Fifth Annual Science Writing Symposium
Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 4 PM
Sharp Lecture Hall, 155 Arms Laboratory (G&PS)

Panelists: Robert Lee Hotz, Richard Murray, and Michael Shermer

Open to the Caltech community and the general public.
Free admission. A delicious reception will follow.

The annual Words Matter Science Writing Symposium brings together a panel of prominent science writers and scientists to address the challenges of communicating scientific information to general audiences. Panelists discuss the ways in which effective communication plays a role in their own work and they offer strategies for conveying science with clarity and grace. After informal opening remarks, panelists respond to each other's comments and to audience questions.

Robert Lee Hotz is a science journalist at the Los Angeles Times. He is also author of Designs on Life: Exploring the New Frontiers of Human Fertility. His many kudos for science writing include a Pulitzer Prize as well as awards from the American Academy for Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Richard Murray is Caltech’s Everhart Professor of Control & Dynamical Systems. His teaching and research focus on analysis and design of feedback systems. Recipient of the 2006 Feynman Teaching Prize, he is faculty advisor to student teams building autonomous vehicles and author of a textbook, Feedback Systems: An Introduction for Scientists and Engineers.

Michael Shermer is Executive Director of the Skeptics Society and a regular columnist for Scientific American. He is also science correspondent for KPCC public radio and author of eight popularscience books, including Why People Believe Weird Things and Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design.

Past Symposia

The Fourth Annual Science Writing Symposium was held on April 5, 2006. Panelists included Mike Brown, Caltech Professor of Planetary Astronomy and discoverer of the object briefly known as the "tenth planet"; Bruce Lewenstein, Associate Professor of Science Communication at Cornell University and former editor of Public Understanding of Science; and Joe Palca, science correspondent for National Public Radio, former editor at Nature, and past president of the National Association of Science Writers. A streaming video broadcast of this event is available at http://today.caltech.edu/theater/13643_bb.ram.

The Third Annual Science Writing Symposium was held on May 16, 2005. Panelists included Christof Koch, Caltech Professor of Cognitive & Behavioral Biology and author of Biophysics of Computation: Information Processing in Single Neurons and The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach; Leonard Mladinow, physics Ph.D., coauthor, with Stephen Hawking, of A Briefer History of Time (2005), author of other popular science books and former script writer for Star Trek; and Margaret Wertheim, internationally noted science writer and commentator, author of Pythagoras' Trousers (physics, religion, and women) and The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace (cultural history of space, from Dante to the Internet). A streaming video broadcast of this event is available at http://today.caltech.edu/theater/8055_bb.ram.

The Second Annual Science Writing Symposium, held on Wednesday, January 21, 2004, featured K.C. Cole, L.A. Times science writer, author, and National Public Radio commentator; Kip Thorne, Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech; and Robert Winston, Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College, London, and member of the House of Lords. A streaming video broadcast of this event is available at http://today.caltech.edu/theater/1699_bb.ram.

The First Science Writing Symposium, held on Monday, April 7, 2003, featured panelists Usha Lee McFarling of the L.A. Times, Alan Lightman of MIT, and Caltech's David Goodstein. Russ Rymer, writer and former Core 1 instructor, moderated. A streaming video broadcast of this event is available at at http://today.caltech.edu/theater/334_bb.ram.