Caleb Scharf Director of Astrobiology, Columbia University Caleb Scharf’s research career spans cosmology, exoplanetary science, and astrobiology. He currently leads efforts at Columbia University in New York to understand the nature of exoplanets and living environments in the universe. He is also a Global Science Coordinator for the Earth-Life Science Institute’s Origins Network at the Tokyo Institute for Technology and a co-founder of YHouse, Inc. He received his B.Sc. in Physics from Durham University in the UK, and his PhD in Astronomy from the University of Cambridge. His Life, Unbounded blog at Scientific American has been described as one of the “hottest science blogs”, with an annual readership of over 400,000. His popular science book, The Copernicus Complex, was The Times of London’s ‘Science book of the year’, and long-listed for the 2015 PEN/E.O. Wilson award. Together with ‘Gravity’s Engines’, his works have been widely praised and listed as ‘top reads’ by Barnes and Noble, New Scientist, NBC News, and more. He has written for The New York Times, LA Times, Nature, WIRED, The New Yorker, Nautilus, and many other publications. He has also served as guest or consultant for The Discovery Channel, the BBC, PBS, the Science Channel, History Channel, National Geographic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and others. Participant In: Complexity and Emergence Saturday, November 15, 2014 2:30-4:30 pm Past Event Watch the video » Psychobiologist Roger Sperry proposed that, “mind and consciousness are dynamic emergent properties of the living brain in action.” This seemingly simple observation raises a host of questions. How do novel entities arise from self-organizing complex systems? If a system itself shows adaptive, self-organizing properties not attributable to its aggregate micro-potentialities—such that at each new level… read more » Design in Nature Saturday, April 22nd, 2017 at 2:30pm Past Event Watch the video » Though human ingenuity may make various inventions…it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous… – Leonardo da Vinci, The Da Vinci Notebooks, Vol. II, XIV: Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology When we employ the term… read more » Life in the Universe 2:30 pm on Saturday, March 9th, 2019 Past Event Watch the video » With billions of stars and galaxies in the observable universe, the possibility of life elsewhere has intrigued both scientists and philosophers alike. In this roundtable, we will explore the notion of life in the universe and what it might look like elsewhere. See recent news from one of our participants: https://news.yale.edu/2019/02/04/yale-astrophysicists-prediction-comes-pass-20-years-later
Complexity and Emergence Saturday, November 15, 2014 2:30-4:30 pm Past Event Watch the video » Psychobiologist Roger Sperry proposed that, “mind and consciousness are dynamic emergent properties of the living brain in action.” This seemingly simple observation raises a host of questions. How do novel entities arise from self-organizing complex systems? If a system itself shows adaptive, self-organizing properties not attributable to its aggregate micro-potentialities—such that at each new level… read more »
Design in Nature Saturday, April 22nd, 2017 at 2:30pm Past Event Watch the video » Though human ingenuity may make various inventions…it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous… – Leonardo da Vinci, The Da Vinci Notebooks, Vol. II, XIV: Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology When we employ the term… read more »
Life in the Universe 2:30 pm on Saturday, March 9th, 2019 Past Event Watch the video » With billions of stars and galaxies in the observable universe, the possibility of life elsewhere has intrigued both scientists and philosophers alike. In this roundtable, we will explore the notion of life in the universe and what it might look like elsewhere. See recent news from one of our participants: https://news.yale.edu/2019/02/04/yale-astrophysicists-prediction-comes-pass-20-years-later