Prominent scientists to speak at NC State

The College of Sciences, along with many of its departments and centers, is welcoming several distinguished speakers to campus this fall to help celebrate the College’s first year.

Nate Silver, a statistician, author and blogger who helped redefine political coverage with his FiveThirtyEight.com blog, will come to campus on Oct. 10. In 2012, when his blog was published by the New York Times, it correctly predicted the presidential election outcome in all 50 states. Silver recently left the New York Times and will soon join ESPN to cover sports, economics, culture, science and technology. He is also the author of a best-selling book, The Signal and The Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t.

Dr. Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Program (NTP), will speak at NC State on Oct. 17. Birnbaum, the first woman to lead NIEHS and NTP, oversees federal funding for biomedical research to discover how the environment influences human health and disease. In 2010, she was elected to the Institute of Medicine, one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine.

Dr. Martin Chalfie, University Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, will deliver his address on Dec. 5. Chalfie’s research uses a type of roundworm to investigate aspects of nerve cell development and function. In 2008, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with two other researchers for their discovery and development of green fluorescent protein, or GFP. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004.

More events will be added later this year, including a feature event for the spring semester. Details will be available soon.

October 10
Nate Silver
Statistician, author and blogger
Lecture title: “Celebrating Statistics: The Signal and the Noise”
This event, which is by invitation only, is presented by the Department of Statistics and sponsored by the JMP Division of SAS. The lecture is being held to celebrate the International Year of Statistics, or Statistics2013, a worldwide initiative that is highlighting the contributions of the statistics field to finding solutions to global challenges.
4 p.m. at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library Auditorium

October 17
Dr. Linda Birnbaum
Director, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
Birnbaum will speak as part of a lecture series jointly sponsored by the College and Center for Human Health and the Environment. The event is free and open to the public. More details, including the lecture time and location, will be available soon at chhe.research.ncsu.edu.

December 5
Dr. Martin Chalfie
University Professor
Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University
Chalfie will speak as part of the seminar series sponsored by the W.M. Keck Center for Behavioral Biology.
3:30 p.m. in Room 101, David Clark Labs