Presidential Lectures

In this lecture, Michael Oppenheimer will describe the physical mechanisms causing observed increases in sea level.

The Bonini laboratory focuses on applying the extraordinary power of a very simple model organism — the fruit fly Drosophila — to the complex problem of human neurodegenerative disease.

Stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM), breaks the diffraction limit on light microscopy by using selective activation of photo-switchable fluorescent probes to temporally separate the spatially overlapping images of individual molecules. This approach has allowed multicolor and 3-D imaging of living cells with nanometer-scale resolution, enabling discoveries of novel sub-cellular structures. In this talk, Prof. Zhuang will discuss her group's development of STORM and its biological applications.

Advanced data generation capabilities require other enhanced abilities — with increasing data size and complexity, the development of more efficient acquisition and analysis methods is essential. In this lecture, Lawrence R. Frank will discuss how this new paradigm of imaging exploration is manifest.

In this lecture, Mark Liberman will describe the origins and development of the ‘Common Task’ method in DARPA’s human language technology program, its broader influence on recent research and development practices, and its lessons for the future.