Biographies of RSI Speakers 2006
- Carl Bergstrom
- Axel Börsch-Supan
- Judith Campisi, Ph.D.
- William Gale
- David Laibson
- Ronald Lee
- S. Jay Olshansky
- Alberto Palloni
- Malcolm C. Pike
- Samuel Preston
- Norbert Schwarz
- Thomas Seyfried
- David Snowdon
- Walter C. Willett, M.D., Dr. P.H.
Carl Bergstrom
University of Washington
http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/
In February 2001, Dr. Bergstrom joined the faculty in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA.
Prior to that, he did two-and-a-half years of postdoctoral work at Emory University. There he worked with Bruce Levin on the ecology and evolution of bacteria, with Marc Lipsitch on the ecology of nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infection, and with Rustom Antia on the evolution of the vertebrate immune response.
In 1998, Dr. Bergstrom received a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University. His principal advisor was Marcus Feldman and his dissertation was entitled Game-theoretic models of signalling among relatives. His graduate work focused on the mathematics of signal evolution, and on stochasticity in evolutionary processes.
Dr. Bergstrom did his undergraduate work at Harvard University from 1989 to 1993, majoring in biology with a focus on evolution and animal behavior. He worked with Naomi Pierce on the evolution of cooperation and with David Haig, on population genetic models of meiotic drive.
When he's not working he likes to be outside, be it hiking, rock climbing, working with his bonsai trees, or simply spending time with his wife Holly and his daughter Helen.
Axel Börsch-Supan
University of Mannheim
http://www.mea.uni-mannheim.de
Axel Börsch-Supan is Director of the Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging (MEA) which he founded and Professor for Macroeconomics and Public Policy at the University of Mannheim, Germany. He holds a diploma in mathematics from the University of Bonn, Germany. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taught at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and at Dortmund University before joining Mannheim.
Axel Börsch-Supan chairs the Council of Advisors to the German Economics Ministry and the pension reform unit of the German Social Security Reform Commission. He is research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), speaker for the program project on behavioral economics at Mannheim (SFB504), and coordinator of the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).
Axel Börsch-Supan has published widely on topics of applied econometrics, household saving, housing demand, retirement decisions and economic implications of aging. He is member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin-Brandenburg and the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina. He is married and has three children.
Judith Campisi, Ph.D.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and
Buck Institute for Age Research
http://www.lbl.gov/lifesciences/CMB/Campisi.html
http://www.buckinstitute.org/faculty.aspx?id=825
Judith Campisi received her doctorate in Biochemistry from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and postdoctoral training in the area of cell cycle regulation and cancer at the Harvard Medical School. As an Assistant Professor at the Boston University Medical School, she became interested the control of cellular senescence and its role in tumor suppression and aging. In 1991, she moved her research program to the Berkeley National Laboratory, where she continues to study cellular senescence and has established a broad program in various aspects of aging. In 2002, she established a second laboratory at the Buck Institute for Age Research, the first free-standing institute devoted to aging research in the US. She is the recipient of two MERIT awards from the National Institute on Aging (1995, 2005), Senior Scholar award from the Ellison Medical Foundation, the AlliedSignal Award (1997), and awards from the Gerontological Society of America (1999) and American Federation for Aging Research (2002) for her research on aging. She serves on several editorial boards and advisory boards.
William Gale
Brookings Institution
http://www.brookings.org/scholars/wgale.htm
Bill Gale is a Senior Fellow and holds the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. He is deputy director of the Economic Studies Program and co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute. His areas of expertise include tax policy, budget and fiscal policy, public and private saving behavior and pensions.
Before joining Brookings, Gale was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California at Los Angeles, and a senior staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisers.
Gale is co-editor of The Evolving Pension System: Trends, Effects, and Proposals for Reform (2005), Private Pensions and Public Policy (2004), Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation (2001), and Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform (1996), all published by Brookings.
Gale is author or co-author of numerous academic articles. He contributes a regular column called “Tax Break,” which appears in Tax Notes magazine, and has published in a wide variety of popular media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.
Gale has received grants from the National Institute on Aging, the National Science Foundation, Smith-Richardson Foundation, the Social Security Administration, the American Council on Life Insurance, the Lumina Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, TIAA-CREF Institute, the Department of Labor, the Institute for Research on Poverty, and the Center for American Politics and Public Policy.
Gale received his B.A. in economics from Duke University and his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. He also studied for a year as an undergraduate at the London School of Economics. He lives in Fairfax, VA, with his wife, two children, and two golden retrievers. He is an avid tennis player, runner, and skier.
David Laibson
Harvard University
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/laibson/laibson.html
Dr. David I. Laibson is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a Research Associate at the NBER. He is also a member of the Institutional Review Board at the NBER and the Data Monitoring Committee (external review Board) of the Health and Retirement Survey. His research is funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Aging, and the Social Security Administration. His research uses different methodological tools including laboratory experiments, field experiments, twin studies, genotyping, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), computer simulations, and theory. He is currently working in the fields of decision and cognitive sciences, neuroeconomics, behavioral finance, and genomics. Dr. Laibson received a BA in Economics from Harvard University (1988, Summa Cum Laude), an MSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics (1990, with distinction), and a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1994).
