Distinguished Speaker Series:

How Advances in Science Are Made

Guest Speaker: Prof Douglas Osheroff - Stanford University (Nobel Laureate in Physics)

Date: 28th July 2008

About the Speaker:

Douglas Osheroff shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with David Lee and Robert Richardson for discovering the superfluidic nature of Helium-3 (3He). This discovery was made in 1971, while he was pursuing his PhD at Cornell.

Professor Osheroff worked in the physical research division at Bell Laboratories for 15 years where he became head of the Low Temperature and Solid State Research Department. There, he worked in collaboration on newly discovered superfluid phases of liquid 3He, as well as studied the nature of nuclear spin order in solid 3He and made the first observations of weak localization in thin disordered metallic films. His current research focuses on the properties of condensed matter at ultra-low temperatures.

Besides the Nobel Prize, Professor Osheroff has received numerous honors, including the Sir Francis Simon Memorial Award, the Buckley Prize and the MacArthur Prize. He is currently the J.G. Jackson and C.J. Wood Professor of Physics at Stanford University. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Mathematics Seminar:

Numerical Solution of Non-Smooth Eigenvalue Problems from Visco-Plasticity

Guest Speaker: Professor Roland Glowinski - Cullen Professor of Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston and Visiting Member, Institute for Advanced Study at HKUST

Date: 27th June 2008

About the Speaker:

Professor Roland Glowinski is a professor of mathematics and mechanical engineering at the University of Houston. He has been awarded the Seymour Cray Prize in France in 1988, the Grand Prix Marcel Dassault of the French National Academy of Sciences in 1996, and the SIAM Von Kˆhrmˆhn Prize in 2004.

Professor Glowinski is an honorary doctor of the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland and a member of the French National Academy of Sciences, the French National Academy of Technology and the Academia Europaea. His scientific interests include computational fluid dynamics, non-smooth mechanics, the control of distributed parameter systems, large scale optimization and the computational aspects of the calculus of variations, and more recently, computational methods for fully nonlinear elliptic equations such as Monge-Ampˆjre¡¦s, Pucci¡¦s etc.

Distinguished Speaker Series:

Low Cost ¡§Plastic¡¨ Solar Cells

Guest Speaker: Prof Alan Heeger - Professor of Physics and Materials, University of California at Santa Barbara (Nobel Laureate in Chemistry)

Date: 13th June 2008

About the Speaker:

After receiving a PhD in physics from UC Berkeley in 1961, Professor Alan Heeger taught and conducted Research at the University of Pennsylvania until 1982, when he became professor at UC Santa Barbara and director of its Institute for Polymers and Organic Solids. In 1990, Professor Heeger founded the UNIAX Corporation to develop and manufacture light-emitting displays (LEDs) based on conducting polymers.

A member of both the US National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering, Professor Heeger won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000 for his contributions to the discovery and development of conductive polymers. The current mission of his research group is to utilize the discovery of ultrafast photoinduced electron transfer from semiconducting polymers to fullerenes to create a new generation of low cost solar cells. This technology is now under active development toward commercialization, and will have the potential for serious impact on the energy needs of our planet.

Distinguished Speaker Series:

Cars: Chemistry in Motion

Guest Speaker: Prof Richard Zare - Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, Chair of Chemistry Department, Stanford University

Date: 5th June 2008

About the Speaker:

Professor Richard Zare had taught at MIT, Colorado and Columbia University after receiving his PhD in Chemical physics from Harvard University in 1964. He joined Stanford University in 1977, and has chaired the Chemistry Department since 2005. Renowned in the field of laser chemistry, Professor Zare¡¦s research leads to greater understanding of chemical reactions at the molecular level. His development of laser induced fluorescence has been widely adopted in laboratories for studying reaction dynamics.

Professor Zare is the recipient of the Wolf Prize in Chemistry and the US National Medal of Science, among numerous other awards. Author of four books and holder of more than 50 patents, Professor Zare is a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Chemical Society, the American Philosophical Society, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has received honorary doctorates from University of Arizona, Northwestern University, ETH Zurich, Columbia University, Hunan University, University of York, Universite P. Sabatier, Uppsala University, and Chalmers Institute of Technology. No stranger to education, he has been honored with the Laurance and Naomi Carpenter Hoagland Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University and the George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society.

