Speakers

The following speakers gave presentations at the Royal Society’s discussion meetings in 2010. Click on the title of a talk to listen to that speaker (mp3 format).

Ageing process 

'The new science of ageing' was held on 10-11 May 2010.

• Professor Andrzej Bartke: Single gene mutations and mammalian ageing
• Professor Nir Barzilai: Interfering with ageing to treat ageing-related disease
• Professor Maria A Blasco: Ageing as a risk factor for cancer
• Professor Andrew Dillin: Lifespan-extension and ageing-related disease
• Professor William Evans: Drug Discovery and Development for Elderly People: Opportunities and Challenges
• Dr David Gems: Treating ageing and ethics
• Professor Cynthia Kenyon: Genes and Cells that Can Extend the Lifespan of C. Elegans
• Professor Brian Kennedy: Evolutionarily conserved mechanisms of ageing
• Professor Stuart Kim: Genomics and Systems Physiology of Lifespan-Extension
• Professor Tom Kirkwood: Systems biology of ageing and longevity
• Professor Janet Lord: Future directions for the new science of ageing
• Professor Thomas Nyström: Damage segregation and cellular rejuvenation
• Professor Thomas Rando: Ageing and stem cell dysfunction in tissue repair
• Professor Eline Slagboom: Genomics of human ageing
• Professor Janet Thornton FRS: Bioinformatics and Lifespan-Extension
• Professor Dominic Withers: Mammalian models of extended healthy lifespan

Biological diversity 

'Biological diversity in a changing world' was held on 27-28 October 2010.

• Professor Mike Benton: The origins of modern biodiversity on land
• Professor Anne Chao: Phylogenetic dviersity measures based on Hill numbers
• Professor Steven Chown: Temporal changes in transformed landscapes: a southern system perspective
• Professor Andrew Clarke: Biological diversity at high latitudes: speciation and extinction in an extreme environment
• Dr Ben Collen: Population and range dynamics: implications for conservation planning
• Dr Maria Dornelas: Disturbance and change in biodiversity
• Professor Nicholas Gotelli: Measuring temporal change in community structure
• Professor Jeremy Jackson: The future of the oceans past
• Dr Kathleen Lyons: Ecological correlates of range shifts of late Pleistocene mammals
• Professor Brian McGill: Bird populations and communities through time in a changing environment
• Dr Aaron MacNeil: Transitional states in marine fisheries: adapting to cope with predicted global change
• Professor Anne Magurran: Changes in the structure of ecological communities through time
• Dr Rebecca Morris: Anthropogenic impacts on tropical forest biodiversity

Cognition and computation 

'Cognition, computation and consciousness' was held on 20-21 September 2010.

• Professor Ned Block: Is consciousness really explained?
• Professor Nicky Clayton FRS: Is human cognition special?
• Professor Michael Gazzaniga: A perspective on the problem of consciousness
• Professor Patrick Haggard : What is an intention?
• Professor Nancy Kanwisher: Functional specificity in the human brain
• Professor Henry Markram: The computational machinery of the cortex
• Sir Paul Mellars: The evolution of human culture
• Professor Richard Morris CBE FRS: The mechanisms of memory
• Professor Luiz Pessoa: Emotion and cognition
• Professor Robert Plomin: The genetic basis of cognition
• Professor Pasko Rakic: Is the human brain special?
• Professor Michael Shadlen: How does the brain make decisions?

Cultural evolution 

'Culture evolves' was held on 28-30 June 2010.

