Canadian Institute for Advanced Research well represented at AAAS 2012

CIFAR makes an impact at the AAAS 2012 meeting, one of the world's largest and most renowned science events. Organized by The American Association for the Advancement of Science, over 4,000 delegates will descend on Vancouver, B.C. from February 16 to 20.

With the theme "Flattening the world: Building a global knowledge society" participants will consider how international models and multinational collaborative efforts can tackle the challenges of the 21st century, which are global and complex. It's a theme that aligns well with CIFAR's 30-year history of building global research initiatives on topics of international importance.

CIFAR researchers lead four of the 44 symposia, and contribute to thirteen presentation.

CIFAR-led symposia:

A decline in biodiversity poses dramatic consequences to almost every aspect of human development - from food supply to global health to the economy. Our ability to respond to these threats depends on the exploration of the most prevalent, and tiniest, living forms on earth: microorganisms. This session will illustrate the challenges of exploring microbial diversity in natural habitats such as the open oceans, deep into the ground, or inside our own bodies.

Claudio Slamovits (Dalhousie University), Patrick J. Keeling (University of British Columbia), Alexandra Z. Worden (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) and Forest Rohwer (San Diego State University) present Seeing Biosphere's Dark Matter: Genomic Methods on Unculturable Microbial Diversity.
The Earth's climate has fluctuated since the beginning of time, but only recently have scientists been able to quantify the impact of climate change on human behaviour and development. An interdisciplinary panel will share findings about climate and human evolution over the last several million years. This knowledge will determine new strategies for mapping how the changing weather shaped human civilization as we know it.

Mark Collard (Simon Fraser University) leads Climate Change and Human Evolution: Problems and Projects.
Recent advances in science show that early experience has a lasting impact on health and well-being, shaping our brains for life. By understanding how the young brain wires itself in response to its environment, scientists are trying to find the mechanisms that reopen the brain's responsiveness in later life, when much of the brain is fixed. This could pave the way for interventions to treat a myriad of disorders.

Janet F. Werker (University of British Columbia) leads The Effects of Early Experience on Lifelong Functioning: Commitment and Resilience.
Takao Hensch (Harvard University) and Charles A. Nelson III (Harvard Medical School) contribute to the panel.
The world's oceans contain the greatest reservoir of unexplored genetic potential on the planet, but fall outside of the jurisdiction, ownership and protection of any state or international agreement. Understanding the wealth of marine biodiversity, and unlocking it's genetic diversity, will help researchers to develop solutions on how to manage and share the benefits from this untapped resource of knowledge to the benefit of all nations.

Curtis A. Suttle (University of British Columbia) leads Marine Biological Diversity: Who Owns the Greatest Reservoir of Unexplored Diversity?
Other CIFAR researchers at AAAS are:

• Michael E. Grigg (National Institutes of Health), on Swimming in Sick Seas
• Michele Lamont (Harvard University) on Successful Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Insights from Practice to Theory
• Scott Aaronson (MIT) on Quantum Computing and the Laws of Physics
• Raymond Laflamme (University of Waterloo) on Quantum Information Science and Technology: A Global Perspective
• Raymond Laflamme and Thomas Jennewein (University of Waterloo, Institute for Quantum Computing) on Quantum Information Technologies: A New Era for Global Communication