Distinguished Speaker Series:

Biomedical Sciences in the New Century

Guest Speaker: Prof Shu Chien

Professor of Bioengineering and Medicine, Director - Whitaker Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of California at San Diego

Date: 26th May 2008

About the Speaker:

Professor Shu Chien joined UC San Diego in 1988 and became the founding chair of the Department of Bioengineering in 1994. As principal investigator on the Whitaker Foundation Development Award (1993) and Leadership Award (1998), Professor Chien played a major role in establishing UCSD¡¦s bioengineering program as one of the top two programs in the United States. As founding Director of the Whitaker Institute of Biomedical Engineering at UCSD, he helps foster collaborations among the faculty of UCSD and with research institutes and biomedical companies in San Diego. In September 2006, Professor Chien was named the inaugural holder of the Y.C. Fung Endowed Chair in Bioengineering at the USCD Jacobs School of Engineering. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, US National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine. Professor Chien co-founded Celladon Corporation and serves as a consultant to AVIVA Biosciences and BioDuro. He received his MD from the National Taiwan University and his PhD in Physiology from Columbia University, where he was a professor from 1969 to 1988.

Professor Chien¡¦s research focuses on how the forces of blood flow impact the cardiovascular system. His studies are leading to new understanding about the onset of atherosclerosis and hypertension, and to experimental treatments for heart disease using gene therapy and engineered tissue. At the molecular level, he is discovering how mechanical forces signal gene expression to cause cell growth, migration and cell death. Most recently, UCSD was issued a US patent for his proposed gene therapy to prevent arteries from re-clogging after balloon angioplasty and bypass surgery. Professor Chien takes a multidisciplinary, integrative approach that combines engineering and biomedical sciences. He employs an array of technologies including nanotechnology, DNA microarrays, bioinformatics, cell biophysics and biomechanics in his research.

Distinguished Nobel Lecture Series:

Evolution, Cooperation, and Repeated Games

Guest Speaker: Professor Eric Maskin, Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Science Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences 2007

Date: 16th April 2008

About the Speaker: Professor Eric Maskin received his PhD in applied mathematics in 1976 from Harvard University. He had been teaching at MIT (1977-1984) and Harvard (1985-2000) before he joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Science.

He was elected Fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the European Economic Association, Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and Honorary Fellow of St John¡¦s College, Cambridge. He is also an Honorary Professor at Wuhan and Tsinghua Universities.

Professor Maskin¡¦s work in economic theory has had a deep influence on many areas of economics, political science, and law. For his contributions in laying the foundation of mechanism design theory, he was awarded the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His current research focus is on mechanism design, repeated games, income inequality, and the theory of voting.

Distinguished Speaker Series:

Economic Development and Cultural Renaissance in China

Guest Speaker: Prof Justin Lin - Peking University and the World Bank

Date: 1st April 2008

About the Speaker:

Professor Justin Yifu Lin, Founding Director of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University and the World Bank¡¦s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, shares his insights on how the Chinese culture interacts with the nation's economic base and modernization.

Distinguished Lecture

Nanoporous Silica-based Materials for Drug Delivery Applications

Guest Speaker: Professor Jesus Santamaria - University of Zaragoza and Nanoscience Institute of Aragon, Spain

Date: 10th March 2008

Abstract:

Medical practice relies heavily on enteral (usually oral) and parenteral drug administration. Thus, a controlled drug delivery system is highly desirable to increase the efficiency and selectivity of therapeutic efforts.

In our laboratory we attempt to create new delivery vehicles both static (e.g., medical devices such as zeolite-coated stents) and mobile (injectable nanoparticles). Nanoporous coatings on these vehicles serve the purpose of increasing biocompatibility and providing a sufficient drug loading capability, and can also be used to anchor targeting moieties. In addition, the porous structure can be employed to harbour monitoring elements (so that particle accumulation can be detected by MRI or luminescence), and agents for magnetic guidance and/or hyperthermia. This goal is to obtain multifunctional vectors, capable of self-guidance and with intelligent drug delivery capabilities.

