Springfield Public Forum 2008 Speakers
All events are held at Springfield Symphony Hall, free to the public.
Roboticist James McLurkin (with his robots)
Sunday, September 14, 2008 - 2 p.m.
"Dances with Robots: An Interactive Investigation of Swarm Robots"
National Geographic Photographer and Adventurer Maria Stenzel
Tuesday October 7, 2008 - 7:30 p.m.
"The Deep South: Antarctica as Ground Zero for Climate Change"
Veteran Journalist Roger Mudd
Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - 7:30 p.m.
"The Place To Be: CBS, Washington and the Glory Days of Television News"
NPR Bureau Chief Rob Gifford
Thursday, November 13, 2008 - 7:30 p.m.
"China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power"
Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg
Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - 7:30 p.m.
"The Supreme Court"
Click here to view downloadable speaker biographies and annotated bibliographies.
Roboticist James McLurkin (with his robots)
Sunday September 14, 2008 - 2 p.m.
"Dances with Robots: How They Work, What They Do" An Interactive Investigation of Swarm Robots
Co-sponsors: Hasbro, Inc. and PeoplesBank
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Roboticist James McLurkin knows the power of play and exploration to the budding scientist. As a child, he was constantly building with plastic bricks, cardboard boxes, or any other materials he could access. Today, McLurkin continues this tradition, both in his work and in his lectures. James McLurkin is dedicated to illustrating the fun and excitement in science and engineering, and has taught many classes for high school programs from physics to civil engineering, in an effort to help mold a future engineer corps.
Using Mother Nature as a model, his core research is developing algorithms and techniques for constructing and programming large swarms of autonomous robots. Inspired by the behavior of ants and bees, the SwarmBots perform individual tasks that collectively contribute to the goals of the group. They were originally created during his five-year post as Lead Research Scientist at iRobot, one of the world's leading robotics companies.
McLurkin holds an SB in electrical engineering with a minor in mechanical engineering from MIT (1995), a M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley (1999), and an SM in computer science from MIT (2004). He has just completed his Ph.D. in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), working under Professor Leslie Kaelbling. His first robot, Rover, was constructed in 1988, and was quickly followed by many other designs, including the Robotic Ants created at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab for his undergraduate thesis.
In 2003, McLurkin received the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, which is awarded to burgeoning MIT student inventors. Also in 2003, he was recognized by Time Magazine as one of five leading robotics engineers in their "Rise of the Machines" feature, and by Black Enterprise magazine as a "Best and Brightest Under 40." In 2002, he was featured in the Lemelson Center's nationwide interactive traveling exhibit, Invention at Play, which began at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
McLurkin is a native of Baldwin, NY, where his parents were very encouraging and began cultivating his inventiveness and engineering prowess at a young age. From Lego bricks to BMX bicycling to programming self-designed video games, he quickly became consumed by his passion for engineering. McLurkin recounts, "I remember when I was in the 7th grade and saw the MIT 2.70 Design Competition on a Nova special. I thought, wow, that's the coolest thing on the planet." The T.V. program featured a behind the scenes look at students working in the labs using tools as large as they were to design robots to perform a specified task. "I was amazed that there were such tools and I saw how they were building intriguing stuff and having a competition... and I realized that's where I wanted to go."
National Geographic Photographer and Adventurer Maria Stenzel
Tuesday, October 7, 2008 - 7:30 p.m.
"The Deep South: Antarctica as Ground Zero for Climate Change "
Co-Sponsors: St. Germain Investment Management and Springfield Medical Associates
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As a contributor to National Geographic for more than 16 years, Maria Stenzel has covered a wide variety of assignments, documenting indigenous groups from the rain forest to the Arctic, dinosaur digs in Madagascar, and Inca mummies high in the Andes.
However, like most National Geographic photographers, there's one region of the world that keeps calling her back. For Stenzel, that place is Antarctica and its frozen underworld of big seas, icebergs, sea ice, and the largest concentration of wildlife on Earth--not to mention the world's largest icecap.
Her Antarctic work began in 1995 with a voyage by icebreaker to study the winter sea ice of the Southern Ocean with a team of scientists from the National Science Foundation. More projects have followed--the ice-free Dry Valleys, Sir Earnest Shackleton's heroic journey across South Georgia, a survey of scientific research in Antarctica, and the South Sandwich Islands. Part of her mission as an adventurer and photographer is to document the affects of climate change in this pristine world.
Her most recent story on the Antarctic, the South Sandwich Islands (NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, December 2006) earned World Press Photo Award. In praise of this article the American Society of Magazine Editors proclaimed, "After a century, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC managed to do the unthinkable and elevate the level of its own wondrous brand of photography. Never has the magazine's imagery been more relevant and brilliantly used to tell the epic story of our planet," citing Stenzel's "breathtaking images of penguins in the South Sandwich Islands."
Stenzel grew up in Ghana, the Netherlands, and New York. She has lived in Washington D.C. since 1980, when as a young college graduate she came to the capital city looking for work. Armed with a bachelor's degree in American Studies from the University of Virginia, she her liberal arts education had endowed in her a wide range of interests. An entry-level job at National Geographic introduced her to the world of photojournalism, and she has been on that journey ever since.
Veteran Journalist Roger Mudd
Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - 7:30 p.m..
