President's Dream Colloquium on Emergence and Complexity of Life

These profound questions have broad significance to all members of our community. From a scientific and philosophical perspective, the origin of life and the evolutionary progression leading to the emergence of human intelligence represents one of the most fundamental questions of our time.

Over the ages, a series of scientific revolutions have changed the way we think about ourselves and the universe we live in.

We are currently poised at the threshold of just such a revolution concerning our origins. Recent breakthroughs in our understanding of the origin of life and the spectacular discovery of thousands of extrasolar planets orbiting nearby stars in our galaxy makes a President’s Dream Colloquium on the emergence and complexity of life timely and exciting.

The series of lectures from internationally recognized experts will incorporate four interlocking themes:

1. Origins of life on Earth
2. Evolving ever-increasing complexity
3. I think, therefore I am
4. Is there anybody else I can talk to?

Graduate students will be the focal point of this colloquium, as they will be responsible for synthesizing background material from a broad range of fields and for presenting the ideas and results of more specialized papers to their colleagues from other disciplines.

Each colloquium will be set up as six bi-weekly seminars led by six different renowned experts in their field.

Each seminar topic will have a two-week focus: In the first week, the group will meet to discuss materials relevant to the following week's seminar, which will be led by the guest speaker. There will be a final student presentation or collaborative project.