North America

Francisco J. Ayala, Ph.D.

Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences and University Professor at the University of California, Irvine. He received his Ph.D. in genetics from Columbia University. Dr. Ayala has been president and chairman of the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and president of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society of the U.S. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and numerous foreign academies, and has received numerous prizes and honorary degrees. His scientific research focuses on population and evolutionary genetics, including the origin of species, genetic diversity of populations, the origin of malaria, the population structure of parasitic protozoa, and the molecular clock of evolution. He has published more than 900 articles and is author or editor of 30 books. Dr. Ayala also writes about the interface between religion and science, and on philosophical issues concerning epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of biology. Born in Madrid, Spain, Dr. Ayala has lived in the United States since 1961, and became a U.S. citizen in 1971. In 2002, Dr. Ayala received the National Medal of Science from President George W. Bush at a White House ceremony. From 1994 to 2001, he was a member of the U.S. President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Stephen M. Barr, Ph.D.

Professor in the Bartol Research Institute and the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Delaware. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics from Princeton University. Dr. Barr previously held faculty positions at the University of Washington and Brookhaven National Laboratory. He is on the board of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, and a founding officer of the Delaware Association of Scholars. He is the author of 130 research papers in the fields of particle physics and cosmology, as well as numerous published lectures and book chapters, including the article on 'Grand Unified Theories' in the AIP Encyclopedia of Physics. He has published Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (University of Notre Dame Press, 2003) and A Student's Guide to Natural Science (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006). Dr. Barr writes regularly on science and religion for First Things (he serves on its editorial advisory board), as well as other national magazines and journals. Dr. Barr has lectured widely, including giving the 2002 Erasmus Lecture of the Institute for Religion and Public Life and the 2006 Merton Lecture at Columbia University.

Peter L. Benson, Ph.D.

President and CEO of Minneapolis-based Search Institute, one of the world's leading authorities on positive human development. He joined the staff of Search Institute after several years in academia and became the Institute's president in 1985. He holds a doctorate and master's degree from the University of Denver as well as a master's degree from Yale University. Dr. Benson's international reputation in human development emerged in the 1990s through his innovative, research-based framework of Developmental Assets, the most widely recognized approach to positive youth development in the United States and around the world. His vision, research, and public voice have inspired a "sea change" in research, practice, and policy. Most recently, he has focused on conceptualizing a new understanding of "thriving." He is also the principal investigator and co-director for Search Institute's new Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, which seeks to advance knowledge, practice, and international interest in this important domain of human development. Dr. Benson is the author or editor of more than a dozen books on child and adolescent development, including, most recently, All Kids Are Our Kids: What Communities Must Do to Raise Caring and Responsible Children and Adolescents and The Handbook of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence. Among his many honors, Dr. Benson was the first Visiting Scholar at the William T. Grant Foundation and also received the William James Award for Career Contributions to the Psychology of Religion from the American Psychological Association.

Mark C. Berner, J.D.

President and CEO of the New City Commons Foundation, Inc., a New York-based foundation that incubates individuals and organizations that focus on reformation and renewal in the church and the culture. Previously, he was managing partner and co-founder of SDG Resources, L.P., an oil and gas investment and operating company with operations in Texas and New Mexico. Mr. Berner was educated at Yale (B.A., magna cum laude, history), Oxford (M.A., philosophy and theology) and Villanova (J.D.). He is a member of the Bar of the State of New York. For many years, he managed hedge funds focused primarily on investing in distressed assets, first at the Credit Suisse First Boston Special Situations Fund and then with Turnberry Capital Management. Prior to joining First Boston, Mr. Berner was a partner and senior member of the bankruptcy and restructuring group at Anderson Kill & Olick, a New York law firm. Before attending law school, Mr. Berner was a youth worker in western New England with FOCUS, a Christian ministry to students in independent schools. He is an active member of several charitable boards: The American Anglican Council, The Trinity Forum, and the Calvary-St. George's Episcopal Church, New York City.

Ramanath Cowsik, Ph.D.

