World-Renowned Scientists

Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, M.D., is a cardiologist and psychiatrist who turns to the natural world for insights into human health and development. Faculty in the Harvard-MIT HST Program, Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology and Professor of Medicine at UCLA, she studies a diverse range of animals and disorders from congestive heart failure in okapi, bats and wallabies, to compulsive disorders in birds, cats and horses. She is the co-author of NYT bestseller, Zoobiquity, which was a Finalist in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)’s Excellence in Science Books Award, a Smithsonian Top Book of 2012, a Discover Magazine Best Book of 2012, and the China Times Best Book of 2012. Zoobiquity has been translated into ten languages and has been a common read at universities across the country.

Dr. Natterson-Horowitz was the invited keynote speaker at the 2019 Nobel Conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

Constantina Theofanopoulou is an Associate Research Professor at Hunter College, City University of New York, a Visiting Associate Professor at Rockefeller University and a Visiting Scholar at New York University. She is directing the Neurobiology of Social Communication lab, which is co-funded by both Hunter College and Rockefeller University. Her overall goal is to dissect the neural circuits of complex sensory motor behaviors that serve social communication, essentially, speech and dance, and to identify possible therapies for disorders that include deficits in these behaviors.

For her Ph.D., she worked on the neurobiology of the social reward mechanisms underlying speech, specifically on the role of oxytocin in vocal learning in songbirds and humans. This project led her to realize that the oxytocin/vasotocin field was suffering from an inconsistent gene nomenclature that was hampering translational research. To mitigate this, during her Post Doc (Rockefeller University), she used novel genomic methods and proposed how gene nomenclature should be revisited, aiming at a universal vertebrate gene nomenclature.

Professor Nim Tottenham is a developmental neuroscientist and professor of psychology at Columbia University, where she leads the Developmental Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. Her research focuses on changes in amygdala-prefrontal cortex circuitry across childhood and adolescence and the effect of early experiences on how these circuits develop.

Professor Tottenham is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the Society for Experimental Psychologists and has received several prestigious awards for her contributions to developmental neuroscience, including the National Academy of Sciences Troland Research Award. One of her most cited works is the NimStim set of facial expressions, consisting of 672 photographs of various facial expressions, which is used widely in research on working memory, self-regulation, and clinical disorders. Her scientific contributions in developmental neuroscience have also been recognized by the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology, the Flux Award, and the American Psychosomatic Society.

Cumrun Vafa is a theoretical physicist who received his BS in Math and Physics from MIT in 1981 and his PhD in Physics from Princeton University in 1985 under the direction of Edward Witten. After completing his studies, he joined the faculty at Harvard University, where he has been teaching ever since. In 2018, he was appointed Harvard’s Hollis Professor of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy.

Vafa’s primary area of research is string theory, which is at the forefront of efforts by theoretical physicists to find a unified fundamental theory of nature in a consistent quantum theory. The study of string theory involves investigating the mysteries of confinement of quarks inside atomic nuclei and exploring the enigmatic properties of astrophysical objects such as black holes. As a result, string theory is at the crossroads of many fields, including mathematics, particle phenomenology, and astrophysics. Vafa’s research has involved all these aspects, and he has made significant contributions to the field of string theory. One of Vafa’s most notable contributions is his work on the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, which describes the amount of entropy that a black hole can have. He has also worked on topological strings, which aim to elucidate new mathematics originating from string theory and use these techniques to uncover the mysteries of black holes. In addition to his research, Vafa has authored over 300 research articles in the fields of string theory, mathematics, and physics.

Vafa’s groundbreaking contributions to string theory have earned him many accolades throughout his career. He is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences and has received a number of awards and recognitions for his work, including the Dirac Medal of ICTP, the AMS Leonard Eisenbud Prize for Math and Physics, the APS Dannie Heineman Prize in Mathematical Physics, and the 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. His research and teaching continue to have a profound impact on the field of theoretical physics.