Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturers, 2025–2026

Potential hosts should contact lecturers directly to book events. In making arrangements, hosts should be specific about dates, lecture topic, scope of the lecturer's visit and any special accommodations that may be called for.

Each lecturer has designated his or her topic(s) for three different types of audiences. Where more than one level is shown, the lecture can be adjusted to the needs of the audience:

• P (Public)
  Aimed at presenting scientific issues of general concern to a public audience.

• G (General)
  Intended for a typical Sigma Xi audience of both scientists and other scholars representing a broad range of disciplines.

• S (Specialized)
  Aimed at scientists and students in fields that are closely related to that of the lecturer.

David A. Bader

New Jersey Institute of Technology
Distinguished Professor

Email
Website

1. Solving Global Grand Challenges with High Performance Data Analytics (P, G, S)
2. Predictive Analysis from Massive Knowledge Graphs (P, G, S)
3. Interactive Data Science at Scale (P, G, S)

David A. Bader is a Distinguished Professor and founder of the Department of Data Science and inaugural Director of the Institute for Data Science at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Prior to this, he served as founding Professor and Chair of the School of Computational Science and Engineering, College of Computing, at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dr. Bader is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, AAAS, and SIAM, and a recipient of the IEEE Sidney Fernbach Award. He advises the White House, most recently on the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) and Future Advanced Computing Ecosystem (FACE). Bader is a leading expert in solving global grand challenges in science, engineering, computing, and data science. His interests are at the intersection of high-performance computing and real-world applications, including cybersecurity, massive-scale analytics, and computational genomics, and he has co-authored over 300 scholarly papers and has best paper awards from ISC, IEEE HPEC, and IEEE/ACM SC.

Dr. Bader is Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Parallel Computing, and previously served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems. ROI-NJ recognized Bader as a technology influencer on its 2021 inaugural and 2022 lists. In 2012, Bader was the inaugural recipient of University of Maryland’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award.

In 2014, Bader received the Outstanding Senior Faculty Research Award from Georgia Tech. Bader has also served as Director of the Sony-Toshiba-IBM Center of Competence for the Cell Broadband Engine Processor and Director of an NVIDIA GPU Center of Excellence. In 1998, Bader built the first Linux supercomputer that led to a high-performance computing (HPC) revolution, and Hyperion Research estimates that the total economic value of Linux supercomputing pioneered by Bader has been over $100 trillion over the past 25 years.

Matthew Baum

Harvard Univesity
Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications and Professor of Public Policy

Email
Website

1. Misinformation: How big a problem and what can be done? (P, G, S)
2. Soft News, Satire and the Blending of Politics and Entertainment: Why it Matters (P, G, S)
3. Media Bias: Perceptions, Reality, Consequences (G, S)

Matthew A. Baum (Ph.D., UC San Diego, 2000) is the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Department of Government. His research focuses on the domestic political influences on international conflict and cooperation in general and American foreign policy in particular, as well as on the role of the mass media and public opinion in contemporary American politics. Additional research interests include the interaction of media and electoral institutions, fake news and misinformation, the relationship between partisan media and polarization and the relationship between politics and public health. His research has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics and Science. His books include Soft News Goes to War: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy in the New Media Age (2003, Princeton University Press), War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Public Views of War (2009, Princeton University Press, co-authored with Tim Groeling), and War and Democratic Constraint: How the Public Influences Foreign Policy (2015, Princeton University Press, co-authored with Phil Potter). He has contributed op-ed articles to a variety of newspapers, magazines, and blog sites in the United States and abroad. He is also co-founder, principal investigator and co-editor of the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, co-founder of the Combatting Fake News Group, and co-founder and principal investigator of the COVID States Project (now known as the Civic Health and Institutions Project, or CHIP50), a bimonthly state-level survey of all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. Before coming to Harvard, Baum was an associate professor of political science and communication studies at UCLA.

Joseph J. Biernacki 

1. What do artificial intelligence, synthetic life-chemistry and nuclear fusion have to do with portland cement? (P, G, S)
2. The Looming Housing Crisis and Hope on the Horizon (P, G, S)
3. Who’s the biggest maker of them all? (P, G)

Lynn Cominsky

Sonoma State University
Professor and Director
Email
Website

1. Gravitational Waves: The Discovery that won the 2017 Nobel Prize (P, G)
2. High Energy Visions of the Universe (P, G)
3. Science of War and Peace (P, G)

Lynn Cominsky is an award-winning Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at Sonoma State University (SSU), where she has been on the faculty for over 35 years. She received a Ph.D. in Physics from MIT in 1981, and a B.S. magna cum laude in Physics from Brandeis University in 1975. Cominsky is an author on over 225 research papers in refereed journals, and the Principal or Co-Investigator on over $33 million of grants to SSU.

