Purushottama P. Bilimoria, (Ph.D. Philosophy East & West, La Trobe University), was educated in New Zealand, Australia, India, and has held fellowships at Oxford and Harvard. He has had visiting professorships at Stony Brook, Boston and UC Santa Barbara, and held the visiting chair in India Studies and Contemporary Ethics at UC Berkeley (Fall '95). Bilimoria was Visiting Professor at Emory University (1999-2000), where he was also a Rockefeller Fellow with the Center for the Study of Public Scholarship and a Ford Foundation-funded nominee to work (with Renuka Sharma) on Personal Laws in India for Emory’s Islamic Family Law International Project. He is a Professor of Philosophy at Deakin University and Senior Fellow with the Department of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. He has been a visiting professor at Stony Brook since Fall 2003. His areas of interest include Indian philosophy and ethics, naturalist [Samkhya-Jain] psychology, philosophy of religion, crosscultural issues in ethics, bioethics, science and religion interaction, social thought and culture. His major works have been on theories of testimony and scriptural hermeneutics, Indian ethics and Sanskritic thinking. Other writings extend to Hinduism, Indologism, Gandhian philosophy of moral training, art and nationalism, and diaspora/transnational studies.
R. David Bynum (Ph.D., Cell Biology, Dartmouth 1981) is Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Stony Brook (since 1982). To carry out his work in science education, he has received almost ten million dollars in external funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 1995 he founded LIGASE (Long Island Group Advancing Science Education) and located it in Stony Brook’s Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. LIGASE develops partnerships between Stony Brook, colleges and schools to provide workshops, courses and resources for pre-service and in-service K-12 science teachers; offer inquiry-based science activities for students from elementary through graduate school; and, include all students who wish to learn by making strong efforts to attract underrepresented students. Dr. Bynum has won local, state and national recognition and has received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. He has served on national review panels for NSF and NIH. Prior to academic life, he held systems analysis and management positions in corporate and non-profit organizations.
William C. Chittick is Professor of Religious Studies in the Departments of Asian and Asian-American Studies and Cultural Anthropology, Stony Brook University. He is the author of twenty-five books and one hundred articles addressing various dimensions of Islamic intellectual history. Among his writings more relevant to the issue of the role of trust in science and human cognition are The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-'Arabî's Metaphysics of Imagination (State University of New York Press, 1989), The Heart of Islamic Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2001), “Ibn `Arabî on the Benefit of Knowledge” (Sophia 8/2, 2002), “The Anthropocosmic Vision in Islamic Thought” (God, Life, and the Cosmos: Christian and Islamic Perspectives, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), “Time, Space, and the Objectivity of Ethical Norms” (Islamic Studies 39, 2000), and “On the Teleology of Perception” (Transcendent Philosophy 1, 2000).
Robert P. Crease (Chair, Ph.D. Philosophy, Columbia) is a Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University (SBU), where he will serve as Acting Chair of the Philosophy Department in Spring 2005, and historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He was a Senior Fellow at MIT’s Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology (2002-2003). His books include: The Prism and the Pendulum: The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments in Science; Making Physics: A Biography of Brookhaven National Laboratory 1946-1972; Peace and War: Reflections on a Life at the Frontiers of Science (by Robert Serber with Robert P. Crease); Hermeneutics and the Natural Sciences (ed. Crease); The Play of Nature: Experimentation as Performance; and The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in 20th Century Physics (with Charles C. Mann). He is the translator of American Philosophy of Technology: The Empirical Turn (ed. H. Achterhuis). For several years, Crease organized SBU’s interdisciplinary Science Studies Forum. He has taught ethics and science courses, and has directed “Social Dimensions of Science,” a course in SBU’s Women in Science and Engineering program. For five years he has written “Critical Point,” a monthly column about science and society for Physics World.