About the Speaker:

Professor Jesus Santamaria is presently a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Zaragoza, in Spain, where he heads the Nanoporous Films and Particles research group, and is also the Vice-Director of the Nanoscience Institute of Aragon. His current research interests are mainly in the area of nanoporous materials and their applications, including microreactors, microstructured chemical sensors and systems for controlled drug delivery.

His scientific production includes over 180 refereed publications, including 6 invited reviews, close to 300 presentations at scientific meetings and 13 patents. A frequently invited speaker at scientific conferences (29 occasions as either Keynote or Plenary speaker), he has received different awards including the 3M Innovation award and the Honeywell-UOP Distinguished Lectureship. Professor Santamaria is also the Editor of the Materials Synthesis and Processing section of the Chemical Engineering Journal and sits on the Editorial Board of several other Journals.

IAS Bio-Science Lectures

Date: 19th, 20th, 21st and 29th January 2008

Guest Speaker: Professor Paul Schimmel

The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, The Scripps Research Institute

Visiting Member, Institute for Advanced Study at HKUST

(1) How the 'Second Genetic Code' was Revealed

(2) How Errors of Protein Synthesis can Lead to Human Diseases

(3) How Basic Research has Transformed Human Health

Professor Paul Schimmel is Ernest and Jean Hahn Professor of Molecular Biology and Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). Before joining TSRI, he had been a professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at MIT for 30 years. His major research activities have concentrated on the decoding of genetic information, and Nature magazine listed the work of his laboratory on expressed sequence tags as one of the four key developments that launched the human genome project. Professor Schimmel was elected Member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1990, and is currently a Visiting Member of IAS at HKUST. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the Institute of Medicine.

Guest Speaker: Professor Xiang-Lei Yang

Department of Molecular Biology, The Scripps Research Institut

(1) How Hereditary Diseases can Arise from Mutations in Genes of the Translation Machinery

(2) How Structural Analysis can Actively Elucidate Mammalian Cell Functions

Professor Xiang-Lei Yang received her PhD in biophysics and computational biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2000. She then joined The Scripps Research Institute and is now an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Biology. The Schimmel-Yang Laboratory at TSRI focuses on obtaining new understandings of aminoacyl tRNA synthetases, which are essential components, through their catalytic activities, in establishing the rules of the universal genetic code.

There Are No Excuses in Paradise ¡V The Institute for Advanced Study: Past, Present and Future

Guest Speaker: Professor Peter Goddard, Directorof Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA

Date: 30th January 2008

Background:

The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton has been styled an Academic Paradise since its earliest days ¡V ¡§the one true Platonic Heaven¡¨ ¡V but it has also been described by some as the ¡§Institute where there are no excuses¡¨ for failing to do something important.? The absence of formal outside pressure and prescriptive expectations creates great self-imposed pressures on members to achieve great things.? In reflecting on the remarkable rise and achievements of the Institute, Professor Goddard will discuss China¡¦s role in the scientific world and the way forward for this venerable institution.

About the speaker:

Peter Goddard had taught at the University of Cambridge for 30 years before he became Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in 2004. Formerly Master of St John¡¦s College, he played a key role in the establishment of the university¡¦s Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences and served as its first Deputy Director. ?Professor Goddard is recognized as one of the pioneers of string theory. He was awarded the Dirac Prize in 1997 for his contributions to string theory and quantum field theory.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, a Member and the former President of the London Mathematical Society, and a Fellow of both the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Arts. He has been a Senior Fellow, Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge, since 1994, and an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, since 1995. In 2002, Professor Goddard was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for his contributions to theoretical physics.

The Institute, whose founding Members included Albert Einstein, has yielded an unsurpassed record of definitive scholarship. Institute faculty and members have received 15 Nobel Prizes, and 31 out of 43 Fields Medalists ¡V the Nobel equivalent for mathematicians ¡V have been associated with the Institute.

