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April 4, 2005
Futurist Forum set for Friday

The collection of brain power that will be gathered in the Schwartz Center’s Emerson Concert Hall this Friday, April 8, from 8:30 a.m. to noon promises to be of a most impressive wattage, as Emory hosts the Futurist Forum, part of the University’s strategic planning process.

The event’s 14 panelists (along with moderator and CNN news anchor Stephen Frazier) are world leaders in their respective disciplines, and they will be asked to put their minds to work both broadly and with focus, as they look toward the future and comment on the University’s proposed signature themes.

Friday morning, each panelist will speak for five minutes, with periods for open discussion interspersed throughout. Friday afternoon, the panelists will visit individually with the signature theme discussion groups, offering more specific insights.

Photos and biographical sketches of all the panelists and the moderator are featured below. For more information about the strategic planning process, visit www.admin.emory.edu/strategicplan/.

MODERATOR
STEPHEN FRAZIER
CNN NEWS ANCHOR
Before becoming news anchor, Frazier served as a weekend news anchor for CNN/U.S. and has co-anchored CNN NewsStand and CNN & Fortune. He also served as senior correspondent and co-anchor of Impact, the CNN & Time weekly primetime investigative newsmagazine. From 1993–96, he was senior correspondent for CNN Presents, the network’s award-winning documentary news hour. Before joining CNN, Frazier spent 12 years at NBC News as a network correspondent and anchor.

HUDA AKIL
GARDNER QUARTON DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF NEUROSCIENCE AND PSYCHIATRY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Akil, also co-director of Michigan’s Mental Health Research Institute, has made seminal contributions to understanding the neurobiology of emotions, including pain, anxiety, depression and substance abuse. Akil received in 1993 the Pacesetter Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Pasarow Award for Neuroscience Research in 1994. She is past president of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and past president of the Society for Neuroscience.

FLOYD BLOOM
PROFESSOR EMERITUS, SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTE
An innovative neuroscientist with a broad-based concept of structure and function of the nervous system, Bloom is one of the chief architects of modern neuroscience. He has been director of behavioral neurobiology at The Salk Institute and chief of the neuropharmacology lab of the National Institute for Mental Health. He is former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and chair of the AAAS Board of Directors. Bloom is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.

LINCOLN CHEN
DIRECTOR, GLOBAL EQUITY INITIATIVE, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Chen is chair of the board of directors of CARE/USA. A professional in international public health and development, he founded the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard in 2002, after serving five years as executive vice president for strategy at the Rockefeller Foundation. Over the previous decade, Chen was the Taro Takemi Professor of International Health and chaired the Department of Population and International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health.

JAMES DUDERSTADT
PROFESSOR OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Duderstadt joined the nuclear engineering faculty at Michigan in 1968. He later became dean of the College of Engineering (1981), then provost (1986), and was appointed president in 1988, serving until July 1996. Duderstadt has received the E.O. Lawrence Award for excellence in nuclear research, the Arthur Holly Compton Prize for outstanding teaching, the Reginald Wilson Award for national leadership in achieving diversity, and the National Medal of Technology for exemplary service to the nation.

JOHN EVANS
CHAIRMAN & CEO, EVANS TELECOMMUNICATIONS CO. & THE JOHN D. EVANS FOUNDATION
Evans is an internationally recognized expert in the telecommunications industry and a leader in technological innovation. He is perhaps best known as one of the co-founders of C-SPAN in 1977.
He received the National Cable Television Association’s President’s Award in 1981 and the Vanguard Award for Young Leadership in 1984. As founder of the John D. Evans Foundation, Evans is committed to AIDS and cancer research, protection of the environment, and improving the quality of life through technological innovation.

DAVID FEATHERMAN
DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR ADVANCING RESEARCH AND SOLUTIONS FOR SOCIETY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
From 1995 until this year, Featherman served as director of the Institute for Social Research at Michigan, where he continues to hold academic appointments as professor of sociology and of psychology in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. His most recent book is Social Science and Policymaking: A Search for Relevance in the 20th Century. Featherman is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

LEROY HOOD
PRESIDENT, INSTITUTE FOR SYSTEMS BIOLOGY
Hood’s research has focused on the study of molecular immunology, biotechnology and genomics. He founded and chaired the University of Washington’s cross-disciplinary Department of Molecular Biotechnology in 1992, and in 2000 he co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle to pursue systems approaches to biology and medicine. Last year Hood received the Association for Molecular Pathology Award for Excellence in Molecular Diagnostics; he’s also received the Lemelson–MIT Prize for Innovation and Invention, the Kyoto Prize and the Lasker Prize.

JAMES JACKSON
DANIEL KATZ DISTINGUISHED UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
In addition to his Katz chair, Jackson is professor of health behavior and health education; director of the Research Center for Group Dynamics; senior research scientist and director of the Program for Research on Black Americans, Institute for Social Research; and director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, all at Michigan. He is principal investigator for many NIH and NSF
research grants. In 2002 he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences.

GUSTAV NIEBUHR
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF RELIGION AND THE MEDIA, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
Niebuhr holds a joint appointment in religion and in Syracuse’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Prior to coming to Syracuse in January 2004, he spent two years as a visiting fellow and scholar-in-residence at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University. For many years, Niebuhr wrote about religion in the United States, most recently as a national correspondent for The New York Times and prior to that for the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

THEODORE SHAW
PRESIDENT & DIRECTOR-COUNSEL, NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND (LDF)
Shaw joined LDF, the nation’s premier civil rights law firm, in 1982, becoming its fifth director last May. The National Bar Association Young Lawyers Division recently presented Shaw with the A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Memorial Award, and he also received the Lawrence A. Wein Prize for Social Justice from Columbia University. Shaw is a member of the bar in New York and in California, and is admitted to practice before U.S. District Courts in California, several U.S. Courts of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.

DEBRA STEWART
PRESIDENT, COUNCIL OF GRADUATE SCHOOLS
Stewart lectures nationally and internationally on graduate education issues and challenges. Prior to becoming the Council of Graduate Schools’ fifth president in July 2000, She was vice chancellor and dean of the Graduate School at North Carolina State University. Stewart currently serves on the National Research Council (NRC) Board on Higher Education and the Workforce, the NRC Committee on Educational Paradigms for Homeland Security, and advisory boards for the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate and the Responsive Ph.D. Project.

CATHARINE STIMPSON
UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR AND DEAN, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
From 1994–97, Stimpson served as director of the Fellows Program at the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago while on leave from her position as University Professor at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, where from 1986–92 she also served as dean of the Graduate School and vice provost for graduate education. Stimpson was the founding editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society from 1974–80. She is a past president of the Modern Language Association and the Association of Graduate Schools.

ROBERT WEISBUCH
PRESIDENT, WOODROW WILSON NATIONAL FELLOWSHIP FUND
Since Weisbuch became president in 1997, the Wilson Foundation has emphasized its namesake’s role in connecting higher education to the social sectors beyond academia and in connecting the levels of education to each other. Weisbuch joined the foundation after 25 years at the University of Michigan, where while dean of the graduate school he established a fund to improve mentoring of graduate teaching assistants, created humanities and arts awards for faculty, and made diversity an integral criterion in evaluating program quality.

GAIL WILENSKY
SENIOR FELLOW, PROJECT HOPE
At Project HOPE, an international health education foundation, Wilensky analyzes and develops policies relating to health care reform. From 1990–92, she was administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, overseeing the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Wilensky is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and is vice chair of the Maryland Health Care Commission. She is a trustee of the Combined Benefits Fund of the United Mineworkers of America and of the American Heart Association.

 

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