Ronald Lee
University of California, Berkeley
http://www.ceda.berkeley.edu/peoplenew/rlee.html
Professor Ronald Lee holds an M.A. in Demography from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. He spent a postdoctoral year at the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED, France). After teaching for eight years at the University of Michigan in the Economics Department and working at the Populations Studies Center, he joined Demography at Berkeley in 1979, with a joint appointment in Economics. He currently holds the Edward G. and Nancy S. Jordan Endowed Chair in Economics. He has taught courses here in economic demography, population theory, population and economic development, demographic forecasting, population aging, indirect estimation, and research design, as well as a number of pro-seminars. Honors include Presidency of the Population Association of America, the Mindel C. Sheps Award for research in Mathematical Demography, the PAA Irene B. Taeuber Award for outstanding contributions in the field of demography. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Corresponding member of the British Academy. He has chaired the population and social science study section for NIH and the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Population, and served on the National Advisory Committee on Aging (NIA Council). Professor Lee is also the Director of the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging at U.C. Berkeley, funded by the National Institute of Aging. His current research includes including modeling and forecasting demographic time series, the evolutionary theory of life histories, population aging, Social Security, and intergenerational transfers. He enjoys tennis and hiking.
S. Jay Olshansky
University of Illinois, Chicago
http://apr.sph.uic.edu/faculty_profile/facultyprofile.asp?i=sjayo
S. Jay Olshansky received his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1984. He is currently a Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Research Associate at the Center on Aging at the University of Chicago and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The focus of his research to date has been on estimates of the upper limits to human longevity, exploring the health and public policy implications associated with individual and population aging, and global implications of the re-emergence of infectious and parasitic diseases.
During the last fifteen years, Dr. Olshansky has been working with colleagues in the biological sciences to develop the modern "biodemographic paradigm" of mortality – an effort to understand the biological nature of the dying out process of living organisms. Dr. Olshansky's work on biodemography has been funded by a Special Emphasis Research Career Award (SERCA) and Independent Scientist Award (ISA) from the National Institute on Aging – awards that were designed to permit him to obtain additional training in the fields of evolutionary biology, molecular biology, genetics, epidemiology, population biology, anthropology and statistics.
Dr. Olshansky is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences and Biogerontology and he is on the editorial board of several other scientific journals. He was an invited speaker at the December, 2002 President's Council on Bioethics, Fortune Magazine's 2004 Brainstorm meeting, The Nobel Conference devoted to the science of aging, the 2005 UNESCO conference on Health and Longevity; and the Institute of Medicine - 2004, and has testified before the trustees of the Social Security Administration where his research has influenced forecasts of the nation's entitlement programs. Dr. Olshansky is the recipient of a 2005/2006 Senior Fulbright Award to lecture in France; he has been invited to lecture on aging throughout the world; and has participated in a number of international debates on the future of human health and longevity. Dr. Olshansky is the first author of The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging (Norton, 2001).
Alberto Palloni
University of Wisconsin-Madison
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/faculty/palloni.htm
Dr. Alberto Palloni is President of the Population Association of America and Director for the Center for Demography and Ecology at University of Wisconsin. He is also a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Currently his research explores health and inequality in developed countries, mortality and health disparities, statistical models for the analysis of self reported health data, aging in developing countries, effects of HIV/AIDS on families and households in Sub-Saharan Africa, relations between early health status and adult socioeconomic achievement and health status.
Malcolm C. Pike , Ph.D.
University of Southern California
http://www.usc.edu/schools/medicine/util/directories/faculty/profile.php?PersonIs_ID=910
Dr. Malcolm Pike is University Professor of Preventive Medicine at the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles.
Dr. Pike was born in South Africa and received his undergraduate degree in Mathematics in South Africa before moving to the United Kingdom. While in the UK he studied Mathematical Statistics at the Universities of London, Cambridge and Aberdeen, where he obtained his PhD. He then worked for the UK Medical Research Council's Statistical Research Unit at the University of London before moving with Professor Sir Richard Doll to the Regius Department of Medicine at Oxford University. In 1973 he joined Dr. Brian Henderson at USC Medical School to help found the epidemiology program there under the auspices of the National Cancer Institute's Special Virus Cancer Program and has remained there since this time except for a 4 year period in the mid 1980s when he was Director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund's Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford in the UK.
Dr. Pike is a Member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and has received the Brinker International Award of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the American Association for Cancer Research's Award for Research Excellence in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention.
Dr. Pike's main research interest is in the chemoprevention of breast and ovarian cancer.
