Douglas A. Melton, Ph.D., is the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor in the Natural Sciences at Harvard University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is Co- Director of Harvard's Stem Cell Institute and Co- Chair of the FAS/HMS Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. Research in Dr. Melton's laboratory focuses on new treatments for diabetes. His lab studies the genes and cells that make pancreatic tissue during normal development, with the goal of generating human pancreatic cells for transplantation.
Dr. Melton is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine and has received numerous awards for research. Additionally, Dr. Melton has twice been named to Time Magazine's annual list of the world's 100 most influential people for his advocacy of stem cell science. Dr. Melton earned a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Illinois and attended Cambridge University in England as a Marshall Scholar. He earned a B.A. in history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University and remained there for a Ph.D. in molecular biology at Trinity College and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. NCRC 2012 Keynote
Lene Vestergaard Hau, Ph.D, is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics at Harvard. Prior to joining the faculty in 1999, she was a member of scientific staff at Rowland Institute for Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Aarhus, Denmark.
Hau led a team who succeeded in slowing a pulse of light dramatically and ultimately bringing it to a stop. Her formalized training is in theoretical condensed matter physics and she has worked in the fields of experimental and theoretical optical, atomic, and condensed matter physics. Her research has included studies of ultra-cold atoms and superfluid Bose-Einstein condensates, as well as channeling of high-energy electrons and positrons in single crystals with experiments at CERN, Brookhaven, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is a recipient of numerous awards, including the MacArthur Genius Award and the Ledlie Prize, Harvard University's highest faculty award, as well as the Ole Roemer Medal, and the Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award. In 2010, she was appointed National Security Science and Technology Faculty Fellow by the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, and was named "World Dane", thus becoming one of only three Danes ever to have been elected for this honor. NCRC 2012 Keynote
Melissa Franklin, Ph.D., is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics at Harvard University. She is an experimental particle physicist who is working on studies of hadron collisions produced by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory with the Collider Detector Facility (CDF) and the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). She works in a collaboration of over 600 international physicists who discovered the top quark at CDF, and 3000 physicists at ATLAS where she studies particle interactions and symmetries at the highest energies now available worldwide when the accelerator turns on this fall. Professor Franklin, born and raised in Canada, received her B.Sc. from the University of Toronto and her Doctorate from Stanford University. She worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois in Champagne/Urbana and was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard, before joining the Harvard faculty in 1989 and becoming the first female tenured faculty member in the department of physics in 1992. NCRC 2012 Keynote
Cherry A. Murray, Ph.D., is the Dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Physics. She has led some of the nation's most brilliant scientists and engineers as an executive at Bell Laboratories and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory before her appointment as dean of SEAS on July 1, 2009.
Previously, Murray served as principal associate director for science and technology at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., where she lead 3,500 employees in providing core science and technology support for Lawrence Livermore’s major programs. She served as president of the American Physical Society (APS) during 2009.
Murray was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1999, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001, and to the National Academy of Engineering in 2002. She has served on more than 80 national and international scientific advisory committees, governing boards, and National Research Council (NRC) panels, including chairing the Division of Engineering and Physical Science of the NRC, and serving on the visiting committee for Harvard's Department of Physics from 1993 to 2004.
A celebrated experimentalist, Murray is well-known for her scientific accomplishments using light scattering, an experimental technique where photons are fired at a target of interest. Scientists can then gather insights into surface physics and photonic behavior by analyzing the spray of photons in various directions from such collisions. She is also a leader in the study of soft condensed matter and complex fluids, hybrid materials that show properties of different phases of matter. The control of suspensions, foams, and emulsions has application for the development of everything from novel drug delivery systems to "lab-on-a-chip" devices. NCRC 2012 Panelist
Fawwaz Habbal, Ph.D., has served as the Executive Dean for the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) since its establishment in 2007 to present. He is also a Senior Lecturer in Applied Physics.
Prior to Harvard, he held the position as Corporate Vice President, responsible for research and product design at Polaroid Corporation where he served as a Senior Research and Engineering Fellow as well. At Polaroid he was responsible for product delivery of many advanced products including magnetic storage, medical imaging, graphic arts, digital imaging, and consumer film and hardware.
While at Polaroid Corporation, Dr. Habbal invented, planned and integrated product systems: High density computer storage systems (1987); high resolution printers and dry film for CT, MRI and digital x-ray imaging (1990-93); 3600 dots/inch image-setter; "on-press" developable aluminum printing plate (1996); new instant cameras (1996-99); digital cameras (1998 - 2001).
After leaving Polaroid, Dr. Habbal founded two technology-based new business ventures in semiconductor technology. At Harvard University he advises on intellectual property issues, commercialization strategies and the creation of startup ventures. In the course of his industrial career he was an inventor on more than 8 patents.
Dr. Habbal's research interests focus on superconductivity, magnetic materials, silicon nanowires for photon detection and nano-photonics more broadly. He also conducted research in the area of digital imaging and CMOS sensors. As a senior lecturer he has taught courses on nanoscience, microfluidics, bionanotechnology, and MEMS. Dr. Habbal holds a Ph.D. in Experimental Physics. NCRC 2012 Panelist
Robert A. Lue, Ph.D., is Professor of the Practice of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, where he is the director of Life Sciences Education. His research focuses on defining and assessing how large research universities such as Harvard can more effectively foster new generations of scientists as well as science-literate citizens. Undergraduate education in the life sciences at Harvard has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years. Life sciences education now encompasses collaboration between seven departments: Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Human Evolutionary Biology, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Psychology, Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, and Biomedical Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Noteworthy results of this collaboration include a novel, interdisciplinary set of foundation courses and a coordinated cluster of undergraduate concentrations that allows students to develop their interests in coherent areas of inquiry within the life sciences. NCRC 2012 Panelist
