2012 Kavli Prizes

Live Webcast from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Oslo, and the World Science Festival, New York
May 31, 2012; 8:15-10:30am Eastern Daylight Time

PROGRAM INFORMATION

THE NORWEGIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE AND LETTERS ANNOUNCES THE RECIPIENTS OF THE 2012 KAVLI PRIZES. The Kavli Prizes recognize scientists whose discoveries have dramatically expanded human understanding in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience. Consisting of a scroll, medal and cash award of one million dollars, a prize in each of these areas has been awarded biennially since 2008.  

A live webcast (details to be announced) includes the announcements from Oslo by Nils Christian Stenseth, president of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, as well as a special Kavli Prize program from the World Science Festival in New York, featuring opening remarks by John P. Holdren, Science Advisor to President Barack Obama and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President. From the Festival, three extraordinary scientists will also discuss the winning achievements in their fields:

Moderators Adam Rutherford, BBC and Nature, and Elizabeth Vargas, ABC News and 20/20.

• Astrophysics - Claire Max, University of California, Santa Cruz
• Nanoscience - Angela Belcher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Neuroscience - Thomas Jessell, Columbia University

Moderating the announcements from Oslo will be Adam Rutherford, BBC and Nature. Moderating the program from New York will be Elizabeth Vargas, ABC News and 20/20. Opening the program will be Brian Greene, Co-Founder of the World Science Festival, physicist, and best-selling author.

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

ANNOUNCING THE 2012 KAVLI PRIZE ANNOUNCEMENTS

Nils Christian Stenseth is president of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, which was founded in 1857 and is a non-governmental, nationwide and interdisciplinary body whose main purpose  is the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. Stenseth is also Professor and Chair of the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, which is based at the Department of Biology, University of Oslo, and is dedicated to the integration of interdisciplinary scientific fields to study ecological and evolutionary processes. Stenseth is an elected member/fellow of several other academies, including the DKNVS, Academia Europaea, French Académie des Sciences and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. He has been awarded honorary doctorates (Doctor Honoris Causa) at the University of Antwerpen, Belgium  and the École Normale Supéreure, Lyon, France. He is a Chevalier (Knight) in the French National Order of the Legion of Honour and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal,  Climate Research.

 OPENING SPEAKER

John P. Holdren is the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and President Barack Obama’s senior science and technology advisor. An aerospace engineer and plasma physicist by training, he is one of the nation’s foremost experts on energy technology, nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, and global environmental change. Since joining the administration in 2009 he has focused on ensuring that federal policies are supported by sound science while working to create science and technology jobs; strengthen science, engineering, and math education; reduce reliance on energy imports; mitigate climate change; and support the application of biomedical science and information technology to help all Americans live healthy and connected lives.

Before he was appointed to the White House position, Holdren was a professor at Harvard in both the Kennedy School of Government and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, as well as director of the nonprofit Woods Hole Research Center, which focuses on climate change science and policy. His numerous awards include the John Heinz Prize in Public Policy, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and a 1981 MacArthur Prize Fellowship.  He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a foreign member of the British Royal Society—Britain’s academy of sciences.

PANELISTS

ASTROPHYSICS

Claire Max served on the 2012 Kavli Prize Committee for Astrophysics. Max is a pioneer in the field of adaptive optics, a technology that removes the blurring effects of turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere, allowing telescopes on the ground to see as clearly as if they were in space. A coinventor of the laser guide star technique for astronomical adaptive optics, she has helped revolutionize the capabilities of ground-based telescopes. Max is a Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz and UC Observatories, and directs the Center for Adaptive Optics, a Science and Technology Center funded by the National Science Foundation. She has been active in the development of advanced adaptive optics systems for current and future large ground-based telescopes. Her current research in astronomy involves the use of adaptive optics to study merging black holes at the centers of galaxies. Earlier in her career, Max studied the plasma physics aspects of laser fusion at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). She made important contributions to laser-plasma interactions and to the understanding of astrophysical plasmas.

