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What are the key areas where science is focused? Science seems on the brink of several mega-revolutions, including biotechnology and genetic engineering, broadband communications and artificial intelligence, a search for a "Theory of Everything," cosmology of the early universe, and nanotechnology, the building of extremely small machines. Our diverse scientists enumerate and evaluate the Big Questions and rank them in order of importance.  

Participants: Ayala, Churchland, Ferris, Koonin, Kuhn, Tyson.

 

	Francisco Ayala was recently profiled in a major story in The New York Times as the "Renaissance Man of Evolutionary Biology." He is professor of biology and philosophy at the University of California at Irvine, where he specializes in evolutionary genetics, using DNA to track the path and flow of evolution. He has published 12 books and 650 articles. He is past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
	Patricia Smith Churchland is professor of philosophy at the University of California at San Diego, where she focuses on the foundations of neuroscience and psychology. She has written extensively on how empirical research in these sciences helps to solve, or to restructure, traditional problems in the philosophy of mind, and to explore the changes in our self-conception that such research may provoke. Books include: Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain; The Computational Brain; and The Mind-Brain Continuum.
	Timothy Ferris is the best-selling author of nine books, including Coming of Age in the Milky Way (winner of the American Institute of Physics Prize), The Mind’s Sky, and The Whole Shebang. He is emeritus professor at the University of California at Berkeley and is a frequent writer in national publications such as The New Yorker and Scientific American, and commentator for National Public Radio and PBS. He serves as a consultant to NASA on long-term space exploration policy.
	Steve Koonin is Vice President and Provost of the California Institute of Technology, considered the world’s leading science university, where he is also professor of theoretical physics. His research interests range from astrophysics to global climate change.
	Neil deGrasse Tyson is Visiting Research Scientist in the department of astrophysics at Princeton University. He is also Director of the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He is the author of several popular books on science, including Just Visiting This Planet and Universe Down to Earth.
	Robert Lawrence Kuhn is the creator and host of the Closer To Truth television series and author of the Closer To Truth book. Trained in brain research (Ph.D. UCLA), he has published more than twenty books, including the Handbook for Creative and Innovative Managers and the seven-volume Library of Investment Banking. He is the president of The Geneva Companies, a leading merger and acquisition firm for private, middle market businesses.
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