Speaker Biographies
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Opening Remarks
Shigeru Watanabe
Faculty of Letters, Keio University
Director, Research Centre for Human CognitionShigeru Watanabe obtained his Ph.D. from Keio University in 1978. Topic of his thesis was interhemispheric transfer of learning in pigeons. He started his scientific carrier as a behavioral psychologist, and then moved to more biology oriented researches. His main interest now is evolution of higher cognitive function and published a lot of papers on comparative cognition. He published the first brain atlas of crow in 2007 with his colleague Professor E.Izawa and edited a special issue of Reviews in Neuroscience on "Comparative perspectives of hippocampal organization and functions" with V.P.Bingman and H-J.Bischof. Since 2007, he is a program leader of Global COE (Center of Excellence) program titled "Centre for Advanced Research of Logic and Sensibility" consisted of 27 principal investigators. The center organized an international symposium on "rationality" in 2006 and published a book "Rational Animals, Irrational Humans" (edited by S.Watanabe, A.P.Blaisdel, L.Huber, and A.Young) from Keio University Press. He is also a pioneer of new scientific field "Animal Aesthetics" and clarified reinforcing property of music for songbirds and discrimination of paintings by pigeons. He carried out several experimental works in abroad, for example, University of Maryland (with W.Hodos), University of Cambridge (with N.S.Clayton), University of Bielefeld (with H-J.Bischof), University of Sao Paulo (with L.Brito) etc. He is ex-president of Japanese Society of Animal Psychology.
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Catalyzing trans-disciplinary research: Lessons from SFI's 25-year experience
Chris Wood
Vice President, Santa Fe Institute
Chris Wood received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1973. Following a postdoctoral appointment at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington DC, he returned to Yale as a faculty member with joint appointments in the Departments of Psychology, Neurology, and Neurosurgery. Chris left Yale in 1989 to lead the Biophysics Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a position he held until becoming the Santa Fe Institute's Vice President in 2005. At Los Alamos, Chris' group was responsible for a wide range of biophysical and physical research, including protein crystallography, quantum information, and human brain imaging. During 2000-2001, Chris served as interim director of the National Foundation for Functional Brain Imaging, a collaboration involving Harvard / Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Minnesota, and a number of academic and research institutions in New Mexico devoted to the development and application of advanced functional imaging techniques to mental disorders. Chris' research interests include imaging and modeling the human brain, computational neuroscience, and biological computation.
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Directions of NTU towards an Asian hub for interdisciplinary research
Monique van Donzel
President Office, Nanyang Technological University
Monique van Donzel (1970) did her undergraduate education at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and at the University of Paris VII Jussieu in Paris, France. She holds an MA in French Literature and Linguistics and one in General Linguistics, both from Leiden University. She received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 1999, having done part of the research at the Department of Linguistics at Lund University, Sweden. She joined the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), Council for the Humanities, as policy staff member in 1999 and was responsible for managing international collaborative research programs and grant schemes as well as international peer review. From January 2004 till September 2008 she was employed at the European Science Foundation (ESF) in Strasbourg, France, first as program manager for the humanities and social sciences, and from 2005 as head of the Humanities Unit and scientific secretary to the Standing Committee for the Humanities. As such, she was responsible for initiating, launching and managing pan-European (interdisciplinary) networking projects. She joined Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore in October 2008, as Director of the President's Office, where she is assisting NTU president in setting up strategic and interdisciplinary initiatives and partnerships, as well as university alliances, with a particular interest for the humanities, arts, and social sciences.
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Do the cultural conditions for making discoveries awarded with Nobel Prizes change with time?
Erling Norrby
The Royal Swedish Academy of Science
Chairman of Science Board, Institute Para LimesErling Norrby (M.D. 1963, Ph.D. 1964), a virologist, is Former Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He became Professor of Virology in 1972 at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm., Chairman of the Department, 1972 to 1990: He was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine (1990 to 1996) and finally Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He has served in many functions in the work on Nobel Prizes at the Karolinska Institute during 1973-1996; Member of the Nobel Committee, Karolinska Institutet, Adjunct member of the Nobel Committee, Karolinska Institutet and Chairman of the Nobel Assembly. He is an active member of numerous medical committees in Sweden, he is involved in many international organizations and has received a number of awards in recognition for his work. He is Lord Chamberlain in Waiting at the Royal Swedish Court.
