclear beta decay and discovered experimentally only decades later. Recent studies of neutrinos from astrophysical and terrestrial sources have now found evidence for small neutrino masses and evidence that the different types (electron, muon, and tau) of neutrinos can transmutate from one variety to another. We are now at the remarkable stage, inconceivable only a few years ago, that the basic properties of these elusive particles are almost as well determined as those of the quarks and electrons. A good theoretical explanation for the masses and mixings that have been observe still eludes us.  This session reviewed the recent progress and current puzzles.
>> Audio and slide presentations from the related Frontiers session held November, 2003

Who Will Do the Science of the Future? A Symposium on Careers of Women in Science (April 25, 1999)
This symposium explored ways to encourage scientific talent at all stages of education and employment, while increasing overall participation in science and technology. The symposium focused on the growing participation of women in science, but the lessons learned are equally applicable to members of underrepresented minority groups and to white males who are turned off by science at an early age. Interest in science careers has been declining in all segments of the U.S. population; this symposium addressed strategies to reverse the trend, with an emphasis on attracting and retaining women in science.
>> Audio presentations
>> Symposium publication