A panel discussion, "Stem Cell Therapies: The Science and the Controversy," will be presented on Friday, Sept. 30, at 1:30 p.m. in Hamilton's new Science Auditorium as part of the College's science center dedication weekend "Celebrating Science at Hamilton College." The panel will feature Dr. Robert Almeder, author and a member of the Philosophy Department at Georgia State University and Dr. Susan Bryant (P' 08) dean of Biological Sciences at University of California at Irvine, and a member of the California Citizens Oversight Committee. The new $56 million science center is the largest construction project in Hamilton's history.
Dr. Almeder is the inaugural appointment to the recently endowed Alan McCullough, Jr. Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Hamilton. The professorship is located in the Philosophy Department and brings specialists in ethics and political philosophy to campus for one-semester (or sometimes full-year) appointments.
Almeder is the editor, with James Humber, of Human Cloning (1998, Humana Press). He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969. He taught previously at SUNY at Oswego, and then was appointed associate professor in philosophy at Georgia State University in 1972, and professor in philosophy in 1980.
Almeder received the Georgia State University Alumni Distinguished Professor Award for College of Arts and Sciences in 1984, and for the University in l995. He received the Outstanding Educator of America Award in 1973 and is recipient of National Fellowship Award from the Council for Philosophical Studies, two SUNY research grants, and two Georgia Endowment for the Humanities grants to conduct public conferences on bioethical issues. Almeder also received a NSF/CDC grant for research on the method of quantitative risk assessment.
He is editor of The American Philosophical Quarterly and co-editor of the annual book series Biomedical Ethics Reviews. Almeder is the author of many books and articles, including The Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce: A Critical Introduction (1980); Blind Realism: An Essay on Human Knowledge and Natural Science (1991); Harmless Naturalism (l998); Death and Personal Survival (l992); Human Happiness and Morality: A Brief Introduction to Ethics (2000); Glossary of Epistemology and Philosophy of Science(co-authored with James Fetzer, 1992); Business Ethics: Corporate Values and Society (co-edited with M. Snoeyenbos and J. Humber (revised edition l992), and Biomedical Ethics and the Law (co-edited with J. Humber, 1979).
Susan Bryant obtained her undergraduate degree at King's College London and her Ph.D. at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, University of London. She moved to the U.S. to study regeneration as a postdoctoral fellow at Case Western Reserve University, and was recruited as the first woman on the faculty in biology at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), a few years after the campus opened, in the late 1960s. Bryant has been an influential developmental biologist, and she established regeneration as a model system for pattern formation.
With her collaborators, she has delineated the core principles of regeneration, and has published more than 100 papers in her field. She has served on several national committees, including advisory boards for the VA Office of Regeneration Programs, and for the Indiana University Axolotl Colony. Bryant also serves on the editorial boards of several journals in her field. In 2001 she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has held several leadership positions, including program director at NSF, assistant vice chancellor for plans and programs and department chair at UCI, and dean of the School of Biological Sciences at UCI since 2000, the beginning of a period of explosive growth.
Bryant's goal as dean is to ensure that the school is a major participant in the discoveries that are fueling the revolution in biology and at the same time to work for the full participation of women and minorities in the scientific enterprise. She has been concerned about this issue for many years, and in 1987 was awarded one of the first UCI Pacesetter Awards for contributions to women at UCI. As dean, she competed successfully in 2001 for a large institutional NSF grant to address gender equity on the faculty, the Advance Program for Institutional Transformation, the only award to a California university. In 2005, Bryant was elected a Fellow, the highest honor bestowed, by the Association of Women in Science. Bryant's daughter is a rising sophomore at Hamilton College.
The panel discussion, which is presented by the Hamilton student organization "Biology Matters," is free and open to the public.
