Presidential Lectures

Katepalli Sreenivasan will describe what is known about the convective phenomena in the sun, using results from basic turbulence modeling, numerical simulations, as well as helioseismology.

The Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, was built to search for and explore habitable environments. In this lecture, John Grotzinger will review Curiosity’s latest discoveries and describe the biological viability of ancient environments on Mars, along with the value of robots in geologic exploration.

Genetic disorders with high penetrance of autism symptoms provide an opportunity to investigate the cellular and circuitry abnormalities underlying autism spectrum disorder. Mustafa Sahin studies the basis of Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC) in cell culture, in animal models and in the clinic and will present an update on translational research in TSC.

In this lecture, Dr. Andrea Ghez will discuss the latest developments in the study of black holes, specifically how the environment around the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is quite different than astronomers expected. She will also describe how studying the orbits of stars at the galactic center could improve our understanding of gravity.

Next-generation sequencing has the power to decode DNA in a matter of hours, but doctors still diagnose infections using methods developed decades ago. This lecture will describe how scientists are using the latest sequencing technology in combination with new, very fast algorithms to sequence a complex mixture of DNA from a sick patient and, in some cases, identify the causative agent of an infection.

Dr. Ruth O’Hara will present on the field’s current understanding of sleep in autism spectrum disorder.