Reinventing Discovery with Michael Nielsen at York University!

If you're in the Greater Toronto Area next Tuesday, please drop by and see Michael talk. I'm thrilled that my library is co-sponsoring such a fantastic event!

Presented by:

• Janusz A. Kozinski - Dean, Faculty of Science and Engineering
• The Division of Natural Science
• The Steacie Science and Engineering Library

Location: Paul A. Delaney Gallery, 320 Bethune College
Date: Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Time: 12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Refreshments will be served courtesy of Steacie Science and Engineering Library

Prof. Nielsen will describe an evolution in how scientific discoveries are made driven by new online tools that help scientists work together in new ways. Prof. Nielsen will describe examples that enable large groups of amateurs to make discoveries, and online markets in scientific problems.

This talk will be a blend of presentation, Q&A and discussion.

Abstract: In this talk I describe a remarkable transformation now underway in how scientific discoveries are made, a transformation being driven by new online tools that help scientists work together in new ways. I will describe examples that include massively collaborative approaches to solving mathematical problems, citizen science projects that enable large groups of amateurs to make discoveries, and online markets in scientific problems. These and other projects use online tools to amplify our collective intelligence, and so extend our problem-solving ability. This promise is only part of the story, however, for today there are also cultural barriers strongly inhibiting scientists from using online tools to their full potential. I will describe these cultural barriers, and how they can be overcome.

Bio: Michael Nielsen is one of the pioneers of quantum computation. Together
with Ike Chuang of MIT, he wrote the standard text in the field, a text which is now one of the ten most highly cited physics books of all time. He is the author of more than fifty scientific papers, including invited contributions to Nature and Scientific American. His research contributions include involvement in one of the first quantum teleportation experiments, named as one of Science Magazine's Top Ten Breakthroughs of the Year for 1998. Michael was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of New Mexico, and has worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, as the Richard Chace Tolman Prize Fellow at Caltech, as Foundation Professor of Quantum Information Science at the University of Queensland, and as a Senior Faculty Member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Michael left academia to write a book about open science, and the radical change that online tools are causing in the way scientific discoveries are made.

The flyer is here.