Samuel Preston
University of Pennsylvania
http://www.ssc.upenn.edu/soc/People/prestonsamuel.html
Dr. Samuel Preston received his B.A in Economics from Amherst College and his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University. He is both a professor of Sociology and the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to that he was the Director of the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Dr. Preston's professional honors include Member of the National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, President of the Population Association of America, and the Irene B. Taeuber Award for Excellence in Demographic Research. His professional activities over the last decade have and do include membership to the Board of Trustees on the Population Council and a member of the Technical Advisory Panel on Assumptions and Methods on the Social Security Advisory Council.
Some of his research has focused on African-American mortality, effect of age reporting on mortality estimates, and training the Demography of Aging.
Norbert Schwarz
University of Michigan
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/norbert.schwarz/
Norbert Schwarz is Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Research Professor in the Survey Research Center and the Research Center for Group Dynamics at Michigan's Institute for Social Research, and Professor of Marketing in the Ross School of Business. He received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Mannheim, Germany (1980) and a “Habilitation” in psychology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany (1986). Prior to joining the University of Michigan in 1993, he taught psychology at the University of Heidelberg (1981-1992) and served as Scientific Director of ZUMA, an interdisciplinary social science research center in Mannheim (1987-1992). His research interests focus on human judgment and cognition, including the interplay of feeling and thinking, the socially situated nature of cognition, and the implications of basic cognitive and communicative processes for public opinion, consumer behavior and social science research.
Dr. Schwarz is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association for Psychological Science (formerly American Psychological Society), and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, as well as a former Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Other honors include the Wilhelm Wundt Medal of the German Psychological Association (jointly with Fritz Strack) for contributions to psychology, the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Preis of the German Department of Science and Education for early career contributions, the Thomas M. Ostrom Award of the Person Memory Interest Group for contributions to social cognition, and a Rackham Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award from the University of Michigan.
Dr. Schwarz serves, or has served, as associate or consulting editor for numerous journals in the behavioral sciences, including, Psychological Science; Journal of Experimental Psychology: General; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; Journal of Experimental Social Psychology; Personality and Social Psychology Review; Emotion; Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes; Journal of Behavioral Decision Making; Journal of Consumer Psychology; Public Opinion Quarterly, and Social Indicators Research. His publications include 20 books and more than 200 journal articles and chapters.
Thomas Seyfried
Boston College
http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/biology/facadmin/seyfried/
Dr. Thomas N. Seyfried did his undergraduate work in biology at the University of New England, ME, and received an MS degree in molecular genetics from Illinois State University, Normal, IL. He received his Ph.D. degree in biochemical genetics from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. After three years of postdoctoral work in the Department of Neurology at the Yale University School of Medicine, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Yale Medical School. While at Yale, Dr. Seyfried developed research programs in the genetics of epilepsy and in the biochemistry of brain cancer. In 1985, Dr. Seyfried moved his research program from Yale University to Boston College where he is now Professor of Biology. Over the several years, his research program has focused on the dietary management of neurological and neurodegenerative disease to include epilepsy, brain cancer, and lipid storage diseases. These diet therapies involve caloric restriction, fasting, and the ketogenic diet. Dr. Seyfried's research program has been actively funded through government and private foundations for more than 25 years.
David Snowdon
University of Kentucky
http://www.mc.uky.edu/nunnet/faq.htm
Dr. David Snowdon earned his Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of Minnesota. He is a Professor in the department of Neurology in the College of Medicine and the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky. He is the director of the Nun Study, a longitudinal study of health and aging. Participants in the Nun Study are 678 American members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame religious congregation.
Findings from the Nun Study have been featured locally on evening television news programs and nationally on NBC's The Today Show, CNN, ABC Nightline, and all three networks evening news programs. Articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and TIME, Newsweek and National Geographic magazines as well as in various national and international newspapers.
Nun Study findings have been published in scientific journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Epidemiology and the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Dr. Snowdon has authored a book Aging with Grace, published on May 8, 2001 by Bantam Books.
Walter C. Willett, M.D., Dr. P.H.
Harvard School of Public Health
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/facres/wlltt.html
Dr. Walter Willett is Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition and Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, studied food science at Michigan State University, and graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School before obtaining a Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Willett has focused much of his work overt the last 25 years on the development of methods, using both questionnaire and biochemical approaches, to study the effects of diet on the occurrence of major diseases. He has applied these methods starting in 1980 in the Nurses' Health Studies I and II and the Health Professionals' Follow-up Study. Together, these cohorts that include nearly 300,000 men and women with repeated dietary assessments are providing the most detailed information on the long-term health consequences of food choices. Dr. Willett has published over 900 articles, primarily on lifestyle risk factors for heart disease and cancer, and has written the textbook, Nutritional Epidemiology, published by Oxford University Press. His recent book for the general public, Eat, Drink and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating, has appeared on most major bestseller lists. Dr. Willett is the most cited nutritionist internationally, and is among the 25 most cited persons in all fields of science. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of many national and international awards for his research.
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