Professor, Physics Department at Washington University & Director-elect-McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences. He earned his Ph.D. in physics at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay University. Dr. Cowsik theorized that weakly interacting particles with finite rest mass, like neutrinos, will be a gravitationally dominant relict of the 'big-bang' origin of the universe. They will trigger the formation of galaxies, and will thus generically form halos of dark matter that embed the galaxies within them. He showed that such cosmological considerations place strict bounds on the sums of masses of the neutrinos. His research interests extend to the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and non-accelerator particle physics. His scientific contributions include establishing the highest observatory in the world in Hanle, Ladakh, in the Himalayas at an altitude of 15,000 ft. for astronomy in the optical and infrared wavelength bands and understanding the highly energetic phenomena in astrophysics, such as cosmic rays, pulsars, supernova remnants, gamma ray bursts, active-galactic nuclei and other such sources powered by accretion flows; and inventing the 'leaky-box' and the 'nested-leaky box' models that are extensively used to interpret the observations of cosmic rays. His current research efforts are primarily directed toward building an extremely sensitive torsion balance to probe possible violations of the inverse square law of gravity at sub-millimeter scales that are predicted by 'string-motivated' theories, and to measure directly the rotations associated with the torroidal oscillations of the Earth. This is a follow-up of his longstanding interest in constructing sensitive torsion balances and using them to study Einstein's equivalence principle and to search for new fundamental forces. Dr. Cowsik is an elected Fellow of several academies including Indian Academy of Sciences, Third World Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Sciences (F), USA.

Paul C. Davies, Ph.D.

See Board of Trustees

Paul Dietrich, J.D.

Chairman and CEO of Foxhall Capital Management, Inc., Alexandria, Virginia, which currently manages investments for private investors, union pension funds, mutual funds and large private institutions throughout the United States. Mr. Dietrich was the founder of Meridian Emerging Markets, Ltd., a leading provider of global emerging markets company financial information. He is also an international corporate attorney. As an attorney, he has been an advisor on privatization and economic development issues to the Czech government, the World Bank, as well as several governments in Asia and the former Soviet Union. Before entering law, he served as publisher and editor-in-chief of Saturday Review. Mr. Dietrich has been a frequent contributor to the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, the London Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Singapore Times and the South China Morning Post. He served as editor of both the Reuters Emerging Markets Guide and the Reuters Asian Stock Sourcebook. He is also president of the Institute for International Health and Development, has served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., was a member of the National Advisory Board of Harvard University's School of Public Health's AIDS Institute and a member of the Advisory Group on International Health Systems Assessment of the New York Academy of Sciences. Mr. Dietrich has also served as a member of the Development Committee of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and as a member of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Foundation and the American-European Community Association. He is the editor of the award-winning book, A Guide to American Foreign Policy.

Jean Bethke Elshtain, Ph.D.

Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago. Dr. Elshtain taught at the University of Massachusetts and at Vanderbilt University where she was the first woman to hold an endowed professorship in the College of Liberal Arts in the history of that institution.  She has also been a Visiting Professor at Harvard and Yale. Dr. Elshtain holds nine honorary degrees and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has authored and/or edited twenty books, has written some five hundred essays and is a contributing editor for The New Republic. Dr. Elshtain has been a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; a Scholar in Residence, Bellagio Conference and Study Center, Como Italy; a Guggenhein Fellow; a Fellow of the National Humanities Center; and in 2003 – 2004, she held the Maguire Chair in Ethics at the Library of Congress. She also serves on the Scholars Council, The Library of Congress; on the Board of Trustees of the James Madison Program in American Constitutional Ideals at Princeton University; the Board of Trustees of the National Humanities Center; and the Board of the National Endowment for Democracy.  Dr. Elshtain was a Phi Beta Kappa Scholar, served as vice president of the American Political Science Association and is also the recipient of the Ellen Gregg Ingalls Award for excellence in classroom teaching – the highest award for undergraduate teaching at Vanderbilt University. In 2002, she received the Goodenow Award of the American Political Science Association, the Association's highest award for Distinguished Service to the Profession.  In 2005-2006, Dr. Elshtain delivered the prestigious Gifford Lecturers at the University of Edinburgh.