Professor Goddard has graciously agreed to serve as a Member of the HKUST IAS International Advisory Board, thereby initiating ties between the two Institutes.

and Physical Society of Hong Kong

Graphene and the Physics of the Two-Dimensional Dirac Spectrum

Lecture One

Lecture Two

Lecture Three

Guest Speaker: Professor Patrick A. Lee

William & Emma Rogers Professor of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Visiting Member, Institute for Advanced Study at HKUST

Winner of Dirac Medal 2005

Date: 22nd, 24th and 29th January 2008

Professor Patrick Lee joined the MIT Department of Physics in 1982 after approximately ten years with the Theoretical Physics Department at Bell Laboratories. He has made key contributions to the theory of disordered electronic systems and is a pioneer in "mesoscopic physics," the study of small devices at low temperatures. Professor Lee introduced the concept of universal conductance fluctuations to describe such devices. For this, and other contributions to condensed matter physics, he was awarded the 2005 Dirac Medal of the International Center for Theoretical Physics and the Oliver Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society. Professor Lee's main research interests lie in the study of strongly correlated electronic systems. More recently, his research is focused on the problem of high temperature superconductivity.

Array Imaging

Guest Speaker: Professor George Papanicolaou

Robert Grimmett Professor in Mathematics, Stanford University

Date: 5th December 2007

Professor George Papanicolaou is a distinguished applied mathematician. He received his PhD in mathematics at the Courant Institute of New York University in 1969, and had been teaching at NYU for 17 years before he joined Stanford University in 1993. He is the Robert Grimmett Professor of Mathematics in Stanford University and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Professor Papanicolaou had made significant contributions in many fields of applied mathematics. He was awarded the SIAM John von Neumann Prize in 2006 in recognition of his wide-ranging development of penetrating analytic and stochastic methods and their applications to a broad range of phenomena in the physical, geophysical, and financial sciences.

In this lecture, Professor Papanicolaou will introduce the emerging interdisciplinary field of array imaging with several examples such as sonar, seismic imaging, radar, ultrasonic non-destructive testing, etc. He will explain how resolution issues can be addressed in a unified mathematical way, along with some new ideas about optimizing the image formation process. He will also show the results of several numerical experiments.

The Importance of a Global Perspective: One View from Space

Guest Speaker: Professor Leroy Chiao

Smiley and Bernice Romero Raborn Distinguished Chair, Max Faget Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Louisiana State University

Date: 27th November 2007

Viewing the world from a global perspective is becoming increasingly important. This is certainly true in the space exploration arena. In recent years, the United States has experienced the challenges and benefits of international cooperation in space. Similarly, there are advantages to a global view in almost all areas of human endeavor. In this lecture, Professor Leroy Chiao will present these ideas from his unique perspective of having been a member of international space crews.

Professor Leroy Chiao is the first Smiley and Bernice Raborn Distinguished Chair Professor at the Louisiana State University, following a fifteen-year career with NASA. A veteran of four space missions, he most recently served as Commander and NASA Science Officer of Expedition 10 aboard the International Space Station. He has logged over 229 days in space, including over 36 hours of spacewalks. He has flown space missions and worked closely with Russian, Japanese and European astronauts and their affiliated space agencies. In September 2006, Professor Chiao became the first American to visit the Astronaut Research and Training Center of China. There, he met the first two national Chinese astronauts, Yang Liwei and Fei Junlong.

"Translating Human Genomics into Therapeutics: We are beginning to speak the right language"

Guest Speaker: Professor Karoly Nikolich, School of Medicine, Stanford University

Date: 19th November 2007

Professor Karoly Nikolich is a Consulting Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine and prior to that served as the Executive Director of the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University.

Professor Nikolich has over 23 years of biotechnology industry experience and is an expert in drug development, particularly in central nervous system therapeutics. He currently serves as the CEO and member of the board of Amnestix Inc, a company developing innovative therapeutics for the enhancement of cognitive functions. His industry experience includes founding AGY Therapeutics, dedicated to the discovery and development of new drugs and drug targets for the prevention and treatment of diseases of the nervous system.

Prior to founding AGY, Professor Nikolich served as Vice President of Research at Lynx Therapeutics, Inc., a pioneering genomics technology company. From 1983 and 1995, he worked at Genentech Inc. Considered the founder of the biotechnology industry, Genentech is among the world's leading biotech companies. During his tenure there, Professor Nikolich initiated, established and directed Genentech's neuroscience research program and participated in product development.