"The Place to Be: Washington, CBS and the Glory Days of Television News"
Co-sponsors: Doherty, Wallace, Pillsbury and Murphy, P.C. and United Bank
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Roger Mudd, veteran journalist and broadcaster, began his career in the 1950s, doing print and radio reporting. His remarkable broadcast journalism career, which covered some of the most defining events of the twentieth century, began as a corresondent with CBS in 1961. In that position, he rose to prominence for his coverage of the filibuster of the Civil Rights Bill in 1964. Later in his career, Mudd also served as weekend and weekday substitute anchor of CBS Evening News, co-anchor of the weekday NBC Nightly News, host of Meet the Press, and American Almanac television news magazine, both NBC programs. He also served as a political correspondent with PBS' MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour. Most recently, he has been an anchor and documentary host for the History Channel.
In addition to his journalism work, Mudd had stints in academia, where he served as a visiting professor at Princeton and Washington and Lee Universities. Roger Mudd is also an author, of both American Heritage: Great Minds of History, Interviews by Roger Mudd, and most recently, The Place to Be: Washington, CBS and the Glory Days of Television News. Of The Place to Be, Publisher's Weekly notes, "...Mudd has written a mostly affectionate memoir. The anecdotes about his former colleagues are often humorous, occasionally nasty, but rarely gratuitous, and he is equally unsparing of himself. Mudd's aim is to educate his readers about how first-rate television journalism used to occur more frequently than it does today, and he is a fine teacher. In addition, he fills the book with stories about the politicians and bureaucrats he covered...Mudd's writing is smooth, his tone approachable, and readers old enough to have watched CBS News during the Mudd years are likely to feel nostalgia."
Mudd is the recipient of the Peabody Award, the Joan Shorenstein Award for Distinguished Washington Reporting, and five Emmy Awards. Mudd received a B.A. degree from Washington and Lee University in 1950 and a Master's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1951.
NPR Bureau Chief Rob Gifford
November 13, 2008- 7:30 p.m.
"China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power"
Sponsor: Wilbraham and Monson Academy
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China, with its rising political, economic and environmental influence, is an increasingly important player on the world stage. Speaker Rob Gifford provides an in-depth and personal look at today's China, detailing the current political, economic and social situation in China with important context provided by historical background and personal stories.
Rob Gifford served as NPR's China correspondent from 1999-2005 and now serves as NPR's London Bureau Chief. His first book, China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power, was published earlier this year.
A fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese, Gifford has traveled throughout China, from Tibet to the Muslim Northwest, to the border with North Korea, filing news and feature stories for NPR News. Gifford also has traveled widely in East Asia for NPR, covering elections in Taiwan and East Timor, diplomatic visits to North Korea, and has produced a range of features on everything from Christian missionaries in Mongolia to Internet start-ups in Hong Kong.
Two days after the terrorist attacks on the US on 9/11, Gifford flew to Pakistan for the first of many reporting trips to the region and has continued to widely reporting on Islamic issues from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Southern Philippines.
Gifford was born and raised in the U.K. where he worked for three years at the BBC World Service before moving to the US in 1994 to attend graduate school. He also spent two years at NPR member station WGBH in Boston. He holds a BA in Chinese Studies from Durham University, UK, and an MA in Regional Studies (East Asia) from Harvard University.
Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg
Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - 7:30 p.m.
"The Supreme Court"
Co-sponsors: The Western New England College School of Law and 88.5 FM WFCR/WNNZ 640 AM
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It has been said that among the most important decisions the new U.S. President will make during his term is his appointment(s) to the Supreme Court. Most analysts predict three, or perhaps four, Justices will retire in the next four to eight years; the new President's Supreme Court appointees will have a lasting impact for decades to come. To assist Public Forum audience members understand this pivotal aspect of America's political system, National Public Radio's award-winning legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg will lend her expertise to analyze the present, and future, of the Supreme Court and its impact on the lives of All Americans.
Nina Totenberg's reports air regularly on NPR's critically acclaimed newsmagazines, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition and her coverage of legal affairs and the Supreme Court has won her widespread recognition. Newsweek says, "The mainstays [of NPR] are Morning Edition and All Things Considered. But the 'creme de la creme' is Nina Totenberg." She is also a regular panelist on Inside Washington, a weekly syndicated public affairs television program produced in the nation's capital.
In 1991,Totenberg's groundbreaking report about University of Oklahoma Law Professor Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment by Judge Clarence Thomas led the Senate Judiciary Committee to re-open Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings to consider Hill's charges. NPR received the prestigious Peabody Award for its gavel-to-gavel coverage--anchored by Totenberg--of both the original hearings and the inquiry into Anita Hill's allegations, and for Totenberg's reports and exclusive interview with Hill.
That same coverage earned Totenberg additional awards, among them: the Long Island University George Polk Award for excellence in journalism; the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for investigative reporting; and the prestigious Joan S. Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based national affairs/public policy reporting, which also acknowledged her coverage of Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement.
In 1988, Totenberg won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for her coverage of Supreme Court nominations. The jurors of the award stated, "Ms. Totenberg broke the story of Judge (Douglas) Ginsburg's use of marijuana, raising issues of changing social values and credibility with careful perspective under deadline pressure."
Nina Totenberg has also won every major journalism award in broadcasting, and is the only radio journalist to have won the National Press Foundation award for Broadcaster of the Year. She has been honored eight times by the American Bar Association for continued excellence in legal reporting, and has received a number of honorary degrees. On a lighter note, in 1992 and 1988, Esquire magazine named her one of the "Women We Love."
A frequent contributor to major newspapers and periodicals, she has published articles in the New York Times Magazine, the Harvard Law Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Parade magazine, New York Magazine, and others. Before joining NPR in 1975, Totenberg served as Washington editor of New Times Magazine, and before that she was the legal affairs correspondent for the National Observer.