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Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities
Luis Bettencourt
Los Alamos National Laboratory
External Professor, Santa Fe InstituteLuís M. A Bettencourt obtained his PhD from Imperial College, University of London, in 1996 for work on critical phenomena in the early Universe, and associated mathematical techniques of Statistical Physics, Field Theory and Non-linear Dynamics. He held postdoctoral positions at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, as a Director's Fellow in the Theoretical Division at LANL, and at the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT. In 2000 he was awarded the distinguished Slansky Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory for excellence in interdisciplinary research. He has been a Staff Member at LANL since the spring of 2003. He is also External Research Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, and a Research Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. Dr. Bettencourt carries research in the structure and dynamics of several complex systems, with an emphasis on dynamical problems in biology and society. Currently he works on real time epidemiological estimation, social networks of human communication, distributed sensor networks, information processing in neural systems and urban organization and dynamics. He is also a consultant for the Office Science and Technology Information of the US Department of Energy on the subject of scientific innovation and discovery.
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Neuroscience of primates' intellectual evolution
Atsushi Iriki
RIKEN Brain Science Institute
Research Centre for Human CognitionAtsushi Iriki received his Ph.D. in Neurophysiology from Tokyo Medical and Dental University in 1986. He held research associate positions at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University and then at the Rockefeller University. He joined the faculty of Toho University Medical School as an assistant professor and the as an associate Professor in Physiology (1991-1999). In 1999, he returned to Tokyo Medical and Dental University as a full professor in Cognitive Neurobiology. Atsushi Iriki is now a Head of Laboratory for Symbolic Cognitive Development at RIKEN Brain Science Institute since 2004. He is an adjunct professor of Tokyo Medical and Dental University, The University of Tokyo, Keio University, and a visiting senior fellow of University College London. Based on behavioral and neurophysiological analyses on chronic macaque monkeys, which were trained to use tools and other high-tech apparatus, he tries to uncover evolutionary precursors of human higher cognitive functions grounded onto physical morphologies and patterns of structured bodily actions. He extrapolates these mechanisms to constitute bases of communicatory functions by sharing above machineries among individuals, and eventually understand neural mechanism of social behaviours. Further, he is aiming at extending these mechanisms onto evolutionary as well as developmental clues of symbolic cognitive functions to subserve inference, metaphysical thoughts etc. that characterise human intelligence.
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Human cognitive evolution
Michel Hofman
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science
Michel A. Hofman received a Bachelor's degree in Biophysics (1973) and a Master's degree in Neurophysiology (1979), both at the University of Amsterdam. In 1980 Dr. Hofman left for the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research (NIBR), a research institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the predecessor of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, where he studied the evolution and comparative anatomy of the cerebral cortex, which in 1984 led to a Ph.D. thesis on brain evolution and cognition in mammals. From 1984 to 1992 he worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the NIBR conducting research on the sexual differentiation and functional-anatomy of the human brain. Since 1992 Dr. Hofman is a senior staff member at the NIBR in the department of Neuropsychiatry, where he is studying the neurobiology of the biological clock. Another focus of his research concerns the study of the design principles and operational modes of the neocortex in primates. In this research line he is studying the complexity and functional dynamics of the neocortex in human and nonhuman primates. Computational models are used to explore the design principles and operational modes of the cortical neural networks that underlie the brain's information processing capacity, to eventually develop a quantitative model of cognition in primates based on these organizational principles.
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Is cognition complex?
Yuichiro Anzai
Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University
Yuichiro Anzai received his Ph.D. in engineering from Keio University in 1974. After serving at Keio as an assistant professor until 1985, he joined the faculty of Hokkaido University as an associate professor in behavioral science. Professor Anzai was a post-doc in the Departments of Psychology and Computer Science, and a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon University, in 1976-78, and in 1981-82 respectively. He was also a visiting professor at the Center for Medical Education, McGill University, in 1990. In 1988 he returned to Keio as a professor in electrical engineering, and became the dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology in 1993. His fields of research include cognitive science and information science, particularly cognitive processes in learning and problem solving, and human-robot-computer interaction. During 2001-2009, he served as the president of Keio University, which celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2008. He has received many awards, including honorary doctoral degree from École Centrale de Nantes in France and Yonsei University in Korea, the commandeur de l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques from the French government in recognition of his efforts to strengthen cultural and educational ties between Japan and France, and the Medal with Purple Ribbon for his contribution to the academic advancement of informatics.