Professor Nikolich is also a highly accomplished researcher. He has authored over 120 scientific publications, was an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, has organized and chaired symposia, and has been an advisor to various scientific and funding organizations.

"Transcellular Migration by Leukocytes and Integrin Signalling"

Guest Speaker: Professor Timothy Springer, Latham Family Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School

Date: 15th November 2007

Professor Timothy A. Springer is the Latham Family Professor of Pathology at the Harvard Medical School. He is an expert on the molecular and cellular pathways involved in leukocyte recruitment and adhesion, with more than 500 articles published in top journals including Nature, Science, Cell etc.

Professor Springer received his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Harvard University in 1976, and has taught at Harvard for 30 years. In recognition of his important contribution to medical science, Professor Springer was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 1996. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Chair Professor at Fudan University.

"The Secret Lives of Enzymes"

Guest Speaker: Professor K. Barry Sharpless (2001 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry), W. M. Keck Professor of Chemistry, The Scripps Research Institute

Date: 10th November 2007

K. Barry Sharpless is the W. M. Keck Professor of Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute. Since graduating with a PhD in chemistry from Stanford University in 1968, he had taught in Stanford and MIT. He joined the Scripps Research Institute in 1990 and has been a member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology since 1996.

Professor Sharpless was elected member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1984. He was the recipient of the King Faisal Award for Science in 1985 and the Harvey Science and Technology Award from Israel Institute of Technology in 1988. In 1995, he received honorary doctorates from Stockholm¡¦s Royal Institute of Technology and the Technical University of Munich. He is an honorary graduand at the 15th Congregation of HKUST (2007) in recognition of his academic achievements.

He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2001 for his work on chirally catalysed oxidation reactions. His discovery of epoxidation was identified by many scientists as ¡§the most important in the field of synthesis during the past few decades¡¨. One of his recent creations is click chemistry, a set of powerful and selective reactions for the rapid synthesis of new compounds.

"Reference Points and the Theory of the Firm"

Guest Speaker: Professor Oliver Hart, Andrew E. Professor of Economics, Harvard University

Date: 9th November 2007

Oliver Hart is the Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has been teaching since 1993. He received his PhD in economics from Princeton University (1974), MA in economics from Warwick University (1972) and a BA in mathematics from Cambridge University (1969).

The professional contributions of Professor Hart have been recognized by a long list of honors. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been granted honorary doctorates from the Free University of Brussels and the University of Basel.

He is a leading authority on contract theory, the theory of the firm, and corporate finance. He has made major breakthroughs in several subjects, such as incomplete market, contract theory, and the theory of the firm. In addition to numerous articles in leading scientific journals, he also published a book as well as articles in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

"Entrepreneurship and Incentives "

Guest Speaker: Professor James Mirrlees (1996 Nobel Prize in Economics), Chinese University of Hong Kong and Cambridge University

Date: 29th October 2007

Professor James Mirrlees studied mathematics at the University of Edinburgh (M.A., 1957) and Economics at Trinity College, Cambridge (Ph.D., 1963). In 1963 he began teaching at the Cambridge as Assistant Lecturer and Lecturer. In 1968 he taught at the Oxford as Professor, and he moved back to the Cambridge in 1995. Currently he is Professor Emeritus at Cambridge, and Distinguished Professor-at-large at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Master-Designate of the Morningside College of the CUHK.

During his time at Oxford he published path-breaking economic theories centered on economic incentives under asymmetric information, which have vast influences on economics, finance, management and political science. The methodology has since become the standard in economics. Mirrlees was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize for Economics together with Vickrey ¡§for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information.¡¨

"New Directions in Science: The Search for Fractional Charge Particles"

Guest Speaker: Professor Martin Perl (1995 Nobel Prize in Physics), Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University

Date: 26th October 2007

Professor Martin Perl started his career as a chemical engineer at the General Electric Co. in 1948¡V50. He completed his Ph.D. in physics at Columbia University in 1955. He taught at the University of Michigan in 1955¡V63 before joining Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 40 years

His life¡¦s work was the study of elementary particles, and it was his work in the 1970s, using the Stanford Linear Accelerator, that led to his detection of the tau lepton ¡V a short-lived, heavyweight cousin of the electron and one of the fundamental building blocks of matter. His discovery lends support to the ¡¥Big Bang¡¦ theory of creation. For this work he shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics. He has also worked on the applications of optics and electronics, and is known as an environmentalist and long-standing opponent of nuclear weapons.

