About the Guest Lecturer
Kim Cobb, Ph.D.
As a climate scientist, Dr. Kim Cobb uses observations of past and
present climate to advance our understanding of future climate change impacts, with
a focus on climate extremes and coastal flooding. She received her B.A. from Yale
University in biology and geology, and her Ph.D. in Oceanography from the Scripps
Institute of Oceanography. Prior to joining Brown in 2022, she served as Director
of the Global Change Program at Georgia Tech, Professor in the School of Earth and
Atmospheric Sciences, and ADVANCE Professor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
In her research, Kim has sailed on oceanographic cruises to the remote central Pacific
and led caving expeditions in the Borneo rainforests. She has received a NSF CAREER
Award, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the Hans Oeschger
Medal, and the ‘Friend of the Planet Award’. She is an elected Fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She served as Lead Author for the IPCC Sixth
Assessment Report, and was appointed by President Biden to the President’s Intelligence
Advisory Board. She currently serves on the Rhode Island Legislative Commission on
Climate Change Impacts and Solutions. As a mother to four, Kim is a strong advocate
for women in science, and champions diversity and inclusion in all that she does.
She is also devoted to the communication of climate change to the public through media
appearances, public speaking, and social media channels, and enjoys frequent exchanges
with policymakers about climate impacts and solutions.
Sylvester James "Jim" Gates, Jr., Ph.D.
Sylvester James “Jim” Gates, Jr., works at the boundary of physics
and mathematics. He is a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland. He
is a University System Regents Professor, the John S. Toll Professor of Physics, and
a College Park Professor. He currently holds the Clark Leadership Chair in Science
and serves as a Professor of Physics with the Physics Department as well as a being
a Professor of Public Policy in the School of Public Policy, both at the University
of Maryland, College Park, MD.
Having contributed to dozens of programs, Professor Gates continues to broadly appear in documentaries. Since 2015 these include “The Big Bang Machine,” “The Great Math Mystery,” “The Mystery of Matter,” “Inside Einstein’s Mind,” “Thru the Wormhole: Do We Live in The Matrix?”, “Secrets of Einstein’s Brain,” and “Inside CERN.” In recent times, he has been called by BBC America to comment upon the discovery of gravitational radiation, and the career of Stephen Hawking. In 2017, working with Frank Blitzer and Stephen Sekula, he co-authored “Reality in the Shadows (Or) What the Heck’s the Higgs?” – a popular level book. In 2006, he completed a DVD series titled Superstring Theory: The DNA of Reality for The Teaching Company composed of 24 half-hour lectures to make the complexities of unification theory accessible to non-physicists.
He is a past president of the National Society of Black Physicists, and is a NSBP Fellow, as well as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Institute of Physics in the UK, and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in South Africa. He also is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. President Obama awarded Professor Gates the National Medal of Science, the highest award given to scientists in the US, with a citation reading, “For his contribution to the mathematics of supersymmetry in particle, field, and string theories and his extraordinary efforts to engage the public on the beauty and wonder of fundamental physics.” In 2013, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and was recently elected to the council of the NAS. Also, in 2013, Professor Gates was awarded the Mendel Medal by Villanova University. During 2014, he was named the Harvard Foundation’s ‘‘Scientist of the Year’’ and in August 2021, he was honored with the Andrew Gemant Award, given by the American Institute of Physics. The award recognized Professor Gates for “instilling a deep and humanistic love of physics in generations of students, being a steadfast ambassador of science policy and the history of physics, and his persistent dedication to communicating the wonders of the field.”
Adam Phillippy, Ph.D.
Dr. Adam Phillippy is a multi-disciplinary scientist who has devoted his career to
reading and understanding genomes. He received his degree in computer science from
鶹Porn in 2002, followed by a PhD from the University of Maryland
in 2010. He is currently a senior investigator at the National Human Genome Research
Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, where he develops computational methods for analyzing
massive genomic datasets. His work has contributed to a wide range of applications,
including forensic investigations, outbreak tracing, plant and animal breeding, biodiversity
preservation, and the diagnosis of rare genetic diseases. He is best known for his
work on completing the human genome from “telomere to telomere” and was named by TIME magazine as one of the most influential people of 2022.