ScienceWhys: Questions at the Confluence of Science and Ethics

Learn more about how kids on the autism spectrum use technology and social media. Lisa Heldke, Director of the Nobel Conference and Professor of Philosophy at Gustavus interviews Meryl Alper, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, Northeastern University. ScienceWhys is the podcast of the Nobel Conference. Listen to Dr. Alper’s lecture and participation in panel discussion at the 2022 Nobel...

Lisa Heldke, Director of the Nobel Conference and Professor of Philosophy at Gustavus

Kate Knutson and Delaney Bluhm discuss Rhema Vaithianathan in this miniature podcast.

Wendy Chun, Canada 150 Research Chair Leader, the Digital Democracies Institute Simon Fraser University.

In anticipation of Nobel Conference 2021, Lisa interviews two conference chairs: Tom & Karl.

Talithia Williams, Professor of Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College.

First of the mini podcasts, Lisa Heldke and Jillian Downey converse about Talithia Williams in anticipation of her upcoming podcast on 9/23/21

Rhema Vaithianathan, Professor of Health Economics Director, Centre for Social Data Analytics Auckland University of Technology.

Francesca Dominici,Clarence James Gamble Professor of Biostatistics, Population and Data Science Co-Director, the Data Science Initiative Harvard University.

Cynthia Rudin, Professor of Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Statistical Science Director, Prediction Analysis Lab Duke University

Lisa Heldke, Director of the Nobel Conference and Professor of Philosophy at Gustavus.

Kathleen Dean Moore, public philosopher and environmental thought-leader.

Gabi Hegerl, Professor of Climate Systems Science, University of Edinburgh.

Siila Watt-Cloutier, Inuit advocate for environment, culture and human rights.

Mike Hulme, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Cambridge and Fellow in Geography at Pembroke College.

Paul Mayewski,  director and professor of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, has done climate research at all three “poles”--the North Pole, the South Pole, and Everest. He discusses the transformation of climate science during his career, and his work to gather evidence for the possibility for the climate to change abruptly. Toward the end of the podcast, Paul mentions...

Suzanne Simard, a Professor in the Department of Forest and Conservation Science, describes her upbringing in the forests of British Columbia, and discusses her work as the leader of the Mother Tree Project, a multi-year project to understand how to support forests in a way that will protect biodiversity, promote carbon sequestration, and encourage regeneration.

Rattan Lal, Distinguished University Professor of Soil Science and the Director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University, describes the path by which he came to understand the power of soil to sequester carbon, and explains why he understands soil as the foundation of all life.

Bissan Al-Lazikani, head of data science, computational biology and chemogenomics at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, explains how she and her colleagues developed the CanSAR “knowledgebase”--a database that puts together myriad types of data from anonymous cancer patient records, in order to improve the odds of successfully discovering new cancer drugs.

Chanita Hughes-Halbert, Associate Dean for Assessment and Evaluation and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Suzanne Chambers, Dean of the Faculty of Health, University of Sydney, discusses her indirect path to becoming a clinical psychologist studying the impact of prostate cancer on men and their families, and the book she has written for men diagnosed with prostate cancer, Facing the Tiger.

James Thomas, Executive Vice President, Global Head of Biotherapeutics, President of U.S. Operations for Just-Evotec Biologics, explains how the cost of biologically derived drugs has been reduced during the first thirty years of their development, and talks about what it will take to bring those costs down another order of magnitude.

Carl June, Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the Perelman School of Medicine, and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania.

Kathryn Schmitz, Professor of Public Health Sciences, and Behavioral Research Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the Penn State Cancer Institute, reflects on the growing body of evidence that supports the use of exercise as medicine in the treatment of cancer...and the reluctance of clinicians to prescribe exercise for their patients with cancer.

Charles Sawyers, chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, talks about his path to becoming a biomedical researcher, his role in the development of Glevec, the first molecularly targeted cancer therapy, and Project GENIE, the cancer research database he launched.