Urban Social Science Au Naturel

Name: Urban Social Science Au Naturel
Start: 2014-10-08T16:15:00-04:00
End: 2014-10-08T18:45:00-04:00
Location: Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium

Wednesday October 8, 2014

About Presidential Lectures

Presidential Lectures are free public colloquia centered on four main themes: Biology, Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science, and Neuroscience and Autism Science. These curated, high-level scientific talks feature leading scientists and mathematicians and are intended to foster discourse and drive discovery among the broader NYC-area research community. We invite those interested in the topic to join us for this weekly lecture series.

The enormous amount of information that is now available about cities and the people who live in them offers intriguing opportunities for better understanding human behavior. That understanding can be applied to optimize urban policy and operations. Steven Koonin will discuss examples of and prospects for gaining insight into human behavior within the context of work at New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress.

About the Speaker

Steven E. Koonin was appointed founding director of New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress in April 2012. That consortium of academic, corporate and government partners pursues research and educational activities to develop and demonstrate informatics technologies for urban problems in the ‘living laboratory’ of New York City. He previously served as the U.S. Department of Energy’s second Senate-confirmed under secretary for science. As chief scientist at BP, Koonin developed a long-range technology strategy for alternative and renewable energy sources.

Koonin joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1975, was a research fellow at the Niels Bohr Institute from 1976 to 1977, and was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellow from 1977 to 1979. He became professor of theoretical physics at Caltech in 1981 and served as chairman of the faculty from 1989 to 1991. From 1995 to 2004, Koonin was the seventh provost of Caltech.