• Dr Mark Collard: A reassessment of the impact of risk on hunter-gatherer toolkit diversity and complexity
• Professor Gergely Csibra: Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation
• Professor Francesco d’Errico: Evolution, revolution or saltation scenario for the emergence of modern cultures?
• Professor Ignacio de la Torre: On the origins of early stone tool technologies
• Professor Luc-Alain Giraldeau: The costs and benefits of social information use: an appraisal of current experimental evidence
• Professor Naama Goren-Inbar: Cultural and cognitive aspects of the million-year-long Acheulian industry
• Professor Russell Gray: Language evolution and human history: what a difference a date makes
• Professor Paul Harris FBA: Young children’s selective trust in informants
• Dr Joe Henrich: On the nature of cultural transmission networks
• Dr Marta Mirazon Lahr: The evolution of human cultural diversity
• Professor Kevin Laland: From fish to fashion: experimental and theoretical insights into the evolution of culture
• Dr Derek Lyons: Overimitation and the transmission of artefact culture
• Professor Ruth Mace FBA: Cultural evolution in socio-political institutions
• Professor Mark Pagel: Culture evolves: natural selection and word evolution
• Professor Susan Perry: Social traditions in wild white-faced capuchin monkeys, Cebus capucinus
• Dr Simon Reader: Social learning co-evolves with primate brain enlargement and general intelligence
• Dr Luke Rendell: The evolution of cultural transmission rules: insights from a social learning strategies tournament
• Professor Stephen Shennan FBA: Descent with modification and the archaeological record: micro-scale processes and macro-scale outcomes
• Professor Tore Slagsvold: The role of cultural transmission in shaping a species’ ecological niche: cross-fostering experiments with titmice
• Dr Dietrich Stout: Stone tool-making and the evolution of human culture and cognition
• Dr Alex Thornton: Cultural transmission and the development of individual and group behaviour in mammal societies
• Professor Carel van Schaik: Orangutan culture and its cognitive consequences
• Professor Andrew Whiten FBA: The scope of culture in chimpanzees, humans and their last common ancestor

Extra-terrestrial life 

'The detection of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society' was held on 25-26 January 2010.

• Professor Iván Almár: Discovery of extraterrestrial life: assessment by scales of its importance and associated risks
• Professor Baruch S Blumberg: Astrobiology, space, and a future age of discovery
• Professor Charles S Cockell: Life in the lithosphere and the prospects for life elsewhere
• Professor Simon Conway Morris FRS: Predicting what extra-terrestrial life will be like… and preparing for the worst
• Dr Paul Davies: Searching for a shadow biosphere on Earth as a test of the 'cosmic imperative'
• Professor Viscount Christian de Duve ForMemRS: Life as a cosmic imperative?
• Dr Kathryn Denning: Is life what we make of it?
• Dr Frank Drake: The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI)
• Professor Pascale Ehrenfreund: The evolution of organic matter in space
• Dr Malcolm Fridlund: Extraterrestrial life in ESA's cosmic vision and beyond
• Professor Albert A Harrison: Fear, pandemonium, equanimity, and delight: human responses to extraterrestrial life
• Professor Michel Mayor: Extra-solar planets: the quest for Earth twins
• Dr Mazlan Othman: Dr Mazlan Othman, UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, Austria
• Professor Ted Peters: The implications of the discovery of extraterrestrial life for religion and theology

Geoengineering 

'Geoengineering - taking control of our planet's climate' was held on 08-09 November 2010.

• Professor Chris Freeman: Terrestrial carbon capture: A peatland case study
• Professor David Keith: CO2 capture from the air
• Dr Tim Kruger: An overview of proposed enhanced weathering methods
• Professor John Latham: Increasing cloud albedo
• Dr Margaret Leinen: Geoengineering: preparations and options for governance
• Professor Damon Matthews: Cumulative carbon as a policy framework for avoiding dangerous climate impacts
• Professor John Mitchell OBE FRS: "Dangerous" climate change and geoengineering
• Professor Nicholas Pidgeon: Public perception of geoengineering - knowledge, risk and acceptability
• Sir Jonathon Porritt CBE: Geo-governance: assuring the future
• Professor John Shepherd CBE FRS: Geoengineering the climate: an overview and update
• Dr Joy Singarayer: Cooling with crops
• Dr Carol Turley: Ocean acidification: a powerful argument to reduce future CO2 emissions
• Dr Naomi Vaughan: Interaction between geoengineering and emissions mitigation
• Professor Andrew Watson FRS: The runaway greenhouse: the last great geoengineering challenge
• Dr Matthew Watson: Solar radiation management through stratospheric particle injection
• Professor Robert Watson: Political dimension and perspectives

Global sustainability 

'The sustainable planet: opportunities and challenges for science, technology and society' was held on 12-14 July 2010.

