Physicists Paul Davies, Stephen Hawking, and Lawrence Krauss speak at the ASU Origins Project Science & Culture Festival 2011
Laubichler named Origins Associate Director
November 16, 2011
The ASU Origins Project is pleased to announce that Manfred Laubichler, Professor in the School of Life Sciences has been named Associate Director of the Origins Project, effective immediately.
In his new position, Laubichler will contribute to ongoing strategic planning and operations, spearhead workshops dealing with complexity and adaptive systems, and assist in the development of the emerging Origins Project curriculum.
Laubichler, who has taught at ASU since 2001, received his graduate training in Biology at Yale University and in History at Princeton. He specializes in theoretical and evolutionary biology, and the history and philosophy of biology, most notably the emergence of the field of Evolutionary Biology or “EvoDevo.”
He is the author of more than eighty refereed articles and a number of books, including Form and Function in Developmental Evolution with ASU Professor Jane Maienschein (Cambridge University Press). He is a founding editor of the journal, Biological Theory, and was elected a fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009.
In making his announcement Lawrence Krauss, Foundation Professor and Director of the Origins Project, stressed Prof. Laublichler’s unique talents and experience working with existing and past Origins Programs. “Manfred has been a valued member of our Origins advisory team since we created the program, and a valued partner and advisor for me personally since I arrived at ASU. He has a broad understanding and appreciation of many of the key intellectual issues we have been addressing, and with his background in biology and history of science and his wide-ranging connections throughout the university, he will add significantly to the management team. This is particularly important as we seek to reach out ever more broadly to the ASU academic community and build exciting new programs within every school in the University.”
Laubichler sees the Origins Project as a means of furthering transdisciplinary work and linking several of ASU’s initiatives and programs. “As we are moving away—in both research and teaching—from discipline-based approaches to a question to a problem driven focus, origins questions, next to complexity and sustainability questions, are an anchor for a wide range of questions and ideas,” Laubichler said. Because Laubichler’s own research agenda and intellectual interests bridge the sciences and the humanities, he is especially keen to explore the intersections and broad implications of cutting edge science for the "big questions" of humanity. “The Origins Project already has an impressive record in exploring deep questions in a widely accessible way and I am grateful for the opportunity to add my own perspectives from evolutionary theory, complexity theory and history and philosophy of science to this mix.”
Founded in 2008, ASU’s Origins Project is a university-wide, transdisciplinary initiative aimed at facilitating cutting edge research and inquiry into origins questions, enhancing public science literacy, and improving science education. Since its inception, the Origins Project has brought the world’s leading scientists and public intellectuals, including many Nobel Prize winners, to Tempe. The Origins Project has hosted workshops and public events before sell-out crowds that have focused on questions as fundamental as the origin of the universe, how life began life, the origins of human uniqueness, the origins of morality, and the relationship between science and culture.
