And the 2012 Kavli Prize Winners are…

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Hurray for Science! The winners of the 2012 prestigious $1 million Kavli Prize were announced live via satellite from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo. The event was simulcast at the Grand Hall of the NYU Global Center as part of the 2012 World Science Festival which runs from May 30-June 3 in New York City. The Festival has brought us this ceremony since 2008.

Every two years the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters awards the Kavli Prize for outstanding research in the “biggest, smallest and most complex fields,” namely Astrophysics, Nanoscience and Neuroscience. The Laureates are selected by international prize committees appointed by the Academy, with committee membership based on recommendations from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the French Academy of Sciences, the Max Planck Society (Germany), the National Academy of Sciences (US) and the Royal Society (UK).

Fred Kavli, a Norwegian-born American who is a physicist, entrepreneur, business leader, innovator and philanthropist is the founder and former CEO of Kavlico Corporation. In 2000 he divested his interest in the company and established the Kavli Foundation. Based in Southern California, the Kavli Foundation is dedicated to the goals of advancing science for the benefit of humanity and promoting increased public understanding and support for scientists and their work. In support of this mission, the Foundation established the Kavli Prize in 2005 in cooperation with the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research.

Opening remarks given by John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology focused on the policy of innovation which President Barack Obama’s administration is fostering. Partnerships between the private and public sector are “spurring on creative solutions to technical challenges” creating a paradigm shift in the domains of intellectual and economic growth, job creation, sustainable energy and food supply and national and homeland security. Holdren gave the example of SpaceX, a privately funded commercial rocket launched into space to accomplish a number of functions such as ferrying supplies to the international space center. It is thought that partnerships such as these between the private and public sector will free up NASA’s time and resources for research.

Holdren, himself a physicist and engineer, spoke about a major push to add challenges and prizes to stimulate innovation. Unlike grant givers, agencies offering prize challenges don’t pay any money until the challenge is completed. These challenges also attract citizen problem solvers who are not among the usual suspects, thereby widening the field of opportunity. For instance, a challenge having to do with radiation in space was solved by a retired radio engineer in New Hampshire. President Obama signed an executive order allowing agencies to use their funds for prizes and challenges and the website challenge.gov was launched to publish a list of problems that need solving.

There is a commitment to making federal data available through data.gov and mobile apps are being developed by third parties to break through the bottlenecks that exist. Blue button initiative medical records, green button initiative for energy data are just a few.

In closing, Holdren spoke of the President’s recognition to “lift our game in STEM education.” STEM or science technology engineering mathematics education is the recipient of a number of new initiatives like Change the Equation (high tech officers) and the Educate to Innovate program where real scientists are sent into classrooms to work with teachers, speak with students, serve as role models, showing the exciting careers available in these fields.

And now to the Prize.

The 2012 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics is awarded to David C. Jewitt (University of California, Los Angeles), Jane X. Luu (MIT), and Michael Brown (California Institute of Technology) “for discovering and characterizing the Kuiper Belt and its largest members, work that led to a major advance in the understanding of our planetary system.” Their research required creative strategies, a great deal of persistence and an open-minded approach to expect the unexpected. Beyond Neptune lies the Kuiper Belt, a disk of more than 70,000 small bodies larger than 100 km in diameter made up of rock and ices, orbiting the sun. One of these bodies, Sedna, takes 10,000 years to complete its orbit around the sun!

The 2012 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience is awarded to Mildred S. Dresselhaus (MIT) “for her specific advances in the study of phonons, electron-phonon interactions and thermal transport in nanostructures.” Because of her pioneering work with carbon and graphene, we have an improved understanding of how energy flows and dissipates on the nanoscale. Just to give you an idea of the scope of all of this–the study and manipulation of matter at a nanostate is about 100,000 times less than the width of a human hair.

The 2012 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience is awarded to Cornelia Isabella Bargmann (the Rockefeller University), Winfried Denk (Max Planck Institute for Medical Research) and Ann Graybiel (MIT) for their use of a wide range of approaches and new technologies to understand how the brain receives information from the environment and processes it to make decisions. Bargmann’s studies of the C. elegans (roundworm) nervous system identified fundamental principles of neural circuit logic which were applied to mammalian primates. She provided the first evidence, in any animal, for the detailed neuronal pathway between a specific sensory receptor protein and behavior. Denk developed the multi-photon microscope which revolutionized high resolution imaging in the living brain. Applying principles of physical law to biology, his invention of serial block-face scanning electron microscopy then revealed a connection between retinal ganglion cells and inter-neurons conveying motion information to the brain. Ann Graybiel’s work with the basal ganglia has led to breakthroughs in treatment of disorders such as schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease and addiction.

What followed was a lively panel moderated by Richard Besser, ABC News’ chief health and medical editor. Angela Belcher, a Materials Scientist and Biological Engineer at MIT, Thomas Jessell, a Neuroscientist and Biochemist and Professor at Columbia University and Claire Max, an Astrophysicist and Professor of Astronomy at UC Santa Cruz shared insights and understanding of the three fields and work of the prize winners furthering an appreciation of the vicissitudes and practical application of this kind of research.

Belcher described nanotechnology as being able to control atoms with applications in energy, environment, medicine. Her focus is on solar energy.

Jessell, alluding to Winston Churchill in his comments on Bargmann’s use of a worm, quipped “Never before in the field of neuroscience has so much been revealed to so many by an organism with so few neurons.” All joking aside, he was quick to point out that the common bond between the three neuroscientists over the last decade was to place a premium on the organization of circuits in the nervous system to understand aspects of neurofunction and links to behavior. Through invention and re-invention and technological innovation with clever combinations of anatomy and biology they were able to overturn conventional understanding in remarkable ways.

A question came in from Twitter: Why is it important to know where we come from? Astrophysicist Max said she felt a sense of humility when realizing that the solar system has been around for billions of years and we’re still discovering things about it. Also, as a steward to the earth, she’d like it to be around for a long time.

In ending, Besser asked the panelists for their opinions on how to address the discrepancy between the great advances in research and the low interest and performance of science, math and technology in education. A call for better communication, in essence heightened public relations, was proposed where prizes such as the Kavli bring recognition of the field and the untiring efforts of individuals who collaborate for a larger purpose in the hopes of accomplishing a big dream. This is how heroes are made and how new scientists are created.

But the last word here goes to Bargmann who was present in New York and able to answer Jessell’s disparaging assessment of her subject as “remedial.” She said:

“First of all, the worms are our partners and our collaborators and the reason that this has become an exciting organism for neuroscience is the fact that you can really try to understand the whole nervous system at once…That you can actually try to understand the complete set of calculations that are taking place on the way from point A to B. That’s something you can attempt to think about when you are thinking about 300 neurons but not when you’re thinking about many billions neurons in our own brain, at least not yet. We can relate function to anatomy to physical reality to the behavior of a whole organism moving vertically to understand all these levels…It opens itself up to us and lets us see what’s going on literally in a sense that it’s transparent…you can see right through it…you can see everything that’s going on in the worm’s brain while it’s thinking.”

For more information on the World Science Festival, go to http://worldsciencefestival.com

Tags: Brain, Education, Learning, Neuroscience, Science

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