NANOSCIENCE

Angela Belcher combines chemistry, molecular biology and electrical engineering to understand how living things make molecular-scale materials and incorporate their tricks into new organic-inorganic hybrid technologies. A materials chemist and the head of the Biomolecular Materials Group at MIT, she has genetically engineered viruses to grow nanoscale structures that can be used in batteries, solar cells and other clean energy sources. Materials she has developed can also be used to diagnose diseases, and eventually—she hopes—power cars. Belcher is the W. M. Keck Professor of Energy at MIT.  She received her Ph.D. and did postdoctoral work at the University of California, Santa Barbara, then became assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Texas, Austin, until joining the MIT faculty in 2002. In the past decade she has founded two start-ups and has received numerous national awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and a Four Star General Recognition Award from the U.S. Army. Scientific American named Belcher “Research Leader of the Year” in 2006, TIME magazine named her a “Hero” in 2007 for her research on climate change, and in 2009, Rolling Stone named her one of the “100 People Who Are Changing the World.”

NEUROSCIENCE 

Thomas Jessell has made fundamental contributions to neuroscience by revealing the basic principles of how our nervous system communicates. His work has defined how the neurons that make up the sensory-motor system develop into diverse types, how they wire themselves together, and how that very precise wiring controls refined motor skills such as locomotion and object manipulation. By identifying how sensory motor neurons are connected, Jessell has opened the door to potential strategies to treat and cure neurodegenerative diseases that impair movement, such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Jessell is Claire Tow Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University. He is also an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a co-director of the Columbia/Kavli Institute for Brain Science. Jessell is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, and was a co-recipient of the first-ever Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2008. In March, his work was recognized with the Canadian Gairdner Foundation award.

PROGRAM MODERATORS

NORWEGIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE AND LETTERS

Adam Rutherford is a science writer and broadcaster with a degree in evolutionary biology and a PhD in genetics. He is currently an editor at the science journal Nature where he makes podcasts and and short films about new research, and writes for The Guardian (United Kingdom). As a science writer, he covers all fields while specializing in evolution and human biology. Adam has made "Men In White" for Channel 4 (UK), "The Cell" and "The Gene Code" for BBC 4. The former was broadcast in over 40 countries and placed in the Daily Telegraph’s list of 10 Classic science programs. He has conducted several interviews for The Culture Show, BBC 2. He has made a number of documentaries for Radio 4 and presented the two flagship science magazine shows, "Science In Action" and "Material World."

WORLD SCIENCE FESTIVAL

Elizabeth Vargas has covered breaking news stories, reported in-depth investigations and conducted newsmaker interviews around the world since joining ABC News in 1996. During the historic Iraqi elections in December 2005, she anchored the network’s “World News” from Baghdad. She won an Emmy in 2000 for Outstanding Instant Coverage of a News Story for anchoring live coverage of the Elian Gonzalez case. The New York Times in 2004 cited Vargas for her “intellectually brave” reporting on the 1998 anti-gay hate crime murder of Matthew Shepard. Her 2003 special “In the Shadow of Laci Peterson” examined why the disappearances of several young women in northern California failed to attract the same media attention as the Peterson case. Vargas co-anchored “World News” with Bob Woodruff before joining the network’s “20/20” news magazine, of which she is the co-anchor. She was previously the anchor of “World News Tonight Sunday” and was also a frequent substitute anchor on “Good Morning America,” as well as a correspondent for “20/20” and “Primetime Thursday” and a co-anchor of “Primetime Monday.” Before joining ABC, she worked at NBC News.

Presentation by the Kavli Prize Committee Chairs from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, 9:15am - 10:00am EDT

Direct from Oslo, following the announcements, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters will present a second webcast, as the Kavli Prize Committee chairs give their presentations of the prize winners in Astrophysics, Nanoscience and Neuroscience.

From left: Professor Oddbjørn Engvold, University of Oslo, Chair of the Kavli Prize Committee in Astrophysics; Professor Arne Skjeltorp, University of Oslo, Chair of the Kavli Prize Committee in Nanoscience; Professor Jon Storm-Mathisen, University of Oslo, Chair of the Kavli Prize Committee in Neuroscience. Photo: Eirik Furu Baardsen