In 1999, Cominsky founded SSU’s EdEon STEM Learning (originally known as Education and Public Outreach), which develops educational materials for NASA, NSF and the US Department of Education with a focus on students under-represented in STEM. The group excels at K-12 teacher training, curriculum development, and the development of interactive web activities for students that teach math and science.

In 1993, Prof. Cominsky was named SSU’s Outstanding Professor, and the California Professor of the Year by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. In 2007, she was named a Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology, in 2009, a Fellow of the American Physical Society and in 2013, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Recent awards include the 2016 Education Prize from the American Astronomical Society, the 2016 Wang Family Excellence Award from the California State University and the 2017 Frank J. Malina Education Medal from the International Astronautical Federation. In 2019, she was selected as one of the first 200 Legacy Fellows named by the American Astronomical Society. Cominsky’s most recent project is NASA’s Neurodiversity Network (N3): Creating Inclusive Informal Learning Opportunities Across the Spectrum. N3’s goal is to provide a pathway to NASA participation and STEM employment for neurodiverse learners, with a focus on those on the autism spectrum. 

James N. Druckman

University of Rochester
Martin Brewer Anderson Professor
Email
Website

1. Partisan Hostility and American Democracy (P, G, S)
2. (Dis)trust in America (P, G, S)
3. The Polarization and Politicization of Trust in Scientists (P, G, S)

James N. Druckman is the Martin Brewer Anderson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. He previously was the Payson S. Wild Professor and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. He is also an Honorary Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University in Denmark. Druckman has published approximately 200 articles and book chapters in political science, communication, economics, science, and psychology journals. He has authored, co-authored, or co-edited seven books. His recent books include Partisan Hostility and American Democracy: Explaining Political Divides (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Equality Unfulfilled: How Title IX's Policy Design Undermines Change to College Sports (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and Experimental Thinking: A Primer on Social Science Experiments (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

He has served as editor of the journals Political Psychology and Public Opinion Quarterly as well as the University of Chicago Press series in American Politics. He currently is the co-Principal Investigator of Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS), the editor of the Cambridge Elements Series on Experimental Political Science, and a co-Principal Investigator of the Civic Health and Institutions (CHIP50) Project. He sits on the Board of Trustees for the Russell Sage Foundation and the American National Election Studies Board of Advisors, and is a Vice President of the American Political Science Association.
Druckman has received grant support from such entities as the National Science Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and Phi Beta Kappa. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

Eduardo Fernandez-Duque

Yale University
Professor 
Email
Website

1. Fatherhood: From Molecules to Society (P, G)
2. The evolution of pair-bonds and monogamy (P, G)
3. Cause and Effect in Biological Anthropology (G, S)

Eduardo Fernandez-Duque, PhD, is Professor of Anthropology and the School of the Environment at Yale University.

He is a cofounder of Fundación ECO, a not-for-profit organization promoting education in northern Argentina, a corresponding member of the Argentine Council for Science and Technology (CONICET), a National Geographic Explorer and an Invited Professor of the Universidad Nacional de Formosa of Argentina and the Universidad San Francisco de Quito of Ecuador.

Born in Argentina, Dr. Fernandez-Duque completed his first degree in biology at the University of Buenos Aires before receiving his PhD in animal behavior at the University of California, Davis. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution, the Zoological Society of San Diego and a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania.

His research program, which bridges the fields of evolutionary anthropology, psychology and primatology, focuses on examining the behavioral, physiological, and ecological correlates of male-female relationships, pair-bonding, and parental care. Dr. Fernandez-Duque studies monogamous primates (titis, sakis and owl monkeys) at field sites in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon, the Argentinean Chaco, and National Primate Centers in the US.

He has published over 170 articles and chapters, an edited volume on owl monkeys and has contributed to the training of more than 400 students from 15 different countries.

Dr. Fernandez-Duque is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Kavli Foundation. He has been awarded The John P. McGovern Award Lecture in the Behavioral Sciences from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2021) and the “Premio Raíces,” (2017) by the Argentine National Ministry of Science and Technology to recognize his contributions to the development of science and technology through international cooperation.