Alfred Scharff Goldhaber (Ph.D., Princeton) is Professor in the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics and Stony Brook’s Dept. of Physics and Astronomy. Dr. Goldhaber represents the second of three physics generations in his family. Collaboration with his parents led to what may have been the first mother-son publications in physics. Among his research publications are articles on magnetic monopoles, elementary particles, nuclei, condensed matter, and cosmology. Themes that help to bind these topics together include the principle of gauge invariance, the use of classical limits and the correspondence principle, and the study of long-distance, low-energy constraints on objects that may have quite high-energy internal structure. He is co-author of three review articles, “Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Limits on the Photon Mass,” “Hypothetical Particles” (with Jack Smith), and “High-Energy Collisions of Nuclei,” and an annotated bibliography, Magnetic Monopoles. He enjoys hindsight heuristics, asking why people made discoveries later than they might have; understanding this could aid future discoveries.
David Hanson is Professor of Chemistry at Stony Brook University. He graduated from Dartmouth College and received a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. He did postdoctoral work with Nobel Laureate Rudolf Mössbauer at the Technische Hochschule München and came to Stony Brook in 1969 where he has served as Chair of the Chemistry Department and Chair of Stony Brook’s new Learning Communities Program. He is a dedicated teacher and an active researcher with over 125 publications, has received awards from graduating classes of Chemistry majors for excellence in teaching, and has pioneered studies of electric field effects in molecular spectra, excitons and energy transfer in molecular solids; and the molecular dynamics associated with core-electron excitation and decay in molecules in solids. Most recently his interests have involved the development of new teaching methodologies and technology-based curriculum materials that are based on a research-derived cognitive model of how most students learn chemistry best.
Sr. Margaret Ann Landry, RSHM, (BA Philosophy, Marymount College; MA History, Catholic University of America; Certificate of Theology, Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley) is Chaplain at the Catholic Campus Ministry/Interfaith Center at Stony Brook University. Sr. was the founder of the Faculty Academic Advising and Peer Advising Program at Marymount Manhattan College. She served as Vice President of the National Academic Advising Association, authoring several articles for its journal and serving on its Editorial Board. Sr. Landry served as President of the Sisters’ Council of the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Sr. was also a missionary in Zimbabwe, Africa. During her 17 years at Stony Brook, she has served on several University-wide committees and was Chair of the Student Affairs Development Committee for five years. Her extensive involvement with students includes being an honorary member of the Golden Key International Honor Society, Co-Coordinator of the University Student Ambassador Program, Coordinator of the Peer Ministry Program in Catholic Campus Ministry and advisor for the Oxfam America Committee. In 2003, she received Stony Brook’s Lifetime Achievement Advisor Award, the first person singled out for this accomplishment. In 2004, the award was named in her honor.
Gary Mar is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University. His areas of research include logic, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of religion. The last doctoral student of Alonzo Church, Mar is also co-author of a classic logic textbook with Kalish and Montague, Logic: Techniques of Formal Reasoning (OUP). Mar’s collaborative research with Grim and St. Denis using chaos theory to discover fractal patterns in the semantic paradoxes was discussed in Scientific American and published in The Philosophical Computer (MIT, 1998). Mar’s work in philosophy of religion -- on the modal logical structure of St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument, a reply to Euthyphro’s Dilemma in defense of Divine Command morality, and a refutation of Atheistic Cantorian Arguments -- won him a Pew Evangelical Scholarship (1995). During that fellowship year, he participated in the Society of Christian Philosophers’ China exchange program and became the catalyst for the Charles B. Wang Asian American Center, which opened recently and was financed with the largest donation in the history of the public education system in New York. Mar's teaching awards include the President's and Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Alumni Association’s Outstanding Professor Award, and membership in the Academy of Teacher-Scholars.
Michael Marx (Ph.D. M.I.T. 1974) is Professor of Physics at Stony Brook University and Project Director, KOPIO: Marx is one of the leading experts in the development and implementation of large-scale detectors for high energy and relativistic heavy ion physics. He co-initiated the D0 experiment that found the top quark at Fermilab; conceived and led the EMPACT proposal and then headed the GEM physics group at the ill-fated SSC; and was Deputy Project Director for the PHENIX experiment at the new RHIC facility at BNL. He has served on numerous national and international advisory and review panels, including most recently the NSERC expert panel reviewing the Canadian Atlas effort.