IAS¡§Frontiers in Neuroscience¡¨ Seminar Series

"The Life and Death of Brain Circuits"

Guest Speaker: Professor William C. Mobley, Professor, Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences Director, Neuroscience Institute, Stanford University

Date: 18th August 2007

Professor Mobley received his medical degree and doctorate in neuroscience from Stanford University. In 1985, he joined the faculty of UC San Diego School of Medicine where he rose to the rank of professor of neurology, pediatrics and the neuroscience program and served as the director of child neurology. In 1991, he was named Derek Denny Brown Scholar of the American Neurological Association. Since 1997, he has been the Chair of the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University.

Professor Mobley¡¦s laboratory studies the signaling biology of neurotrophic factors in the normal brain and in animal models of neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer¡¦s disease and Down syndrome. He is the recipient of both the Zenith Award and the Temple Award from the Alzheimer¡¦s Association and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

"The Sato-Tate Conjecture"

"Modularity Lifting Theorems"
Date: 14th September 2007, Lectures by Prof Richard Taylor

"Geometry and String Theory: The Langlands Programme"

"Questions about Quantum Theory: Advanced and Retarded Differential Equations"

Date: 13th September 2007, Lectures by Sir Michael Atiyah

"Particles?"Geometry and Quantum Field Theory: Vector Bundles on Riemann Surfaces"

Date: 7th September 2007, Lectures by Sir Michael Atiyah

"Geometry and Quantum Mechanics: Points and Particles

Date: 6th September 2007, Lectures by Sir Michael Atiyah

Guest Speaker: Sir Michael Atiyah, University of Edinburgh, winner of Abel Prize and Fields Medal

Professor Richard Taylor, Harvard University, winner of Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences

Sir Michael Atiyah is an Honorary Professor at Edinburgh University. He was previously a professor at Oxford and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In the 1990's, he was Master of Trinity Cambridge, Director of the Isaac Newton Institute and President of the Royal Society. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 and the Abel Prize in 2004. He is a foreign member of around 20 national academies and has over 30 honorary degrees. In 2005 he became President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is a Visiting Member of the Institute for Advanced Study at HKUST.

Prof Richard Taylor is currently the Herchel Smith Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University, a post he has held since 2002. Born in England, he received his BA from Cambridge University in 1984 and his PhD from Princeton University 4 years later. He taught previously at Cambridge University and Oxford University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. He won the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences with Prof Robert Langlands of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for initiating and developing a grand unifying vision of mathematics that connects prime numbers with symmetry.

"Will a New Milli-Volt Switch Replace the Transistor?"

Guest Speaker: Professor Eli Yablonovitch, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley

Date: 14th August 2007

Known as the ¡§father of photonic crystals¡¨, Professor Eli Yablonovitch¡¦s pioneering discoveries in photonics have led to advances in communication and other technologies. Since graduating with a PhD in applied physics from Harvard University in 1972, he has worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Exxon and Bell Communications Research, where he began his work in photonic crystals. He also taught at Harvard and UCLA, and has recently joined UC Berkeley. In 2003, he was elected member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences.

In this lecture, Professor Yablonovitch will present some of the technical options for a new low-voltage switch to replace transistors. With miniaturization, the energy efficiency of information processing steadily improves. However, communication, especially over short distances, bucks this trend. It is caused by the difference in voltage scale between the wires and the transistor switches. A new milli-Volt switch will be a better match to the wires.

"The Future of Physics"

Guest Speaker: Professor David Gross (2004 Nobel Prize in Physics)

Date: 13th August 2007

Professor David Gross won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004 for the discovery of asymptotic freedom, which focuses on understanding the strong interactions that bind quarks and nuclear matter to string theory. After receiving his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1966, he was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University and was affiliated with Princeton University for 27 years. He joined UC Santa Barbara in 1996 and is now the director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. A member of the US National Academy of Sciences, he is the recipient of the J. J. Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society in 1986, and the Dirac Medal in 1988. In 2004, he received France¡¦s highest scientific honor, the Grande M?daille D¡¦or, for his contributions to the understanding of fundamental physical reality.

