The Academic Minute from 2.17 – 2.21
Monday
James Druckman – University of Rochester
Does American Political Hostility Threaten Democracy?
James Druckman is a professor of political science at the University of Rochester and has published approximately 200 articles and book chapters in political science, communication, economics, science, and psychology journals. He has authored, co-authored, or co-edited seven books. His research focuses on political preference formation and communication, and his work examines how citizens make political, economic, and social decisions in various contexts. He also researches the relationship between citizens’ preferences and public policy and the polarization of American society.
Tuesday
John Tarduno – University of Rochester
Weak Magnetic Field Millions of Years Ago May Have Fueled Proliferation of Life
John Tarduno’s research centers on the origin of the geodynamo, its history and relationship with habitability. Such questions have become of significant recent interest in astrophysics in studies of exoplanets. To investigate the magnetic field of the early Earth, Tarduno and his research group have developed a method to derive information on past field strength from single silicate minerals.
Wednesday
Chris Kanan – University of Rochester
Can We Teach AI to Learn Like Humans?
Christopher Kanan’s main research focus is deep learning, with an emphasis on lifelong (continual) machine learning, bias-robust artificial intelligence, medical computer vision, and language-guided scene understanding. He has worked on online continual learning, visual question answering, computational pathology, self-supervised learning, semantic segmentation, object recognition, object detection, active vision, object tracking, and more. Beyond machine learning, he has a background in eye tracking, primate vision, and theoretical neuroscience.
Thursday
James McGrath – University of Rochester
Tissue-on-Chip Technology Holds Promise to Reduce Animal Testing
Since 2001, James McGrath has been on the Biomedical Engineering faculty at the University of Rochester and served the department for over 10 years as the first director of the BME graduate program. While historically his research focused on the phenomena of cell migration, since 2007 he has been leading the Nanomembrane Research Group – a highly interdisciplinary, multi-institutional team that is developing and applying ultrathin silicon ‘nanomembrane’ technologies. In 2015 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).
Friday
Renee Miller – University of Rochester
Is Cognitive Bias Sabotaging Your Fantasy Football Team?
Renee Miller directs the undergraduate Neuroscience program at the University of Rochester. She is passionate about several areas of neuroscience and earned a PhD in neurodegenerative disease research. Miller’s research aims to understand the genetic basis for sex differences in behaviors. She investigates how inherent or adaptive differences in the nervous system contribute to sexual dimorphism and potentially, to the sex biases seen in many neurological disorders. She is an avid fantasy analyst and frequently writes about the intersection between her two passions–sports and the brain.
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