Eduardo Mendieta is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook. He received an MA in Theology from Union Theological Seminary, where he worked with Black Theologian James Cone. His work in the last decade has been on the relationship between liberation theologies and Frankfurt School critical theory. His research has focused on the ways in which theological and religious ideas inform central philosophical ideas and theories in critical theory, and conversely, how certain theological ideas and traditions have been advanced with a critical trust in mind.
Carol Ochs is Director of the Graduate School at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, where she also teaches philosophy and serves as a spiritual guide for rabbinic and cantorial students. Her research, writing and teaching fall into three categories: Jewish spirituality, comparative religion, and Jewish feminism. She is the author of Reaching Godward: Voices from Jewish Spiritual Guidance; Our Lives as Torah: Finding God in Our Own Stories; Jewish Spiritual Guidance (with Kerry Olitzky); Song of the Self: Bibilical Spirituality and Human Holiness; The Noah Paradox: Time as Burden, Time as Blessing; An Ascent to Joy: Transformining Deadness of Spirit; Women and Spirituality; and, Behind the Sex of God: Towards a New Consciousness Transcending Matriarchy and Patriarchy.
Robert Pollack (Ph.D. Brandeis, Biology) is Professor of Biological Sciences, Adjunct Professor of Religion, Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, and Director of the Earth Institute’s Center for the Study of Science and Religion (Columbia University); and Adjunct Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary. Since 1994 Dr. Pollack has concentrated his efforts on questions that lie at the margin of science and religion. He is the author of Signs of Life: the Language and Meanings of DNA, The Missing Moment: How the Unconscious Shapes Modern Science, and The Faith of Biology and the Biology of Faith: Order, Meaning and Free Will in Modern Science, the inaugural volume of a Columbia University Press series of books on Science and Religion. He has served on Advisory Boards of the John Templeton Foundation, the Program in Religion and Ecology of Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions, and as a Senior Consultant for the Director, Program of Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion, American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was Dean of Columbia College from 1982 to 1989, received the Alexander Hamilton Medal from Columbia University, and has held a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Sheldon J. Reaven (BA, Princeton; Ph.D., Philosophy of Science, UC Berkeley) teaches in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University, where he directs the graduate program in Environmental and Waste Management in the Department of Technology and Society and holds a joint appointment in the University's Waste Reduction and Management Institute. He is Executive Editor of the Journal of Environmental Systems. His research addresses (1) scientific, methodological, conceptual, and ethical aspects of seemingly intractable environmental controversies (global warming, “paper vs. plastics,” radioactive waste disposal...); (2) underlying problems of risk analysis, life-cycle analysis, industrial ecology, and other “total systems” comparison tools; (3) environmental and energy technology assessment (especially in waste management, recycling, pollution prevention, nuclear power, nuclear waste, and infrastructure); (4) military history and history and philosophy of science and technology; and (5) homeland security and nuclear, biological, and chemical terrorism. He teaches a graduate seminar, “Diagnosis of Environmental Disputes,” and two undergraduate courses, “Weapons of Mass Destruction and the War on Terrorism” and “Technology and the Environment.”
John D. Ryan (Ph.D. Drew University, Philosophical Theology) teaches in the Religious Studies Program at Stony Brook and in the Dept. of Asian and Asian American Studies. He taught in the theology department at Fordham University and in philosophy departments of several area colleges. He is also a psychotherapist in private practice. His dissertation (1973) was on “The Awareness of God in the Thought of Paul Tillich.” At Stony Brook he has taught courses in Western and Eastern religions and in Christianity, including a specialized course in Teilhard de Chardin. He is a long-time member of the American Teilhard Association, and wrote for them a monograph on “Psychotherapy, Religion and the Teilhardian Vision.” He has written reviews and review essays for Cross Currents on a variety of religious topics. He has also delivered numerous papers at various conferences on religious topics, including: “The Ascent to God in Tillich,” “Tillich as Theologian,” “Medieval Mysticism: Bonaventure’s Intinerarium Mentis in Deum,” “Plotinus and Tillich on the Meaning of God,” “The Awareness of God in Some Medieval Mystics,” “The Ascent to God in The Cloud of Unknowing,” and “The Truth of the Teilhardian Vision.”