David H. Gelernter, Ph.D.

Professor of Computer Science at Yale University. He received his B.A. and M.A. in classical Hebrew literature from Yale University and his Ph.D. from S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook. Dr. Gelernter was one of the founders of the company Mirror Worlds Technologies, which created software using ideas from his book, Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean. He is the author of technical articles, essays, art criticism, and fiction. The "tuple spaces" introduced in Carriero and Gelernter's Linda system (1983) are the basis of many computer-communication and distributed programming systems worldwide. He has also written The Muse in the Machine and the novels, 1939 and Machine Beauty. Dr. Gelernter is a contributor to magazines such as City Journal, The Weekly Standard, Commentary,ArtNews, Washington Post and many other periodicals. His recent talks include the Bradley Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, keynotes at Agenda 2003, Intl. Wireless World, PC Expo, and the 2002 Organick Lecture in Computer Science at the University of Utah. He is a member of the National Council on the Arts and serves on the scientific advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation.

Michael Guillen, Ph.D.

President of Spectacular Science Productions and is also the Host of "Where Did It Come From?..." an exciting new weekly, one-hour, prime-time series for The History Channel. He earned his B.S. from UCLA and his Ph.D. from Cornell University in physics, mathematics and astronomy. Dr. Guillen was a physics instructor at Harvard University for eight years. In 2000, he was elected to the renowned Explorers Club. Dr. Guillen has written hundreds of articles for numerous distinguished publications, including Science News and Psychology Today magazines and The New York Times and Washington Post. For fourteen years, he was the Emmy-award-winning Science Correspondent for ABC News. He appeared regularly on "Good Morning America", "20/20", "Nightline", and "World News Tonight". Dr. Guillen is the chief consultant for science and religion for the Crystal Cathedral Ministries, which includes the "Hour of Power" television show, and chief science advisor for the Central Committee of American Rabbis. He is the author of two critically acclaimed books for the general public about mathematics: Bridges to Infinity: the Human Side of Mathematics and Five Equations that Changed the World: the Power and Poetry of Mathematics. In his latest book Can a Smart Person Believe in God?, Dr. Guillen tells of his lifelong attempt to reconcile his scientific career with his deeply religious upbringing.

Hans Halvorson, Ph.D.

Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Princeton University. Professor Halvorson graduated from Calvin College with a degree in philosophy. That was followed by masters degrees in philosophy and mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. He became assistant professor of philosophy at Princeton in 2001, and received tenure in 2005. At Princeton, Professor Halvorson teaches primarily in philosophical logic and philosophy of science; he also advises independent work in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of religion. His research focuses on the conceptual and mathematical foundations of contemporary physics, especially quantum field theory and quantum information theory. Professor Halvorson has been a short-term Fellow with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (2006), a Behrman Fellow with the Princeton Council of the Humanities, and Associate Fellow with the Center for the Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He has been the recipient of such awards as the Mellon New Directions Fellowship (2007), the Cushing Memorial Prize in the History and Philosophy of Physics (2004), Best Article of the Year by a Recent Ph.D. (Philosophy of Science Association, 2001), and Ten Best Philosophy Articles of the Year (The Philosopher's Annual, 2001 and 2002).

Anne Harrington, Ph.D.

Chair and Professor for the History of Science at Harvard College. She specializes in the history of psychiatry, neuroscience, and the other mind sciences. She is also Visiting Professor for Medical History at the London School of Economics, where she co-edits a new journal called Biosocieties. Professor Harrington received her Ph.D. in the history of science from Oxford University, and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London, and the University of Freiburg in Germany. For six years, she co-directed Harvard's Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative and was also a consultant for the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Mind-Body Interactions. Currently, she serves on the Board of the Mind and Life Institute, an organization dedicated to cross-cultural dialogue between Buddhism and the sciences. She is the author of two books: Medicine, Mind and the Double Brain and Reenchanted Science. A third book, Stories under the Skin: Mind-Body Medicine and its Histories, will be published by W.W. Norton. She has also published many articles and produced a range of edited collections. She is currently working on a project that attempts to make historical and cultural sense of the rise of a genre of literature in our own time concerned with the "inner world" of brain disorder.

