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Conference Highlights Featured Speakers
● The Saturday evening banquet will feature Dr. Mina Izadjoo. Dr. Izadjoo is Senior Distinguished Scientist and Director of The Diagnostics and Transitional Research Center of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine. She is a recent recipient of the Washington Academy of Sciences Biological Sciences Award for her work in translating fundamental research into state-of-the-art wound care through the application of advanced therapies and technologies, bioinformatics, biobanking and personalized medicine.
● The Saturday lunch meeting will feature NSF Program Director, Dr. Paul Werbos. Dr. Werbos is a Fellow of IEEE and INNS, a winner of the IEEE Neural Networks Pioneer Award and winner of the Hebb Award for 2011 from the International Neural Network Society (INNS). The Hebb Award is INNS's highest award, to honor substantive contributions to the understanding of biological learning systems.
● The Sunday lunch meeting will feature Dr. Compton (Jim) Tucker, a senior earth scientist in the Biospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. In collaboration with coworkers, he is presently studying tropical deforestation and fragmentation, global variations in photosynthetic capacity, climatically-coupled diseases, tropical glacier variation in Bolivia and Peru, and studying climate using satellite and ground data. He is the recipient of NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, the Henry Shaw Medal from the Missouri Botanical Garden, National Air and Space Museum Trophy, the William Nordberg Memorial Award for Earth Sciences, the Mongolian Friendship Medal, the William T. Pecora Award from the U.S. Geological Survey, the Galathea Medal from the Royal Danish Geographical Society, and is a fellow of the American Geophysical Society. Plenary Sessions
● NSF Investments in STEM Education. A panel composed of NSF Staff members, led by Drs. Sylvia James and Janice Curry and introduced by NSF Deputy Director Dr. Cora Marrett. In 2001, Judith A. Ramaley, a former director of the National Science Foundation’s education and human-resources division was credited with being the first person to brand science, technology, engineering and mathematics curriculum as STEM. The acronym was quickly adopted by numerous institutions of higher education as well as the scientific communities as a focus for education policy focus and development. This panel will discuss and illustrate NSF’s continuing support of STEM. A current functioning example of the impact of STEM will be demonstrated by a FIRSTUSA robot, who will join us immediately prior to the Sunday plenary
● English as a Second Language: Analog Communication in a Digital World. Dr. Paul Werbos (see Featured Speakers, above) will join University of Chicago Professor Ted Cohen and industry linguist Dr. Betsy Barry in a discussion of tweet-speak and its effect on traditional language. A former chair of the University’s Department of Philosophy, Professor Cohen works works mainly in the philosophy of art. Among his recent publications are the book Jokes, and the essays, "Identifying with Metaphor," "Metaphor, Feeling, and Narrative," and "Three Problems in Kant's Aesthetics." Dr. Barry specializes in computer-mediated communications, or CMCs, which refer to text-based communications that are created and consumed in a computer environment. You can use it to broadly refer to emails, social media such as twitter, blogs (both content and commentary), facebook and instant messaging. Breakfast with Bob
● Saturday Registration begins at 8:00AM. where a continental breakfast awaits. You are invited to bring your breakfast into Virginia Tech's Farragut West room where Bob Hirshon will hold some informal discussions and demonstrations.You are invited to drop in and have breakfast with Bob Hirshon, host of the daily radio show and podcast Science Update, and senior project director for several award-winning after school programs and science web sites. Bob will hold some informal discussions and demonstrations over a period of about two hours. He also heads up Kinetic City, including the Peabody Award winning children's radio drama, McGraw-Hill book series, Codie Award-winning website and education program, Kinetic City Spark Club (green energy program), and Kinetic City Science Gym, featuring the SmartFoot dancepad. He created and oversees the Science NetLinks project for K-12 science teachers, part of the Verizon Foundation Thinkfinity partnership. Bob was recipient of the 2006 Washington Academy of Sciences Krupsaw Award for non-traditional science teaching |