Gilbert Omenn	Gilbert Omenn, AAAS President, and Professor of Medicine, Genetics, and Public Health, University of Michigan Dr. Omenn is among the nation's most prominent health and science experts. He has dedicated his career to translating scientific advances into public policy, advancing the public understanding of science, and developing a new generation of leaders. Early in his career, he recognized the potential of genetics for treating and preventing disease. At the University of Washington, he applied genetic approaches to brain-and-behavior studies, prenatal diagnosis of genetic disorders, and variation in susceptibility to environmental agents. He bridged gaps between policy and practice in science-based analysis of environmental health risks, and helped create unprecedented programs on public health genetics and health promotion for older adults. He also pioneered large-scale cancer chemoprevention trials. His work at the juncture of science and law has advanced mutual understanding among judges, lawyers, scientists, and ethicists. In 1997, Dr. Omenn became chief executive officer of the University of Michigan Health System and implemented a vision of a highly integrated academic health system. His programs for faculty recruitment, bio-informatics, and clinical research, coupled with major research and clinical building projects, helped revitalize the institution. In 2002, he resumed his faculty role in the cutting-edge field of proteomics, where he has focused on discovery of biomarkers for earlier diagnosis of lung cancers. • BACK TO TOP
Peter Agre	Peter Agre, Vice Chancellor for Science and Technology, Duke University Medical Center When Peter Agre, M.D., was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recognized him for his laboratory's 1991 discovery of the long-sought "channels" that regulate and facilitate water molecule transport through cell membranes, a process essential to all living organisms. This discovery ushered in a golden age of biochemical, physiological, and genetic studies of these proteins in bacteria, plants, and mammals, and fundamental understanding of malfunctioning channels associated with many diseases of the kidneys, skeletal muscle, and other organs. A 1992 paper in Science by Agre and Hopkins physiologist Bill Guggino documented the discovery. Born in Northfield, Minn., in 1949, Agre received his medical doctorate from Johns Hopkins in 1974. In 1981, after post-graduate medical training and then a fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Agre returned to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he progressed through the ranks of the departments of medicine and cell biology, and in 1993 became a professor of biological chemistry. He joined Duke University Medical Center in July 2005 as vice chancellor for science and technology. Agre helps guide the development of Duke's biomedical research enterprise. He also will lead an effort to assess health care needs on a global scale, position Duke's research programs to address those needs, and continue his role as a champion and critic of scientific and medical issues that have important societal implications. • BACK TO TOP
Pamela Matson Photo: ©Steve Gladfelter	Pamela Matson, Chester Naramore Dean, School of Earth Sciences, Stanford University Dr. Matson is an interdisciplinary Earth scientist who studies chemical interactions among soils, water, and atmosphere. As a leader among scientists working to reconcile the needs of people and the environment in the 21st century, she works with multidisciplinary teams of researchers and decision makers to develop land management approaches that make sense economically and environmentally. Working mostly in the tropics, she and her colleagues have identified the negative consequences of deforestation and intensive agriculture for the global and local atmosphere and water systems, and are working to develop new approaches that reduce those impacts while maintaining human livelihoods. With her students, she also evaluates the response of tropical forests to nitrogen deposition and climate changes. Dr. Matson was appointed Chester Naramore Dean of the School of Earth Sciences in December 2002. She is also the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies and a member of the Center for Environmental Science and Policy. Dr. Matson joined the Stanford University faculty in 1997, following positions as professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and research scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. She earned her B.S. degree at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, M.S. degree at Indiana University, and doctorate at Oregon State University. • BACK TO TOP
Ursula Goodenough	Ursula Goodenough is Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis MO. She was educated at Radcliffe and Barnard Colleges, Columbia University, and Harvard University, and was Assistant and Associate Professor of Biology at Harvard before moving to Washington University. Her primary teaching has been a cell biology course for undergraduate biology majors; she also co-teaches a course, The Epic of Evolution, with a physicist and a geologist, for non-science students. Her research has focused on the cell biology and (molecular) genetics of the sexual phase of the life cycle of the unicellular eukaryotic green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and, more recently, on the evolution of the genes governing mating-related traits. She has also studied the molecular basis for flagellar motility, the assembly of the Chlamydomonas cell wall, and the inheritance of chloroplast DNA. She wrote 3 editions of a widely adopted textbook, Genetics, and has served in numerous capacities in national biomedical arenas, including service on NIH and NSF review panels, membership on committees of the NRC, editorial boards for several professional journals, and many positions in the American Society for Cell Biology, including the presidency. Dr. Goodenough has presented papers and seminars on the science/religion interface in numerous arenas, and wrote a book on this subject, The Sacred Depths of Nature (Oxford University Press, 1998), which offers non-theistic religious perspectives on our scientific understandings of Nature, particularly biology at a molecular level. • BACK TO TOP
Rodney Brooks	Rodney Brooks, Director, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Panasonic Professor of Robotics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Rodney Brooks is also chief technical officer of iRobot Corp. He received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University in 1981. He held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and a faculty position at Stanford before joining the faculty of MIT in 1984. His research is concerned with both the engineering of intelligent robots to operate in unstructured environments, and with understanding human intelligence through building humanoid robots. He has published papers and books in model-based computer vision, path planning, uncertainty analysis, robot assembly, active vision, autonomous robots, micro-robots, micro-actuators, planetary exploration, representation, artificial life, humanoid robots, and compiler design. Dr. Brooks is a Founding Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, an AAAS Fellow, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He won the Computers and Thought Award at the 1991 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. He has been the Cray lecturer at the University of Minnesota, the Mellon lecturer at Dartmouth College, the Hyland lecturer at Hughes, and the Forsythe lecturer at Stanford University. He was co-founding editor of the International Journal of Computer Vision and is a member of the editorial boards of various journals including Adaptive Behavior, Artificial Life, Applied Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Robots, and New Generation Computing. • BACK TO TOP