• Lynda Armstrong OBE: Towards a Sustainable Energy Future: Realities and Opportunities
• Professor Anthony Costello: Managing the health effect of climate change
• Professor Matthew Davidson: Sustainable chemical technologies
• Professor Robert Edwards: Plants: A biofactory for a sustainable future?
• Dr Jackie Hunter: New drugs for new diseases?
• Professor Allan Jones: Low carbon options for the future provision of power
• Professor Jonathan Jones FRS: Why GM crops
• Professor Stuart Lane: Water: Too much, too little and the problem of prediction
• Professor David Newbery FBA: Economic impacts of climate change and strategic resource shortages
• Professor Daniel Nocera: Personalised energy for 1 (x6 billion)
• Professor Laurie Peter: Towards sustainable photovoltaics: The search for new materials?
• Dr Vicky Pope: The reality of climate change: Evidence and myths
• Dr David Satterthwaite: The economics of strategic resource shortages and climate change
• Professor Sir Ian Wilmut OBE FRS: Ethical issues of scientific intervention
• Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub KBE FRS.: Disease appearance and evolution against a background of climate change and reduced resources

Greenhouse gases 

'Greenhouse gases in the Earth system: setting the agenda to 2030' was held on 22-23 February 2010

• Dr John Ashton: The politics of the low carbon transition
• Professor Philippe Ciais: Attributing the increase of atmospheric CO2 to historical emitters and absorbers         
• Professor Peter Cox: Highly contrasting effects of different climate forcing agents on terrestrial ecosystem services
• Dr Ed Dlugokencky: Global atmospheric methane in 2010: budget, changes, and dangers
• Professor Nicolas Gruber: Warming up, getting sour, losing breath: ocean biogeochemistry under change 
• Professor Corinne Le Quere: Constraints on annual emissions and sinks of carbon dioxide
• Professor Ingeborg Levin: Greenhouse gases emission reductions in Europe until 2020 by more than 20% - reality or fiction?
• Professor Marina Levy: Sources, sinks, and distribution of sea-surface pCO2: role and magnitude of sub-mesoscale processes
• Professor David MacKay FRS: The scale of the decarbonization challenge
• Dr Alistair Manning: The challenge of estimating regional emissions from observations
• Dr Andrew Manning: What have we learned from carbon isotopes and O2/N2? 
• Professor Martin Manning: The growing priority for understanding greenhouse gases in a policy perspective
• Professor Justus Notholt: Ground-based total column measurements of greenhouse gases using the solar absorption spectrometry
• Dr Peter Rayner: Reducing uncertainties in future terrestrial carbon sinks: an approach using process models and data assimilation
• Sir Crispin Tickell: The equities of measurement
• Professor Andrew Watson FRS: Monitoring and interpreting the ocean uptake of atmospheric CO2
• Professor Ray Weiss: Quantifying greenhouse gas emissions from atmospheric measurements: a critical reality check for climate legislation
• Professor Steven Wofsy: The critical role of fine grained measurements in determining transport, sources and sinks of climatically important atmospheric species
• Dr Eric Wolff: Greenhouse gases in the Earth system: a palaeoclimate perspective

New vaccines 

'New vaccines for global health' was held on 15-16 November 2010.

• Professor Shizuo Akira: Innate immunity and adjuvants
• Dr Martin Bachmann: Vaccination against chronic diseases
• Dr Rana Hajjeh: Introducing new vaccines: challenges of decision making and lessons learned from the recent Hib vaccine introduction experience
• Professor Adrian Hill: Vaccines against malaria parasites
• Professor Keith Klugman: Contribution of vaccines to our understanding pneumococcal disease
• Professor Margaret Liu: DNA vaccines
• Dr Julian Lob-Levyt: The contribution of GAVI to global vaccination
• Dr Gary Nabel: Progress in the rational design of an AIDS vaccine
• Sir Gustav Nossal FRS: Vaccines and future global health needs
• Professor Albert Osterhaus: Influenza vaccines: what and when?
• Professor David Paton: Foot and mouth disease and other livestock vaccines
• Dr Rino Rappuoli: Reverse vaccinology and global health

Stem cell biology 

'2010: what next for stem cell biology?' was held on 18-19 October 2010.

