Transcending Global Conflict:
How basic science unifies the world
Camille Crittenden Deputy Director, CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society) Hitoshi Murayama Professor of Physics, UC Berkeley and Director, Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Tokyo) Bernard Sadoulet Professor of Physics, UC Berkeley and Director, UC Institute for Nuclear/Particle Astrophysics and CosmologySutardja Dai Hall, Banatao Auditorium |UC Berkeley October 26, 2015 • 6:30–8:00pm
Free and open to the public
Seating is limited. Admission is first come, first served.
Basic science is common to all humankind and helps unify the world, even among nations in political conflict. “Where do we come from?” and “Why do we exist?” are global themes driving scientific research. Recent examples include collaborations among Israel, Iran and the Palestinian Authority. Join two UC Berkeley scientists who are world leaders in their fields — theoretical particle physicist Hitoshi Murayama and experimental particle astrophysicist Bernard Sadoulet — for a look at how scientific research has brought people from different nations, religions, races, cultures, languages and ideologies to work together toward common goals. Dr. Camille Crittenden, Deputy Director of CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society) and formerly Executive Director of the Human Rights Center at Berkeley Law, will introduce Professors Murayama and Sadoulet and set the context for the discussion.
Camille Crittenden serves as Deputy Director of CITRIS, Director of the CITRIS Connected Communities Initiative, and Executive Director of the CITRIS Social Apps Lab. Prior to coming to CITRIS in 2012, she was Executive Director of the Human Rights Center at Berkeley Law, where she helped to develop its program in human rights, technology, and new media. She has written and spoken widely on these topics, as well as technology applications for civic engagement, government transparency and accountability, and the digital divide. She held previous positions as Assistant Dean for Development with International and Area Studies at UC Berkeley and in development and public relations at University of California Press and San Francisco Opera. She earned an MA and Ph.D. from Duke University. Hitoshi Murayama is a well-known theoretical particle physicist who works broadly, even on astrophysics, cosmology, and condensed matter physics. He has been a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, since 2000, and is also the founding director of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) at the University of Tokyo, since 2007. Born in Japan, lived in Germany for four years and in the US for 21 years, and served on advisory committees around the world, he is a multi-cultural global denizen. In October 2014, he was invited to give a speech at the United Nations headquarters in New York about how science unites people and brings peace. He received the Yukawa Commemoration Prize in Theoretical Physics and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Bernard Sadoulet, a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique (1963) and a “Docteur ès sciences” of Paris-Orsay University (1971), is by training an elementary particle physicist. As such, he had the chance of participating in two prestigious experiments which led to Nobel Prizes: the Mark I experiment at SLAC which discovered the J/ψ, the τ lepton and the charm, and UA1 at CERN which discovered the intermediate vector bosons W and Z. In 1984 he decided to shift his efforts towards particle astrophysics and cosmology. In 1985 he was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and from 1989 to 2001 he was the Director of the Center for Particle Astrophysics, one of the 11 first-generation Science and Technology Centers of the National Science Foundation. He is currently Director of the UC system-wide Institute for Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (INPAC). Focusing on the Search for Dark Matter, his current activities involve three aspects: Development of advanced phonon-mediated detectors, the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment at a deep site, and related phenomenological activities on various aspects of supersymmetric dark matter. He is an Elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.