Efi Foufoula-Georgiou (American Meteorological Society)

University of California Irvine
Distinguished Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email
Website

1. Precipitation in the Earth System: Global estimation, precipitation extremes and climate change (P, G, S) 
2. A Life in Science: A few lessons learned and my professional journey (P, G)
3. The challenge of rainfall estimation and prediction across scales: Learning from patterns (P, G, S)

EFI FOUFOULA-GEORGIOU (NAE) is a Distinguished Professor and the Samueli Endowed Chair in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and in Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. From 1989-2016 she was a McKnight Distinguished Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Director of the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, and Director of the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED). Foufoula-Georgiou studies hydrology and geomorphology with an emphasis on understanding the space-time organization and multiscale structure of precipitation and landforms for improving modeling and prediction. She has served the community in several capacities, including member of the NAS Water Science and Technology Board, NSF Advisory Council for Geosciences, NASA Earth Sciences Subcommittee, and Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. Her elected positions include chair of the Board of Directors of CUAHSI, Trustee of UCAR, President of the Hydrology Section of AGU, and AMS Councilor. Foufoula-Georgiou has been the recipient of several awards including the EGU John Dalton Medal, AGU Hydrologic Sciences Award, AMS Hydrologic Sciences Medal, and AGU Robert Horton Medal. She received a diploma in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and an M.S. and Ph.D. (1985) in Environmental Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville. She is a fellow of AGU, AMS, AAAS and an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and the American Society of Arts and Sciences.

John R. Jungck

Delaware Biotechnology Institute
Professor of Biological Sciences and Mathematical Sciences
Inaugural Fellow Honors College
Associate Director, Institute for Transforming University Education
Affiliated Faculty: DENIN (Delaware Environmental Institute)
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics

Email      

1. Mathematics Save Lives! (G)
2. Citizen University (G)
3. Biomimetic Design Principles of Self-Assembling, Self-Folding, and Origami (G)

Professor Jungck is a mathematical biologist with primary interests in molecular evolution, scientific visualization, and undergraduate reform in science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) education.

He is the founder of the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium (http://bioquest.org) which has been nationally and internationally involved for over three decades in building communities devoted to systematic, sustainable reform and faculty development. He has been the Editor of Biology International, BioQUEST Library, Bioscene: Journal of College Biology Teaching, and the American Biology Teacher. He is on the editorial boards of the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, Evolutionary Bioinformatics, and the American Journal of Undergraduate Research.

His awards include a Fellow of the AAAS, a Bruce Alberts Award, a Thomas Henry Huxley Award, a Doctor of Science honoris causa from the University of Minnesota, a Fulbright Scholar, an award in his name by the Society for Mathematical Biology, and honorary life memberships in five professional societies.

Haagen Klaus

1. Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Andes: Connecting Skeletal Trauma, Archaeology, and the Meanings of Ritual Killing (P, G, S)
2. Surfacing From the Wake of Contact:  A Bioarchaeology of Indigenous Creativity, Resistance, Resilience, and Suffering in Colonial Peru (P, G, S)
3. Ancient Skeletons and Violence:  A Global Reconstruction of the Origins and Causes of Human Conflict in the Past and  (P, G, S)

Dante Lauretta

University of Arizona
Regents Professor
Email   
Website

1. Life in the Cosmos – The Search for Biology in the Universe (P)
2. OSIRIS-REx - NASA's Sample Return Mission from Asteroid Bennu (G)
3. Journeys on the Asteroid Frontier – The Engineering Behind NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission (S)

Dante Lauretta is principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission and a regents professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. His research interests focus on the chemistry and mineralogy of asteroids and comets, and he is an expert in the analysis of extraterrestrial materials, including asteroid samples, mete-orites and comet particles.

June Pilcher

Clemson University
Alumni Distinguished Professor
Email   
Website

1. Science behind Mindfulness Practices and Meta-Awareness (P, G, S)
2. Lifestyle Matters: Impact of Sleep and Physical Activity (P, G, S)
3. Diving into Difficult Discourse (G, S)

Anne Savage

Proyecto Titi, Inc. 
Executive Director
Email    
Website                

1. Proyecto Tití: Saving Colombia's Critically Endangered Cotton-top Tamarin (P, G)
2. Teens, Tamarins, and Teamwork: Successful Efforts to Engage Communities in Conserving Cotton-top Tamarins in Colombia (P, G)
3. Cotton-top Tamarins: Studies In Captive Care Have Informed Conservation Actions (P, G)

A world traveler, Dr. Savage has spent her professional career establishing conservation programs for endangered species. She developed Proyecto Tití, a conservation program designed to conserve Colombia’s most endangered primate, the cotton-top tamarin. Though scientific studies, community development, education programs, and habitat protection Proyecto Tití has made the conservation of the cotton-top tamarin a priority in Colombia. Proyecto Titi continues to garner national and international attention for their successful efforts to create protected areas and engage communities in actions to protect wildlife.

