Paul Ekman, PhD, was a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco for 32 years. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Chicago and New York University. He received his Ph.D. from Adelphi University in 1958 after spending a year in clinical internship at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, part of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He served as chief psychologist in the U.S. Army, Fort Dix, New Jersey from 1958-1960. On discharge he returned to UCSF where he held a three-year postdoctoral research fellowship. He then initiated his research program supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the DOD, loosely affiliated with UCSF. In 1972 he was appointed Professor of Psychology at UCSF. His interests have focused on two separate but related topics. He originally focused on ‘non-verbal’ behavior, and by the mid-60’s concentrated on the expression and physiology of emotion. His second interest is interpersonal deception. His many honors have included the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association in 1991, and an honorary doctor of humane letters from the University of Chicago in 1994. Ekman retired from UCSF in 2004. He currently continues to consult on research and training related to emotion and deception.

Ekman previously served on the Mind & Life Board of Directors.

 

BENNETT M. SHAPIRO is a consultant in biotechnology. He was previously Executive Vice President, Worldwide Licensing and External Research, where he directed Merck’s research relationships with the academic and industrial biomedical research community. He joined Merck Research Laboratories in September of 1990 as Executive Vice President, Basic Research, Merck Research Laboratories. In this position he was responsible for all the basic and preclinical research activities at Merck worldwide. Earlier, he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington. He is the author of over 120 papers on the molecular regulation of cellular behavior and the biochemical events that integrate the cascade of cellular activations at fertilization.

Shapiro received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Dickinson College and his doctor’s degree in medicine from Jefferson Medical College. Following an Internship in Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, he was a Research Associate at the NIH, then a Visiting Scientist at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and returned to the NIH as Chief Section on Cellular Differentiation in the Laboratory of Biochemistry, prior to joining the University of Washington. Dr. Shapiro has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and a Visiting Professor at the University of Nice.

Bennett Shapiro served on the Mind & Life Board of Directors from 2003 to 2016.

George Greenstein, PhD, is the Sidney Dillon Professor of Astronomy at Amherst College. He received his BS from Stanford and his PhD from Yale, both in physics. Initially his interests centered on research in theoretical astrophysics, but later they shifted to writing. He is the author of numerous works interpreting science for nonscientists. His first book, Frozen Star, was the recipient of two science-writing awards. In conjunction with Arthur Zajonc he is the author of a recent textbook titled The Quantum Challenge: Modern Research on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, which discusses the problems of interpretation posed by quantum mechanics. 

Prof. Dr. Anton Zeilinger’s work on the foundations of quantum physics has led both to concepts for a novel quantum information technology and to a new understanding of fundamental issues in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. His group’s achievements include quantum teleportation, entangled-state quantum cryptography, the first experimental realization of a one-way quantum computer and the world record for the largest molecules for which quantum interference has been shown. Among his distinctions are the German Order Pour le Mérite, the King Faisal International Prize in Science, the Sartorius Prize by the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen and honorary doctorates of the Humboldt University Berlin and Gdansk University in Poland. He is a member of the Austrian, the Berlin-Brandenburg, the Polish and the Slovak Academies of Science and of the German Leopoldina. Zeilinger is currently Professor at the Physics Department of Vienna University and at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.