In this talk, Professor Gross will discuss 25 questions that might guide physics over the next 25 years. The questions range from cosmology (What is the origin of the Universe?) to BioPhysics (What is the nature of Consciousness?).

"Material Discovery by Design"

Guest Speaker: Professor Avelino Corma, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain

Date: 4th August 2007

Professor Avelino Corma was born in Monc?far, Spain. He has been the director of the Instituto de Tecnologia Qu?mica (UPV-CSIC) at the Polytechnic University of Valencia since 1990. His current research field is structured nanomaterials and molecular sieves as catalysts, covering aspects of synthesis, characterization, and reactivity in acid-base and redox catalysis. He has written about 700 articles on these subjects in international journals, three books, and a number of reviews and book chapters. He is co-author of more than 90 patents; seven of them have been commercialized. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Dupont Award on New Materials, the Ciapetta and Houdry Awards from the ACS, the F. Gault Award of the European Catalysis Society, D.A. Breck Award of the IZA, the Spain National Award on Science and Technology, the Alwin Mittasch Prize of Dechema, the Award of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry, the Award of the French Society of Chemistry. He was invested ¡§Doctor Honoris Causa¡¨ by Ultrecht University.

"Neurocorrelates of Reading Chinese Words in Texts without Word Boundaries:Evidence from the Educated Eyes to the Educated Brain"

Guest Speaker: Professor Ovid J. L. Tzeng,

Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica

Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University

Date: 6th June 2007

About the speaker:

Professor Ovid J. L. Tzeng is a distinguished psychologist recognized for his work in cognitive neuropsychology and particularly for his extensive analysis of cognition and memory system. His Ph.D. dissertation received the Creative Talent Award by the American Institutes for Research in 1972. During his tenure at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), he created a research center for studies in speech recording process during reading, human information processing, bilingual speech perception, orthography and reading behaviors of dyslexics, and Chinese aphasia. He is the leading pioneer in the field of Cognitive Neuroscientific Studies of Chinese Language, and the author of over 100 scientific papers, including three influential papers published in Nature between 1976 and 1979 on the cognitive neuropsychology of Chinese language processing.

Professor Tzeng has had a distinguished professional career that includes Dean of the College of Social Sciences at the National Chung Cheng University, President of the National Yang-Ming University, Minister of Education, and Vice President of the Academia Sinica.

Abstract:

To assess the nature of the brain plasticity, I will discuss insight gained from experiments on learning to read Chinese texts. In particular, the concept of ¡§wordness¡¨ in reading Chinese texts is explored using the data obtained from tracking the eye movements during reading and also from brain images of the so-called ¡§visual word form area¡¨ during character identification. Comparative neuroimages of literate brains across different writing systems would be important for our understanding of how an "educated" brain is organized neurologically to meet the challenges imposed by various specific linguistic contexts.

Brain images suggest that words are basic cognitive units for reading non-alphabetic texts at both the neurophysiological and the cortical levels. There is much to be learned about the educational processes within the developing brain. Reading as a secondary linguistic activity offers an enlightening window for us to take a look inside the brain.

Organized by Institute for Advanced Study and Center for Economic Development

Distinguished Lecture

"Openness, Technology Capital, and Development"

Guest Speaker: Professor Edward C. Prescott,

Arizona State University and Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Nobel Laureate in Economics

Date: 5th June 2007

About the speaker:

After a long and distinguished career at the University of Minnesota, Professor Edward Prescott is now the W. P. Carey Chair of Economics at Arizona State University. He studied at Swarthmore College (B.A., 1962), Case Western Reserve University (M.S., 1963), and Carnegie Mellon University (Ph.D., 1967), where he later taught and advised Finn E. Kydland on his doctorate. Working with Kydland, he demonstrated how a declared commitment to a low inflation rate by policy makers might create expectations of low inflation and unemployment rates. The two men also established the microeconomic foundation for business cycle analyses, demonstrating that technology changes or supply shocks, such as oil price hikes, could be reflected in investment and relative price movements and thereby create short-term fluctuations around the long-term economic growth path. In 2004, Prescott shared the Nobel Prize for Economics with Kydland.