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Future directions of complex adaptive systems
John Holland
University of Michigan, USA
Trustee, Science Board, External Professor, Santa Fe Institute
Founding Father, Institute Para LimesJohn H. Holland is now Professor of Psychology and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is also a member of The Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan, and a member of the Board of Trustees and Science Board of the Santa Fe Institute. He was born in Fort Wayne in Indiana in 1929. He studied Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a B.S. in 1950, and studied Mathematics at the University of Michigan and received an M.A. in 1954. In 1959 he was the recipient of the first computer science Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. John H Holland is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a fellow of the World Economic Forum. He serves on the Advisory Board on Complexity at the McDonnell Foundation. Professor Holland has been interested for more than 40 years in what are now called complex adaptive systems. He formulated genetic algorithms, classifier systems, and Echo models as tools for studying the dynamics of such systems. His books Hidden Order (1995) and Emergence (1998) summarize many of his thoughts about complex adaptive systems.
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Evolutionary algorithm in natural, artificial and social systems
Yilong Lu
Nanyang Technological University
Dr. Lu Yilong received the BEng degree from Harbin Institute of Technology, the MEng degree from Tsinghua University, and the PhD degree from University College London (UCL) in 1982, 1984 and 1991, respectively. All degrees are in electronic engineering. From November 1984 to September 1988, he was a lecturer in the Department of Electromagnetic Fields Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. He joined the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University as a Lecturer in 1991. He is currently a Professor in the Communication Engineering Division and Deputy Director of Centre for Modeling and Control of Complex Systems. He was a Visiting Scientist at University of California - Los Angeles from October 1998 to June 1999. Dr. Lu's research interests include in radar, antennas, electromagnetics waves-brain interaction, computational electromagnetic and evolutionary algorithms for complex problems.
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Innovative technologies on CNS regeneration and generation of neurological diseases model
Hideyuki Okano
Faculty of Medicine, Keio University
Research Centre for Human CognitionHideyuki Okano received M.D. in Physiology from Keio University in 1983, and served as research associate in Keio University School of Medicine and in Osaka University Institute for Protein Research. After he obtained Ph.D. degree from Keio University in 1988, he held post doctoral position at Johns Hopkins University Medical School. He has appointed full professors at Tsukuba Univesity School of Medicine in 1994, Osaka University School of Medicine in 1997, and returned to Keio University Medical School in 2001 as a full professor of Physiology. He has been conducting basic research in the field of restorative medicine including, neural stem cells and iPS cells, spinal cord injury, developmental genetics and RNA binding proteins. He has awarded numbers of awards and honors including the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2009. Currently, he is aim to establish and provide genetically modified non-human primate models for neuroscience research and to explore the molecular mechanisms of human-intellectual function by using the marmoset model. And, together with micro array system and genome sequence information of common marmoset, he tries to develop a wide range of research as a model of human diseases including Parkinson's disease, ALS and Alzheimer's diseases, neurophysiology, cognitive science and higher brain function research by taking advantage of our transgenic technology, thereby addressing discrete questions regarding neurobiological bases of human-intellectual function.
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Science as a Complex Ecosystem
Peter van den Besselaar
Rathenau Institute
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and SciencesPeter van den Besselaar is research director and head of the science system assessment department, a research center for science system studies and science policy studies at the Rathenau Institut (since 2005). The aim of the department is to conduct research that contributes to our understanding of the dynamics and organization of science, and at the same time should inform science policy. At the Rathenau Institute we also conduct technology assessment research. The research program is based on the idea that the science system is a complex ecosystem. In order to understand its functioning and development, and in order to develop meaningful indicators for evidence based policy, we need new and theory based approaches. These new approaches are among others based on the development of e-social science and cyber-infrastructures for research. At the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam he is professor of organization science, with a special chair on the organization and dynamics of science (since 2009). Previously, he was professor of communication science at the University of Amsterdam (2004-2009), head of the social sciences department and director of the social science data archive (Steinmetz Archive) at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2002-2005), and an associate professor of social informatics at the University of Amsterdam (1986-2002).