Philip Jenkins, Ph.D.

Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State University. Born in Wales, he was educated at Clare College, in the University of Cambridge, where he took Double First Class Honors. He obtained his doctorate in history, also from Cambridge. Though his original training was in early modern British history, he has since moved to studying a wide range of contemporary topics and issues, especially in the realm of religion. He has published twenty sole-authored books, sixteen of which have appeared since 1992. Recent titles have included The Next Christendom: The Rise of Global Christianity (2002) and The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (2006). He is also the author of Decade of Nightmares: The End of the 1960s and the Making of Eighties America (Oxford University Press, 2006). Particularly influential was his essay "The Next Christianity", that appeared as a cover story in the Atlantic Monthly in October, 2002. He has lectured frequently on these themes, and has published in many media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Washington Post, Boston Globe, First Things, and the London Guardian.

Byron R. Johnson, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR) as well as Director of the Program on Prosocial Behavior, both at Baylor University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. Dr. Johnson is currently completing a series of studies for the Department of Justice on the role of religion in prosocial youth behavior. Recent publications examined the impact of faith-based programs on recidivism reduction and prisoner reentry. He is currently completing an evaluation examining academic outcomes among public high school students enrolled in elective courses in comparison with those taking a course on the Bible. Along with other ISR colleagues, he is completing a series of groundbreaking empirical studies on religion in China.

Keith G. Meador, M.D., Th.M., MPH.

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center. Dr Meador has a joint appointment at Duke Divinity School where he teaches pastoral theology and pastoral care. He is co-director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Meador's scholarship focuses on spirituality and health interpreted through practices of caring and their formation within faith communities, as well as methodological and theological considerations in spirituality, theology and health. He has received several awards for his teaching with psychiatry residents and medical students at Duke and also serves as a Senior Fellow in the Duke Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development. A physician, board certified psychiatrist, and pastoral theologian, his work builds on his clinical, research and teaching background in mental health, pastoral theology and public health. Dr. Meador lectures widely and has authored numerous publications, including the co-authored book, Heal Thyself: Spirituality, Medicine, and the Distortion of Christianity published by Oxford University Press.

Donald E. Miller, Ph.D.

Firestone Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California where he is the Executive Director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture as well as Director of the School of Religion. His research has focused on religious trends in the United States, the experience of genocide survivors, and the role of religion in faith-based NGOs. He has recently completed a book on global Pentecostalism that involved research in twenty developing countries. In addition, he has done extensive research in Armenia, Rwanda, and Tanzania. He is the author or editor of seven books and is currently the president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Christian Smith, Ph.D.

William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society, and Principal Investigator of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). Dr. Smith holds his Ph.D. and M.A. from Harvard University. His current research focuses on religion, culture, social change, adolescents, and social theory. Dr. Smith is the author of numerous books, including Moral, Believing Animals: Religion, Culture, and Human Personhood (2003) and Soul Searching: the Religion and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (2005). Dr. Smith has been elected to the Sociological Research Association.

Michael L. Spezio, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Scholar in Social and Affective Neuroscience in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences and at the Brain Imaging Center at the California Institute of Technology. He obtained a doctorate in biochemistry from Cornell University, a doctorate in cognitive/systems neuroscience from the University of Oregon, and a master of divinity degree with a concentration in ethics from the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. His work focuses on brain networks involved in the experience of emotions and in social judgment and decision-making, combining psychophysics, eyetracking, computational modeling, and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Dr. Spezio is gathering evidence to test a new hypothesis about how the amygdala is involved in understanding the emotions of others. He has investigated social cognition in people who have autism and in people who were born without the major connection between the two hemispheres of the brain. Dr. Spezio is also an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and has published articles on the implications of neuroscience for understanding ethical decision-making.

J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, D.Th.