Abstract:

A framework is developed with what we call technology capital. A country is a measure of locations. Absent policy constraints, a firm owning a unit of technology capital can produce the composite output good using the unit of technology capital at as many locations as it chooses. But it can operate only one operation at a given location, so the number of locations is what constrains the number of units it operates using this unit of technology capital. If it has two units of technology capital, it can operate twice as many operations at every location. Professor Prescott will talk about how aggregation is carried out and how the aggregate production functions for the countries are derived. The framework interacts well with the national accounts in the same way as does the neoclassical growth model. It also interacts well with the international accounts. There are constant returns to scale, and therefore no monopoly rents. Yet there are gains to being economically integrated. In the framework, a country¡¦s openness is measured by the effect of its policies on the productivity of foreign operations. The analysis indicates that there are large gains to this openness.

Organized by Institute for Advanced Study at HKUST

Distinguished Lecture

"University Research and Connection to Biotechnology"

Guest Speaker: Prof Paul Schimmel, The Scripps Research Institute

Date: 2nd May 2007

Biotechnology came out of university-based curiosity-driven research. As a result of the success of the industry, strong support has developed for the idea that basic research produces great public benefit. Biotechnology developed out of the idea that natural, human proteins could be broadly used for various diseases, and that these proteins could be produced by recombinant methods in the laboratory. The success of some of the early applications gave enormous encouragement for future developments, including the therapeutic applications of monoclonal antibodies. Biotechnology now includes genomics, genetic profiling, and applications of carbohydrate (sugar)- and RNA-based medicines. Even though biotechnology is a relatively young field, some of the successful companies have become more financially valuable than much older, established pharmaceutical companies. As a consequence, private resources steadily flow to support the development of new therapeutics that come out of biotechnology. Concurrently, university-based research continues to make new discoveries that are the basis for new therapeutics centered on proteins, RNA, and carbohydrates. Already, biotechnology has become a bridge between the United States and Asia. This bridge will expand greatly in the next decades.

Distinguished Lecture:

Topic: Why Our Proteins Have To Die So We Shall Live

Guest Speaker: Professor Aaron Ciechanover, Technion ¡V Israel Institute of Technology, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry

Date: 10 April 2007

Professor Ciechanover won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2004 for his contributions to the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. The complex cascade of the ubiquitin pathway revolutionizes the field of research for life scientists. It is clear now that degradation of cellular proteins is a highly complex, temporally controlled, and tightly regulated process that plays major roles in a variety of basic pathways during cell life and death, and in health and disease.

Panel Discussion:

Topic: The Research University in the 21st Century

Professor Aaron Ciechanover, Technion ¡V Israel Institute of Technology, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry

Professor Da-Hsuan Feng, University of Texas at Dallas

Professor Roland Chin, HKUST

Professor Paul Chu, HKUST

Date: 10 April 2007

A Story of Ether – Are We Living in a Noodle Soup?

Guest Speaker: Professor Xiao-Gang Wen, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Date: 6 January 2007

Prof Xiao-Gang Wen from MIT gives a general knowledge lecture on the story of light. He explains how photons may evolve from the universe, and light as a fluctuation of strings that come from the collective string-like motions in space.

Quantum Spin Liquid: From Drought to Deluge

Professor Patrick A. Lee, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Winner of 2005 Dirac Medal

Date: 8 January 2007

Dirac Medalist Prof Patrick Lee from MIT visited HKUST in January 2007 and shares his research insights on quantum spin liquid and and how the phenomenon of superconductivity is related to a mathematical structure inherited in our universe.

Conductivity, Superconductivity and the Quantum World

Professor Patrick A. Lee, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Winner of 2005 Dirac Medal

Date: 10 January 2007

Dirac Medalist Prof Patrick Lee from MIT visited HKUST in January 2007 and shares his research insights on quantum spin liquid and and how the phenomenon of superconductivity is related to a mathematical structure inherited in our universe.

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Date: 23 September 2006

Minister Shucheng Wang visits Hong Kong and talks about how a water-saving society helps establish socio-economic sustainability and solve the shortage of water resources in China.