What matters to you.
0:00
0:00
NEXT UP:
 
Top

Forum Network

Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

Funding provided by:

All Speakers

  • Gary Borisy, Ph.D., is the Director and CEO of the Marine Biological Laboratory. Dr. Borisy brings a wealth of scientific expertise and administrative experience to the MBL. At various times throughout his career, Dr. Borisy has spent time at the MBL, conducting summer research; collaborating with resident and summer scientists; and participating in some of the MBL's summer educational programs. Dr. Borisy became the laboratory's 13th Director and 3rd CEO in 2006. Previously he was Associate Vice President for Research and the Leslie B. Arey Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at Northwestern University.
  • William E. Marks, water philosopher, studied at Fairleigh Dickinson University where he researched fish kills and industrial pollution. As a result, a major industry pled guilty after being indicted by a Federal Grand Jury based on Marks' water sample and photographic evidence under the 1899 Refuse Act. He was subsequently honored by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA Region II) with the "Citizen Activist Of The Year" award. Marks was Founder/President (14 years) of Martha's Vineyard's first State-Certified water testing laboratory and environmental consulting firm named Vineyard Environmental Protection, Inc. He also was the Founder/President (15 years) of Vineyard Environmental Research, Inst. (VERI), where he researched acid rain and groundwater mobilization of metals with grants from USEPA; American Water Works Association (AWWA); New England Water Works Association (NEWWA), and performed coastal erosion and sea level research with scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In the mid-1980s he was responsible for saving three of Martha's Vineyard's lighthouses from being torn down so they may be opened to the public and preserved for maritime history, while also protecting the surrounding ecosystems. After giving testimony before Congress, he was successful in having three of the island's five lighthouses transferred to the organization he founded Vineyard Environmental Research Institute (VERI). Marks is recipient of the "Water Hero Award" from the World Water Rescue Foundation, the "Ambassador For Peace" award from the Universal Peace Federation, the World of Poetry "Gold Medal of Honor" award, and is an international water advisor to the Board of the Women International Coalition Organization (WICO) based in the UK. He founded and published *Martha's Vineyard Magazine* and *Nantucket Magazine* for six years. He is author of the *History of Wind Power on Martha's Vineyard*, and *The Holy Order of Water*, *Healing Earth's Waters and Ourselves*. Marks is Editor/Publisher of *Water Voices from Around The World*, a book with contributions from profound water researchers and photographers from around the globe. He continues to conduct water research, travel, perform Native American flute, and speak around the world. He has researched water in 15 countries. He is currently involved with three documentaries for television, DVD, and theatrical release in 2010.
  • Dr. Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist, best-selling author, and popularizer of science. He's the co-founder of string field theory (a branch of string theory), and continues Einstein's search to unite the four fundamental forces of nature into one unified theory.
  • Cognizant of the influence his past has on patients, Dr. Kwaku Ohene-Frempong tries to suppress his love of athletics and the large role they played in his life at one time. The director of the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia doesn't tell patients about his experiences on the Ghanian Olympic track & field team or as the star of Yale University's soccer and track & field teams. He knows that most of these children cannot compete in the athletic arena of life, and he pushes them to find heroes to whom they can better relate. Heroes like himself. Heroes like the doctor in a small Ghanian town who inspired Kwaku to study medicine. As a student at Yale, Kwaku made two life-altering discoveries sickle cell disease and Janet Williams, whom he later married. His curiosity about sickle cell grew, and Kwaku then learned that he was a carrier of the disease. He entered Yale Medical School in the fall of 1970 and less than two years later, the birth of his son, Kwame, pushed him to learn even more about the disease. Then in 1986, Kwaku returned to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Employed by the University of Pennsylvania, Kwaku continued the same type of work, breaking ground in the pediatric sickle cell disease field and making steps toward his current position as the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center's director. He assumed the position in 1990 and has made great strides in improving awareness of sickle cell disease and treatment of the illness. Early in his career, Kwaku was involved in one of the National Institute of Healths (NIH) first sickle cell studies. Prior to this study, entitled the Comparative Study of Sickle Cell Disease, most information on the topic came from antidotal sources and a high percentage of it was inaccurate, according to the NIH's director of blood disease and resources division, and long time colleague and friend of Kwaku, Dr. Clarisce D. Reid. Kwaku also organized one of the, it not the, largest conferences on the issue of the deadly disease. More than 800 representatives from the medical and political arenas from all over the world met in Ghana and put sickle cell disease on the country's public health agenda. His work in the U.S. has not been slowed by his project in Africa, and he currently serves as the president of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America.