James I. McCord Professor of Theology and Science at Princeton Theological Seminary. Dr. van Huyssteen has research degrees in philosophy (MA: University of Stellenbosch, South Africa) and philosophical theology (D.Th. Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) as well as a M.A. in philosophy (cum laude). His area of special interest is interdisciplinary theology, including religious and scientific epistemology. Dr. van Huyssteen is also a renowned speaker having lectured both nationally and internationally. He is a member of several national and international academic societies, and has been a member of the Steering Committee of the Religion and Science Section of the American Academy of Religion, a member of the American Theological Society; a life member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, England; a life member of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, a founding member of the International Society of Science and Religion and serves on the Board of Directors of the Metanexus Institute of Science and Religion. In addition to serving on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, the Nederduits Gereformeerde Teologiese Tydskrif, and the Journal of Theology and Science, Dr. van Huyssteen is a member of the editorial board of the Templeton Foundation Press, co-editor of Ashgate Press' Science and Religion Series, and a co-editor of the new Templeton Series on Science and Religion. He is also the editor-in-chief of the two-volumed Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. He has authored numerous books, including The Shaping of Rationality: Toward Interdisciplinarity in Theology and Science, which was chosen in 2004 for the John Templeton Foundation's new Books of Distinction Program. In April of 2004, Dr. van Huyssteen delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, which were published in 2004 as Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology (Eerdmans), and is the first recipient of the Andrew Murray/Desmond Tutu Prize for Theology (April 2007).

George Weigel

Roman Catholic Theologian and Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. His scholarly interests focus on religion and public life, with special reference to the just war tradition. His syndicated column appears in sixty Catholic papers in the United States and Europe, and he serves as Vatican affairs consultant for NBC News. Mr. Weigel received his bachelor's degree from St. Mary's Seminary & University in Baltimore and his master's degree from the University of St. Michael's College in Toronto; he has been awarded eight honorary doctorates. He is the author or editor of eighteen books, including, most recently, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God, and God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church.

Dallas Willard, Ph.D.

Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. He has taught at USC since 1965, with visiting appointments at UCLA and the University of Colorado. He was director of the School of Philosophy at USC from 1982-1985. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy and the history of science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His graduate studies and much of his subsequent work has been focused upon the nature and possibilities of consciousness and knowledge. He has published many articles on the nature of mind and knowledge; his book Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge was published in 1984. Consistent with this central interest in philosophy, he has written extensively on the philosophical thought of Edmund Husserl, the founder of the modern Phenomenological movement in philosophy, and has published two volumes of translations from Husserl's works in logic and the philosophy of mathematics. Dr. Willard has also written a number of popular books on Christian practice and belief, Hearing God, The Divine Conspiracy and Renovation of the Heart (2002). These are all largely focused upon a Christian understanding of transformation of character through a process of religious experience. In recent years, his work has been devoted to working out a scholarly and philosophical understanding of how moral knowledge disappeared from the institutions and culture of the Western world. His next book, The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, is in progress.

 

Advisors Whose Term Expired December 2007
North America

William Damon, Ph.D.
Freeman J. Dyson
Gerald Gabrielse,Ph.D
Mary Ann Glendon, J.D.
William Grassie, Ph.D.
John F. Haught, Ph.D.
William B. Hurlbut, M.D.
David G. Myers, Ph.D.
Priyamvada Natarajan,Ph.D.
Jeffrey P. Schloss, Ph.D.
Jane M. Siebels, Ph.D.
Rodney Stark, Ph.D.
Lynn G. Underwood, Ph.D.
Donald G. York, Ph.D.

 

Eurasia / Australia

John D. Barrow, D. Phil.

See Board of Trustees

Andrew Briggs, Ph.D.

