Scientific Sense ®

Does Crowdfunding Benefit Entrepreneurs and Venture Capital Investors?,  Promoting Solar Panel Investments: Feed-in-Tariff vs. Tax-Rebate, R&D Investments in the Presence of Knowledge Spillover and Debt Financing: Can Risk Shifting Cure Free Riding? Prof. Volodymyr Babich is a Professor of Operations and Information Management at Georgetown University. Prof. Babich’s research interests are the interface of operations and finance, supply risk management, supply chain management, stochastic modeling, and risk management. He serves as an associate editor for Management Science, M&SOM, and Naval Research Logistics, and as a senior editor for Production and Operations Management journals.

The electric grid: infrastructure, risk management, security, and upgrading, optimization of scheduling, storage, pricing and production flexibility, co-optimization of electric bus transportation, storage, and water distribution systems. Dr. Masood Parvania is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair for Research and Advancement at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Utah. His research interests are on the applications of mathematical optimization methods, calculus of variations, and scientific computing to the operation and planning of interdependent critical infrastructure, cyber-physical power, and energy systems, and modeling and integration of distributed renewable energy resources.

The early evolution of the universe, leptogenesis, baryogenesis, and nucleosynthesis in the big bang and particle physics mysteries Prof. Keith Olive is a theoretical physicist, and director at the William I Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, University of Minnesota, specializing in particle physics and cosmology. His main topics of research are big bang nucleosynthesis, particle dark matter; big bang baryogenesis, and inflation.

Adversarial Models for Opponent Intent Inferencing, Intelligence Analyses, and the Insider Threat,  and Discriminating deception from truth and misinformation: an intent-level approach Prof. Eugene Santos who is a  Professor of Engineering at Dartmouth College. Dr. Santos’ work on artificial intelligence intersections with the areas of information, cognition, human factors, and mathematics. His current focus is on computational intent, dynamic human behavior, and decision-making with an emphasis on learning nonlinear and emergent behaviors and explainable AI. Dr. Santos has applied his work with the goal of a better understanding of how we, both as individuals and our society, can best leverage knowledge through AI to improve our world for social good. He is a Fellow of the AAAS and IEEE.

A brief history of the universe and its possible death scenarios, WMAP, ACT, and WFIRST projects, inflation, dark energy, dark matter, and alternative theories, and artificial intelligence to aid cosmology and astrophysics. Prof. David Spergel is the director of the Center for Computational Astrophysics at Flatiron Institute and Emeritus Professor Princeton University. His research interests range from the search for planets around nearby stars to the shape of the universe. Using microwave background observations from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, he has measured the age, shape, and composition of the universe. He is currently co-chair of the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) science team. WFIRST will study the nature of dark energy, complete the demographic survey of exoplanets, characterize the atmospheres of nearby planets and survey the universe with more than 100 times the field of view of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Evolution, Ideology, and Human Nature, New Evidence about Human Nature, Biocultural Synthesis, Domination Systems, and Partnership Systems, Four cornerstones of change: Childhood Relations, Gender Relations, Economic Relations, and Narratives. Prof. Riane Eisler who is a systems scientist and cultural historian whose research focuses on how to construct a more equitable and less violent world based on partnership rather than domination. She is president of the Center for Partnership Studies (CPS), and Editor in Chief of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies, She has written many books applying her research to evolution, religion, education, sexuality, economics, and politics, including Nurturing Our Humanity

Frontiers of Materials Research, Metals, Glasses, and Quantum Materials, Simulation and Computational Tools, and AI in Materials Research Prof. Nadya Mason is a professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she specializes in experimental studies of materials. Prof. Mason’s research focuses on the electronic properties of small-scale materials, such as nano-scale wires and atomically thin membranes. Her research is relevant to applications involving nano-scale and quantum computing elements. She currently serves as Director of the Illinois Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (I-MRSEC), a multidisciplinary research and education center funded by the National Science Foundation.

Economic Diversity and the Resource Curse, Gravity, Borders, and Regionalism, and Globalization, Income Disparity, and Inclusive Development Dr. Fred Olayele is the Chief Economist and Head of the Economic Research & Policy Group with New York City Economic Development Corporation. He oversees economic research and policy initiatives aimed at making New York City the global model for inclusive growth and innovation. He is also a Research Professor at the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Canada.

Effects of food, sleep and the microbiome on Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease and other neurodegenerative diseases Prof. Giulio Pasinetti is a Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Geriatrics at the Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS). He also serves as the Director of Basic and Biomedical Research in the Center for Geriatric Research and Training at the Bronx Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He is also the Director of the Center for Molecular Integrative Neuroresilience at Mount Sinai.

Suspense and Surprise: How to write novels and enjoy sports/politics, Why torture or money for information schemes are not advisable, Rotation to mitigate epidemics, Allocating tests in a pandemic, and a cake-cutting solution to gerrymandering. Prof. Jeff Ely is the director of the mathematical methods in Social Sciences at Northwestern University. He is a microeconomic theorist with interests ranging from pure game theory to applied microeconomics to behavioral and experimental economics. His work includes contributions to the foundations of Game Theory under incomplete information, repeated games, and the evolution of preferences. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society. He was a founding co-editor of the open-access journal Theoretical Economics.