Carlos L. Simmerling (Ph.D., U of Illinois, Chicago) is Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Stony Brook and a member of the Center for Structural Biology. His research interests focus on the structural dynamics of complex biomolecular systems such as proteins and nucleic acids. He uses computer simulation methods and jointly develops one of the most widely used programs for molecular simulation. In 2002, Simmerling became the first researcher to use computational methods to successfully predict the atomic-level structure of a protein and subsequently received international recognition, with profiles of the work in journals and newspapers in more than 10 different languages. Simmerling's research also uses computer-generated graphical representations to visualize nano-scale biological processes. He developed a popular molecular graphics program, and his images have been featured in many publications such as Radiology Today, Reader's Digest and the US Department of Health and Human Services newsletter. The National Institutes of Health chose Simmerling's work for the sole graphic to accompany their 2003 press release, "Research of the Year." Professor Simmerling was the 2003 Stony Brook recipient of the SUNY Chancellor's "Excellence in the Pursuit of Knowledge" award.
Peter Steinfels, a prominent Catholic writer, educator, and speaker and senior religion correspondent for the New York Times from 1988 to 1997, writes “Beliefs,” a biweekly column for the Times. He received his A.B from Loyola University in Chicago and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. Dr. Steinfels joined the staff of Commonweal magazine in 1964 and was editor from 1984-88. His articles regularly appear in Nation, Dissent, and New Republic. He has been a visiting professor of history at Georgetown University and of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Steinfels is the author of The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing American Politics, co-editor of Death Inside Out: The Hastings Center Report, and author of A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America, published this past summer. He and his wife, Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, were recipients of the 2003 Notre Dame Laetare Medal for service to church and society.
Clifford Swartz is Professor Emeritus of Physics at Stony Brook University. After getting his Ph.D from the University of Rochester in 1951, he helped build the Cosmotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory and did research in high energy physics. Starting in 1957 he joined or formed various projects to produce curricula and texts for every school level from kindergarten through college. He is the author of 14 elementary-school science texts (two K-6 series), a 7th-grade science text, a high school physics text, seven college physics and math texts, and a source book on teaching introductory physics. For 29 years he was the editor of The Physics Teacher, a monthly journal of the American Association of Physics Teachers. In 1987 he was the recipient of the Association's Oersted Medal. He is married to the former Barbara Myers and is the father of six children. He has written three religious-inspired books of poetry: Prayers from the Nave (1981, Flax Pond Press); Temptations, Wicked Women, and Denials (2003, Trafford Publishers); Miracles, Among Other Things (2003, Trafford Publishers).
Peter C. Williams (J.D. and Ph.D. in Philosophy, Harvard University) is Professor of Preventive Medicine and member of the Division of Medicine in Society in the Department of Preventive Medicine. He serves as the Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Faculty Development at Stony Brook University’s School of Medicine, where he has taught medical ethics and medical jurisprudence since 1973. He has also taught ethics, philosophy of law and a teaching practicum in philosophy at Stony Brook’s College of Arts and Sciences, as well as medical jurisprudence at Hofstra and Touro Law Schools. He is a recipient of the SUNY Chancellors Award for Excellence in Teaching and was among the first set of Aesculapius Teaching Awardees at the medical school. His academic tasks include helping direct a four-year medical school curriculum in social issues in medicine (Medicine in Contemporary Society); serving on the Hospital Ethics Committee and Ethics Consultation Service; and, as Vice Dean, being responsible for the academic mission of the medical school. His research interests include malpractice reform, the limits of paternalism, applied ethics and medical education. As a result of his interest in malpractice he was awarded a Fulbright Travel Grant to study in New Zealand.