Professor of Nanomaterials, University of Oxford and Director of the Quantum Information Processing Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration. He has a degree in theology from Cambridge University and studied for his Ph.D. in the Physics and Chemistry of Solids group at the Cavendish Laboratory, and later came to the Department of Materials at Oxford to develop applications of acoustic microscopy. Dr. Briggs is a Professorial Fellow of St Anne's College, Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society, Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Liveryman of the Clothworkers' Company, and Guest Professor of the State Key Laboratory of Nanotechnology in Wuhan, China. He is a director of OxLoc Ltd., a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers. Dr. Briggs was awarded a Royal Society Research Fellowship in the Physical Sciences, and, within two years, was appointed to a University Lectureship. With the invention of scanning tunneling microscopy, he studied surfaces at ever higher resolution, using elevated temperatures to image oxides and semiconductor quantum dots during growth. He developed the use of elevated temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and associated techniques to study in situ the atomic structure of oxide surfaces, and the growth of semiconductors, including self-assembled heteroepitaxial nanostructures such as quantum dots and the nitride family of semiconductor materials. In 1999, he was a winner of the Metrology for World Class Manufacturing Award. His work is characterized by a close relationship between experimental observation and theoretical modeling. He is currently pursuing the application of nanomaterials to quantum computing, especially nitride quantum dots and carbon nanotubes and fullerenes. Dr. Briggs has authored over 450 publications, the majority in international refereed journals.

John Hedley Brooke, Ph.D.

Held the Andreas Idreos Professorship of Science & Religion and Directorship of the Ian Ramsey Centre at the University of Oxford from 1999 to 2006. In 2007, he is to be one of the Foundation Fellows at the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Durham. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford and Honorary Professor of the History of Science at Lancaster University. A former editor of the British Journal for the History of Science, Dr. Brooke has been president of the British Society for the History of Science and of the Historical Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1995, jointly with Professor Geoffrey Cantor, he gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow. Dr. Brooke has recently served as director of the European Science Foundation's Network on 'Science and Human Values', is a founder member of the Oxford Centre for the Science of the Mind, is currently president of the UK Forum for Science & Religion, and serves on the Executive Committee of the International Society for Science & Religion. His main books are Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives, which won the Watson Davis Prize of the History of Science Society; Thinking About Matter: Studies in the History of Chemical Philosophy and (with Geoffrey Cantor) Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science & Religion. With Margaret Osler and Jitse Van der Meer, he edited Science in Theistic Contexts: Cognitive Dimensions. His most recent publications include Heterodoxy in Early Modern Science & Religion, co-edited with Ian Maclean (Oxford University Press, 2005) and Religious Values and the Rise of Science in Europe, co-edited with Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu (IRCICA Istanbul, 2005).

Celia Deane-Drummond, Ph.D., Ph.D., FRSA.

Director of the Centre for Religion and the Biosciences at Chester University. Dr. Deane-Drummond received a doctorate in plant physiology from Reading University. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at UBC (Canada) and at Cambridge University, prior to accepting a teaching post in the botany department at Durham University. After receiving a degree then a doctorate in theology from Manchester University, Dr. Deane- Drummond took up a teaching post at Chester University. Her research has focused particularly on the interrelationship between Christian theology and the biological sciences, for which she received a personal Chair in 2000. She has published numerous articles, chapters in books, and books in that field. She was editor of the journal Ecotheology from 2001-2006. More recent books include: Creation Through Wisdom (2000, 2003 (pbk), Reordering Nature: Theology, Society and the New Genetics (joint ed, 2003) Brave New World: Theology, Ethics and the Human Genome (ed. 2003), The Ethics of Nature (2004), Genetics and Christian Ethics (2006); Wonder and Wisdom: Conversations in Science, Spirituality and Ethics (2006); Teilhard de Chardin on People and Planet (ed. 2006) and Future Perfect?: God, Medicine and Human Identity (joint ed., 2006).

Nidhal Guessoum, Ph.D.

An Algerian astrophysicist, Dr. Guessoum received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of California at San Diego and spent two years as an NRC researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. For the past six years, Dr. Guessoum has been at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates; previous to that he held academic positions in Algeria and Kuwait. For many years now, he has been a regular visiting researcher at the Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in Toulouse, France. His interests include nuclear and gamma-ray astrophysics as well as astronomy's history and heritage, particularly that of the Islamic era. He has published dozens of technical papers as well as many articles on general science issues and has co-authored two general public books, The Determination of Lunar Crescent Months and the Islamic Calendar (two editions) and The Story of the Universe (three editions), both in Arabic. Most recently, Dr. Guessoum has been active in the area of Islam-Science interface, focusing on the anthropic principle and related issues (cosmological and design arguments, etc.) as they pertain to the Islamic traditions. He is currently working on a book of dialogue(s) between Islam, modern science, and western thought.