Dr. Savage created the Cotton-top Tamarin SSP© for the Association for Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) to assist more than 300 accredited zoos and aquariums in managing the genetic diversity of cotton-top tamarins. Based on her extensive experience with the species in managed care, she wrote the first husbandry manual on how to expertly care for this Critically Endangered species.

Dr. Savage is the former Conservation Director for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts and helped to develop Disney’s conservation programs for sea turtles, gopher tortoises, butterflies, and several avian species. As one of the project team members of Mission Himalayas, Dr. Savage worked with Conservation International to document the animal life in unexplored regions of Nepal and China.

Dr. Savage has been funded by the National Science Foundation, World Wildlife Fund, National Geographic Research and Exploration, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and many national and international agencies for her various studies with cotton-top tamarins. She is the recipient of the Explorer’s Club Lowell Thomas Award, the Cincinnati Zoo’s Barrows Conservation Award,
the John Muir Conservation Award, and the University of Wisconsin Distinguished Alumni Award.

Dr. Savage received her B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has held numerous leadership positions within AZA and several major scientific organizations. Dr. Savage is currently a Florida Board of Trustees member for The Nature Conservancy.

Karen C. Seto

Yale University 
Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science
Email 
Website              

1. Urbanization in the 21st century: problem or panacea for the environment? (P, G)
2. How will urbanization change food systems? (P, G)
3. Are cities the solution to climate change? (P, G)
4. Revealing patterns of urbanization with remote sensing (S)

Karen Seto is the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. An urban and land change scientist, she is one of the world’s leading experts on contemporary urbanization and global change.  Her central research focus is how urbanization will affect the planet. A geographer by training, she integrates remote sensing, field interviews, and modeling methods to study urbanization and land change, forecast urban growth, and examine the environmental consequences of urban expansion. She is an expert in satellite remote sensing analysis and has pioneered methods to reconstruct historical land-use and to develop empirical models to explain and forecast the expansion of urban areas. Seto is a specialist in contemporary urbanization in China and India, where she has conducted research for over 20 and 10 years, respectively. Her research is notable for its systematic use of big data and a scientific lens to study urbanization as a process and to understand the aggregate global impacts of urbanization. Seto’s research has generated new insights on the interaction between urbanization and food systems, the effects of urban expansion on biodiversity and cropland loss, urban energy use and emissions, and urban mitigation of climate change. 

Seto has served on numerous national and international scientific bodies. She is co-leading the urban mitigation chapter for the IPCC 6th Assessment Report and co-lead the same chapter for the IPCC 5th Assessment Report. She co-founded and for ten years co-chaired an international science program, Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC), which framed, enabled, and coordinated urban environmental research with more than 1,000 affiliates across over 50 countries. She has served on numerous U.S. National Research Council (NRC) Committees, including the NRC Committee to the Advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the NRC Committee on Pathways to Urban Sustainability. She was the Executive Producer of “10,000 Shovels: Rapid Urban Growth in China,” a documentary film that integrates satellite imagery, historical photographs, and contemporary film footage to highlight the urban changes occurring in China. From 2000 to 2008, she was faculty at Stanford, where she held joint appointments in the Woods Institute for the Environment and the School of Earth Sciences. She has received numerous awards for her scientific contributions, including a NASA New Investigator Program Award, a NSF Career Award, a National Geographic Research Grant, and the Outstanding Contributions to Remote Sensing Research Award from the American Association of Geographers. She is an elected member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. She earned a PhD in Geography from Boston University.

Ramteen Sioshansi

Carnegie Mellon University
Professor
Email   
Website    

1. Technology Pathways to and Economic and Technical Challenges with Decarbonizing Electricity Systems (P, G, S)
2. How Regulatory Choices Impact the Sustainability, Reliability, and Resilience of Energy Supply (P, G, S)

Ramteen is a professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy and Director of Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on the techno-economics of decarbonizing energy systems. He works also in energy policy and electricity-market design, especially as they pertain to energy decarbonization. He is an IEEE Fellow and served three two-year terms on Electricity Advisory Committee, a federal advisory committee to the U.S. energy secretary, and chaired its Energy Storage (Technologies) Subcommittee.

Karen Strier 

1. Saving the World’s Most Peaceful Primate (P, G) 
2. Primates and Conservation in a Rapidly Changing World (P, G, S)
3. Primate Behavioral Flexibility and the Limits of Resilience (P, G, S)