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Linguistics as a complex adaptive system
Helena Hong Gao
Nanyang Technological University
Helena Hong Gao received her Ph.D. in linguistics from Lund University, Sweden and did her Post-Doc. research in psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada. Before she joined NTU in August, 2006, she was Research Director of the Cognitive Development Lab/Child Study Centre at the University of Toronto. During her years in Sweden she also worked as a research fellow for a Swedish national research project on machine translation and established a trilingual corpus (Swedish, Chinese, and English) designed for machine translation and used pedagogically as well. Dr. Gao's research interests are mainly in the fields of linguistics and psychology and her teaching experience was gained from her teaching both graduate and undergraduate students in the universities in China, Taiwan, Sweden, Canada, and now in Singapore. Her research interests cover range of, Cognitive and Language Development, Cognitive Semantics, Bilingualism, Language Acquisition & Language Teaching, Corpus Linguistics, and Computational Linguistics.
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Thermodynamics and phase transitions
Daan Frenkel
Trinity College, University of Cambridge
Founding Father, Institute Para LimesDaan Frenkel has carried out the largest part of his research at the Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where he has been employed since 1987. Professor Frenkel is one of the select foreign members of the British ´Royal Society´ and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is 1968 Professor of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. He is also a recipient the Aneesur Rahman Prize of the American Physical Society which is arguably the highest international award in Computational Physics. In 2001 he was awarded the Spinozapremie, also known as the ´Dutch Nobel prize´. Frenkel has co-authored ´Understanding Molecular Simulation´ which has grown into a handbook used worldwide by aspiring computational physicists. He recently joined the University of Cambridge, Department of Chemistry. His research group will focus on the numerical exploration of routes to design novel, self-assembling structures and materials. In particular, the possibilities that bio-molecular recognition and motor action offer to create complex, nano-structured materials.
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Modeling the innovation dynamics of energy systems and the levers for reducing carbon emissions
Jessika Trancik
Omidyar Fellow, Santa Fe Institute
Jessika Trancik is an Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, and will shortly be starting a faculty position in the Engineering Systems Division at MIT. Her research focuses on evaluating energy technologies to determine candidates for long-term climate change mitigation. Her research focuses on the evolution of technologies and on decomposing performance trajectories of energy systems. She is particularly interested in understanding the dynamics and limits of costs and carbon intensities of energy technologies, in order to inform climate change mitigation efforts. A subset of projects centers on nanostructured energy technologies and their potential to reach very low costs and carbon intensities. She received her B.S. in materials science and engineering from Cornell University and her Ph.D. in materials science from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She has also worked for the United Nations, and as an advisor to the private sector on investment in low-carbon energy technologies.
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Direction of IPL and intellectual interactions in Europe
Jan Vasbinder
President, Institute Para Limes
Jan Wouter Vasbinder (1945) studied physics at the Technical University of Delft (1972). He started his professional career as a researcher in a nuclear laboratory. Until 1981 he worked in the nuclear industry in Israel and the Netherlands. In 1981 he was appointed Attaché for Science and Technology in Washington and Ottawa. In 1985 he returned to the Netherlands, to develop large and long term cooperative industry university research programs. Subsequently he became member of the management team of the organization responsible for executing government innovation policies. In 1991 he became partner and then CEO of an interdisciplinary consultancy firm. Since 1994 he is an independent consultant and partner of Prisma & Partners. The joy in his work comes from finding new potentially powerful combinations of knowledge, and developing programs to explore and exploit these. A lot of his time is invested in helping organizations to develop their strategies for the future. In 2003 he was one of the initiators of Institute Para Limes, of which he is the first president. In his career, the common thread is "looking for new combinations and connections, building bridges and coaching". His motto is: "the value of knowledge is in its application".
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Concluding Discussions
Takashi Maeno
Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University
Research Centre for Human CognitionTakashi Maeno received his B. S. and M. S. degrees in mechanical engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 1984 and 1986, respectively. From 1986 to 1995, he worked for Canon, Inc., in Tokyo, Japan. He received his Ph. D. degree in mechanical engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 1993. Since 1995, he has been with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, where he is currently a Professor. He will move to the Graduate School of System Design and Management in April 2008. He was a visiting industrial fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1990 to 1992 and a visiting professor at Harvard University in 2001. Professor Maeno's research field is both on system design methodology and practical system design. The methodology research is based on systems engineering. His interest is on how to design large-scale complex systems taking into account the surrounding values including safety, security, symbiosis and sustainability as well as requirement of stakeholders.