Bruno Guiderdoni, Ph.D.

Director of the Observatory of Lyon. His main research field is in galaxy formation and evolution. He has published more than 120 papers and has organized several international conferences on these issues. He is one of the referent experts on Islam in France and has published 40 papers on Islamic theology and mystics. Dr. Guiderdoni was in charge of a French television program called "Knowing Islam" from 1993 to 1999. He is now the director of the Islamic Institute for Advanced Studies, and the principal investigator of the "Science and Religion in Islam" network of Muslim scientists.

Lydia Jaeger, Ph.D.

Permanent Lectureship and Academic Dean at the Institut Biblique de Nogent-sur-Marne, an interdenominational evangelical Bible college near Paris which trains pastors and other church workers at an undergraduate level and lay people in extension programs. After completing postgraduate studies in physics and mathematics, including research in theoretical solid state physics, at the University of Cologne (Germany) and in theology at the Seminary for Evangelical Theology in Vaux-sur-Seine (France), Dr. Jaeger obtained her Ph.D. in philosophy at the Sorbonne on the possible links between the concept of law of nature and religious presuppositions, under the supervision of Michel Bitbol (CNRS, France). Since 2000, she has had several short study leaves in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge (Great Britain), where she is also an associate member of St. Edmund's College. Commencing in 2005, Dr Jaeger has held a three-year research professorship in philosophy of science and contemporary thought (jointly based at the Seminary for Evangelical Theology in Vaux-sur-Seine and the Institut Biblique de Nogent-sur-Marne), concentrating on the training of religious leaders to develop the way they interact with the philosophies of atheism and scientism. Her current research interests are natural order, the epistemological and ethical implications of the doctrine of creation and the theology of science. Dr. Jaeger is a member of the Fellowship of European Evangelical Theologians (FEET), the Tyndale Fellowship and of Christians in Science (CiS); she is a founding member of the Société de Philosophie des Sciences. She is the author of Croire et connaître: Einstein, Polanyi et les lois de la nature (1999), and of Pour une philosophie chrétienne des sciences (2000). Two new publications, due to be published in 2007, are Lois de la nature et raisons du cœur : les convictions religieuses dans le débat épistémologique contemporain and Vivre dans un monde crée.

Sir Anthony Kenny, D.Phil., D.Litt.

Emeritus Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. Sir Anthony was educated at the Gregorian University in Rome, where he received the degree of S.T.L., was ordained as a Catholic priest and served as a curate in Liverpool. Having received his D.Phil. from the University of Oxford (St Benet's Hall), he also worked as an assistant lecturer in the University of Liverpool. He returned to the lay state in 1963 and since then, his career has been at Oxford University. He was fellow and tutor in philosophy at Balliol College, of which he was Master from 1978-89. From 1989-99, he was Warden of Rhodes House, responsible for the Rhodes scholarship program. Sir Anthony served as president of the British Academy, as chairman of the board of the British Library, has been a member of the American Philosophical Society and of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford and of the School of Advanced Study, University of London since 2002 (Senior Distinguished Fellow 2002-3).He was appointed Knight Bachelor by H.M. the Queen in 1992 and has been an Honorary Bencher of Lincoln's Inn since 1999. In October 2006, Sir Anthony was awarded the American Catholic Philosophical Association's Aquinas Medal for his significant contributions to philosophy. He has published more than forty books on philosophy, religion and history.

