Science Fellows

Kelly Benoit-Bird

Associate Professor, College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University

Kelly Benoit-Bird applies acoustics to the study of ecosystems in the open ocean. She has helped develop several new optical and acoustical instruments and has made fundamental acoustical measurements of species ranging from zooplankton to fish, squid, and marine mammals. Benoit-Bird has been named a MacArthur Fellow, has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and has published in Nature, Marine Biology and the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Through her research into how predators target their prey, Benoit-Bird is creating a new understanding of key ecological processes in the ocean.

 

Flaminia Catteruccia

Associate Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health

Flaminia Catteruccia is a molecular entomologist specializing in the reproductive biology of Anopheles mosquitoes, the only mosquitoes capable of transmitting human malaria. Searching for a more effective way to reduce the incidence of malaria, Catteruccia is exploring how disruptions to the mosquito mating process could cause them not to successfully reproduce. Her work has received funding from the Wellcome Trust and has appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Biotechnology and Malaria Journal. Her focus on the reproductive biology of mosquitoes seeks keys to fighting a disease that still affects hundreds of millions of people around the world.

 

Sriram Kosuri

Postdoctoral Fellow, Wyss Institute and Harvard Medical School

Sriram Kosuri is developing next-generation DNA synthesis technologies for use in bioengineering. Prior to his work at the Wyss Institute, Kosuri was the first employee at Joule Unlimited, a biofuel startup company working to develop fuels from sunlight using engineered microbes; and co-founded OpenWetWare, a website designed to share information in the biological sciences. He has authored several patents and patent applications related to both biofuels and DNA synthesis technologies, and has published in journals such as Nature Biotechnology and Molecular Systems Biology. The potential applications of the engineered biological products Kosuri is working on span realms from medicine to environment to energy and materials.

 

Thaddeus Pace

Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine

Thaddeus Pace explores endocrine and immune system changes in people who suffer from stress-related psychiatric illness or who have had adverse early life experiences. His investigations have highlighted the potential of compassion meditation and other complementary practices to help individuals exposed to trauma, including patients with PTSD and children in state foster care programs. Pace’s work has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and has appeared in Neuroscience, The American Journal of Psychiatry and International Immunopharmacology. His research aims to contribute new approaches to the long-term health and well-being of children and adults in challenging circumstances.

 

David Rand

Assistant Professor, Psychology Department, Yale University

David Rand focuses on the evolution of human behavior, with a particular emphasis on cooperation, generosity and altruism. His approach combines empirical observations from behavioral experiments with predictions generated by evolutionary game theoretic math models and computer simulations. Rand has been named to Wired magazine’s Smart List 2012 of “50 people who will change the world” as well as the AAAS/Science Program for Excellence in Science, and his work has been featured on the front covers of both Nature and Science and reported widely in the media. Rand seeks answers to why people are willing to help others at a cost to themselves, and what can be done to help solve social dilemmas when they arise.

 

Giuseppe Raviola

Director of Mental Health at Partners In Health, Director of the Program in Mental Health and Social Change at Harvard Medical School, and Medical Director of Patient Safety and Quality at Children's Hospital Boston

Giuseppe “Bepi” Raviola works to more fully integrate mental health services into global health care efforts. Through research, clinical practice and training in places ranging from Haiti to Rwanda, Raviola is building teams and bridging disciplines to address this critical and previously neglected issue. His ideas and findings have appeared in The Lancet, the Harvard Review of Psychiatry and the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Raviola’s work on behalf of local mental health team leaders aims to build lasting, community-based systems of mental health care.

 

John Rinn

Assistant Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University and Medical School and Senior Associate Member of the Broad Institute

John Rinn takes an unconventional approach to the way biologists think about the human genome. Focusing on large intervening non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs), his work suggests that so-called “junk genes” may actually play a key regulatory role in cell function. Rinn’s finding have been published in Nature, Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and he has been named to Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10.” By identifying thousands of new RNA genes in the human genome, he is working toward a better understanding of their importance for human health and disease.

 

Leila Takayama

Research Scientist, Willow Garage

Leila Takayama studies how people perceive, understand, feel about and interact with robots. What can robots do? Better yet, what should they do, and how? Takayama has been collaborating with character animators, sound designers, and product designers to work toward making both the appearance and behaviors of robots more human-readable, approachable, and appealing. Her findings have appeared in the International Journal of Design, Neural Networks and IEEE Pervasive Computing. Through her research, Takayama is leading the way toward robots that serve their purposes more effectively and intuitively.

 

Tiffani Williams

Associate Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University

Tiffani Williams explores new ways to use computation in helping to reconstruct the phylogenetic ways that all organisms are connected. A specialist in bioinformatics and high-performance computing, she is working with a multidisciplinary team to build the Open Tree of Life, showing the previously established links among species and providing tools for scientists to update and revise the tree as new data come in. She has been a Radcliffe Institute Fellow, has been funded by the National Science Foundation, and has published in Science, Evolutionary Bioinformatics and the Journal of Computational Biology. By helping identify how species are related to each other, Williams is providing a framework for new understanding in realms such as ecological health, environmental change, and human disease.

 

Benjamin Zaitchik

Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University

Benjamin Zaitchik’s research is directed at understanding, managing, and coping with climatic and hydrologic variability. He looks for new approaches to controlling human influences on climate and water resources at local, regional and global scales, and explores improved forecast systems and methods of risk assessment. His work has received funding from NASA, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and appeared in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and Water Resources Research, among others. Zaitchik is interested in helping provide new insights in such crucial areas as transboundary water management, climate-informed disease early warning systems, and adaptation strategies in subsistence agricultural communities.

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