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SCHOLAR 2011 Evening Enrichment"The New Haven Public Schools and Yale University are both institutions dedicated to education and the development of human potential. As neighbors, we have much to offer each other and much we can do together to promote the vitality of the city of New Haven which is our home."
Richard C. Levin President Yale University
Carl ZimmerCarl Zimmer is a popular science writer and blogger who focuses specifically on the study of evolution, parasites, and viruses. He is widely renowned for his lectures, articles, and books. He has frequently appeared on National Public Radio's Fresh Air and hosts a periodic podcast named "Meet the Scientist." He contributes articles to the New York Times, National Geographic, TIME, Scientific American, Science, and many more. Some of his most famous works include Soul Made Flesh, The Tangled Bank, and Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea. Frank RobinsonFrank Robinson has degrees from Leeds, Oxford, and Hong Kong. After Oxford, he worked on the computer thermal analysis network for the space shuttle and then went to Hong Kong to set up an international tutorial college to prepare students for entry to schools in the U.K. and the U.S. In Hong Kong, he also taught physics and math in a high school before entering study for a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics, whi he received in 2000. After Hong Knong, he started a post-doc in Astronomy at Yale, then a post-doc in Atmospheric Physics in the Department of Geology and Geophysics. While at Yale, he has published peer reviewed articles on stellar physics, atmospheric convection and laboratory convection experiments. In Yale College, he runs the Science and QR Tutoring Program, which helps Professors to implement new teaching methods into science courses and helps students develop their QR skills. Laurie SantosLaurie Santos is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She graduated from Harvard in 1997 with a double-major in Psychology and Biology. She then earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard in 2003. In addition to teaching, Dr. Santos performs research that involves aspects of several different fields such as evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. She studies non-human primates, specifically five different species of lemurs, capuchin monkeys, and rhesus macaques. She observes primate behavior in captivity and in the field. Laurie Santos' research explores the similarities and differences between human infants and primates in their ability to perform specific tasks. In observing these differences, the research identifies how evolution of the mind has progressed from primates to humans. It also examines the following questions: what domains of knowledge are unique to the human mind? Given that human infants and non-human primates both lack language, what similarities and differences do we see in the expression of non-linguistic domains of knowledge? Joan SteitzJoan Argetsinger Steitz is a molecular biologist at Yale University who is famous for her discoveries involving RNA, including ground-breaking insights such as that ribosomes interact with mRNA by complementary base pairing and that introns are spliced by snRNPs, small nuclear ribonucleoporteins which occur in eukaryotes (such as yeasts and humans). She received her B.S. in Chemistry from Antioch College, Ohio, in 1963, where she first became interested in molecular biology at Alex Rich's MIT laboratory as an Antioch "coop" intern. Later she attended Harvard's new program in biochemistry and molecular biology. There she was the first female graduate student to join the laboratory of James D. Watson, who first discovered the structure of DNA. She is an accomplished and distinguished biochemist at Yale University and is the wife of Thomas Steitz, the 2009 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry. Jo HandelsmanDr. Jo Handelsman is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University. She received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1984 and joined the UW faculty in 1985. Her research focuses on the genetic and functional diversity of micro-organisms in soil and insect gut communities. She is one of the pioneers of functional metagenomics, an approach to accessing the genetic potential of unculturable bacteria in environmental samples for discovery of novel antibiotics and other microbial products. In addition to her research program, Dr. Handelsman is nationally known for her efforts to improve science education and increase the participation of women and minorities in science at the university level. This year, she was one of 11 individuals selected by President Barack Obama to receive the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.
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