• Dr Ian Chambers: Molecular mechanisms underpinning pluripotency
• Dr George Daley: Directing and redirecting cell fates
• Dr Shen Ding: A chemical approach to controlling cell fate
• Dr Amanda Fisher: Using heterokaryons to understand pluripotency and reprogramming
• Dr Petra Hajkova: Epigenetic reprogramming in mouse development - new mechanistic insights
• Dr Sui Huang: Systems biology of multipotency and cell fate decisions - from Waddington's landscape to gene networks and noise
• Dr Huck Hui Ng: Transcriptional regulatory networks in pluripotent cells
• Dr Doug Melton: Directed differentiation: making new cells for patients
• Dr Catherine Prescott: The business of exploiting iPS cells
• Dr Jose Silva: Dissecting the role of signalling inhibition during the induction of pluripotency
• Dr Deepak Srivastava: Direct reprogramming of Fibroblasts into functional cardiomyocytes
• Dr Lorenz Studer: Use of iPS cells in studies of family dysautonomia
• Dr Craig Taylor: The therapeutic potential of iPS cells and stem cell banking; treatment for the privileged few or treatment for all?
• Dr Amy Wagers: Stem cells for skeletal muscle repair
• Dr Marius Wernig: Direct conversion of fibroblasts to functional neurons by defined factors

Uncertainty in science 

'Handling uncertainty in science' was held on 22-23 March 2010.

• Professor John D Barrow FRS: Uncertainties in cosmology
• Professor Harvey Brown: Uncertainty and probability in physics, old and new
• Dr Philip Campbell: Communicating scientific uncertainty
• Professor Sally Davies DBE: A governmental perspective on uncertainties in the health sciences
• Mr Mervyn King: Uncertainty in macroeconomic policy making: art or science?
• Lord Krebs: Risk and regulation
• Rt Hon. Lord Smith of Finsbury, PC: Implications of uncertainty for Government
• Lord May of Oxford OM AC FRS: Science as organised scepticism
• Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS: Uncertainties of quantum mechanics – faith or fantasy?
• Dr Nina M Skorupska: Making commercial decisions in the light of incertain scientific advice
• Professor Julia Slingo: Uncertainty in weather and climate prediction
• Professor Leonard Smith: Uncertainty, ambiguity and risk in forming climate policy
• Professor David Spiegelhalter FRS: Quantifying uncertainty
• Professor Ian Stewart FRS: Sources of uncertainty in deterministic dynamics
• Professor Peter Webster: Uncertainties in predicting extremes of weather and climate

Web science 

'Web science: A new frontier' was held on 27-28 September 2010 (video recordings are also available).

• Professor Albert-Laszlo Barabasi: The structure of the web
• Sir Tim Berners-Lee OM, KBE, FRS: Future hopes for the web
• Professor Manuel Castells FBA: Social networks in the internet: what social research knows about it
• Dr Jennifer Chayes: The mathematics of web science: structure, dynamics and incentives
• Professor Noshir Contractor: Developing web science to understand and enable 21st century multidimensional networks
• Professor Ramesh Jain: The event web: towards experiential computing
• Lord Robert May of Oxford OM FRS: Networks and webs in ecosystems and financial systems
• Professor David Karger: Enhancing communication and creativity with structured data on the web
• Dr Anne-Marie Kermarrec: Towards a decentralised and personalised web
• Professor Jon Kleinberg: Understanding social and information networks
• Professor Pierre Levy: The nature of collective intelligence
• Professor Helen Margetts: New models of government via the web
• Professor David Robertson: Programming the social computer: using computational logic to specify webs of interaction
• Professor Luis von Ahn: Augmented intelligence: the web and human computation
• Professor Jonathan Zittrain: Will the web break?