Carl Wieman received his undergraduate degree in physics from MIT and holds a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford. He has been a pioneer in the field of atomic and optical physics and shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001 for the achievement of Bose-Einstein Condensation with ultra-cooled atoms. More recently, Carl has devoted his efforts to science education. He has pioneered the use of experimental techniques to evaluate the effectiveness of various teaching strategies for physics and for sciences more broadly. He served as Associate Director for Science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Obama Administration.
David C. Parkes is the Dean and George F. Colony Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Parkes founded the EconCS research group at SEAS, which conducts theoretical and experimental research at the intersection of economics and computer science, exploring artificial intelligence and algorithms for social and economic impact. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Dean Parkes was the founding faculty co-director of the Harvard Data Science Initiative and of the Harvard Business Analytics program and was named a Harvard College Professor, a 5-year appointment that recognizes exemplary teaching. Following his M. Eng. in Engineering and Computing Science from the University of Oxford, Parkes received a Thouron Award to study at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science. He is the inventor or co-inventor on 17 patents.
Eric Mazur is the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University and Member of the Faculty of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He served as Area Chair and Area Dean of Applied Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences from 2010 until 2021 and Academic Dean from 2021 until 2024. Mazur is Chair of the Optica Foundation, a philanthropic organization supporting students and early-career professionals in the field of optics and photonics, and Past President of Optica (formerly the Optical Society).