Rory F. Knight, M.A.(Oxon) M.Com. Ph.D. CA

Founder and Chairman of Oxford Metrica. Dr Knight created Oxford Metrica in 2000 after serving two terms as Dean of Templeton College, Oxford University's business college. Oxford Metrica is an international research and advisory firm which serves leading financial institutions on all aspects of international investment. Prior to taking up his post at Oxford, Dr Knight held a directorship within the Swiss Central Bank, having previously spent a number of years as professor in finance at IMD, a leading business school based in Switzerland. Dr Knight's research revolves around mathematical applications in finance and investments. He is currently an advisor on corporate governance to governments and corporations.

Ard A. Louis, Ph.D.

Royal Society University Research Fellow and Lecturer based in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford.He was born in the Netherlands, raised in Gabon, and received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Cornell University, U.S.A. Dr. Louis leads an interdisciplinary research group studying problems on the border between chemistry, physics and biology. He is also the International Secretary for Christians in Science.

Walter E. Thirring, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus, Department for Theoretical Physics, University of Vienna. Dr. Thirring received his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna. He was awarded fellowships to the institutions where the leading physicists worked: to Schrödinger in Dublin, to Heisenberg in Göttingen, to Pauli in Zürich and to the Institute in Princeton where he met with Einstein. He served as a professor at MIT, the University of Washington and Bern before being nominated director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Vienna. He was the founder of an institution of experimental particle physics which later became the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Austrian Academy of Science. The Institute participated in the international experiment which led to the discovery of the W and Z particles. In 1968, he was appointed director for theory at CERN. Later in his career, Dr. Thirring turned to mathematical physics and was elected the first president of the International Association for Mathematical Physics. When the iron curtain fell in 1989, there was a suggestion that an international institute be originated in Vienna and Dr. Thirring was able to convince the government that this was the occasion to make Vienna again the intellectual centre of that part of Europe. Thus he founded the Ervin Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics. In 2000, Dr. Thirring wrote Kosmische Impressionen , Gottes Spuren in denNaturgesetzen (Cosmic Impressions, Gods traces in the laws of Nature).

Ian A. Walmsley, Ph.D.

Hooke Professor of Experimental Physics and Head of Atomic and Laser Physics, University of Oxford. He read physics at Imperial College before moving to the U.S. to study for a Ph.D. in optical engineering at the Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, NY. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in electrical engineering at Cornell University and then joined the faculty at Rochester, eventually becoming director of the Institute of Optics. In 2001, he moved to Oxford. His research is in experimental quantum optics. This involves the study of nonclassical states of light and matter and their interaction, with some view to applications in which quantum phenomena can provide enhanced capabilities over what is possible using the rules of classical physics. The particular expertise of his group is the application of ultrafast lasers to generate, manipulate and detect small quantum systems, and currently has activity in the areas of linear optics quantum computing, quantum-enhanced precision measurement, coherent control of ultracold matter, attoscience, and ultrafast optical metrology. He has held visiting positions at universities in both Europe and the U.S.

Harvey Whitehouse, Ph.D.

Professor of Social Anthropology, Head of the School of Anthropology, and Professorial Fellow of Magdalen College at the University of Oxford. He was awarded his Ph.D. from Cambridge University. His research interests include cognitive and evolutionary explanations of cultural innovation and transmission, particularly in the area of religion and ritual. After carrying out two years of field research on a 'cargo cult' in New Britain, Papua New Guinea in the late eighties, Dr Whitehouse developed a theory of 'modes of religiosity' that has been the subject of extensive critical evaluation and testing by anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, and cognitive scientists. In recent years, he has focused his energies on the development of collaborative programs of research on cognition and culture. Dr. Whitehouse was professor of anthropology and the founding director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen's University Belfast (where he was awarded an Honorary Professorship on his departure) and has created a complementary centre at Oxford University – the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology. His many books include Inside the Cult (1995), Arguments and Icons (2000), and Modes of Religiosity (2004).

 

Advisors Whose Term Expired December 2007
Eurasia / Australia

Denis Alexander, Ph.D.
Alexei Bodrov, Ph.D.
Xavier Le Pichon, Ph.D.
Rev. Stephen C. Orchard, M.A., Ph.D.
Rev. John C. Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS
F. Russell Stannard, Ph.D.

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