HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017551.jpg

JOHN MAZZIOTTA Dr. John Mazziotta is Chair of the Department of Neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Director of the UCLA Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center. After receiving his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Columbia University in 1972, he obtained an M.D. and Ph.D. in Neuroanatomy and Computer Science from Georgetown University in 1977. Following an internship at Georgetown, he completed Neurology and Nuclear Medicine training at UCLA and joined the faculty here in 1983. Dr. Mazziotta chairs one of the nation’s largest Neurology departments, which for nine of the last ten years achieved the distinguished position of being first in National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding. An expert in brain imaging, he established the Brain Mapping Center at UCLA that includes all of the methods available to study human brain structure and function. He was the principal investigator of the International Consortium for Brain Mapping, whose goal is to develop the first atlas of the human brain that will include behavioral, demographic, imaging, and genetic data from 7,000 subjects. Since beginning this work, Dr. Mazziotta has published more than 255 research papers and eight texts. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Oldendorf Award from the American Society of Neuroimaging, the S. Weir Mitchell Award and the Wartenberg Prize of the American Academy of Neurology, the Von Hevesy Prize from the International Society of Nuclear Medicine, the 1996 Medical Science Award from the UCLA Medical Alumni Association, election to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, Honorary Doctorate from l’Université de Caen and membership in the Royal College of Physicians. In January 2012, Dr. Mazziotta was appointed Associate Vice Chancellor for Medical Sciences and Executive Vice Dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE Nicholas Negroponte (born December 1, 1943) is an American architect best known as the founder and Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, and also known as the founder of the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC). Negroponte was born to Dimitri John Negroponte, a Greek shipping magnate, and grew up in New York City’s Upper East Side. He is the younger brother of John Negroponte, former United States Deputy Secretary of State. He attended Buckley School in New York City, Le Rosey in Switzerland, and The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, from which he graduated in 1961. Subsequently, he studied at MIT as both an undergraduate and graduate student in Architecture where his research focused on issues of computer-aided design. He earned a Master’s degree in architecture from MIT in 1966. Negroponte joined the faculty of MIT in 1966. For several years thereafter he divided his teaching time between MIT and several visiting professorships at Yale, Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley. In 1967, Negroponte founded MIT’s Architecture Machine Group, a combination lab and think tank which studied new approaches to human-computer interaction. In 1985, Negroponte created the MIT Media Lab with Jerome B. Wiesner. As director, he developed the lab into the pre-eminent computer science laboratory for new media and a high-tech playground for investigating the human-computer interface. Negroponte also became a proponent of intelligent agents and personalized electronic newspapers, for which he popularized the term the Daily Me. In 1992, Negroponte became involved in the creation of Wired Magazine as the first investor. From 1993 to 1998, he contributed a monthly column to the magazine in which he reiterated a basic theme: “Move bits, not atoms.” Negroponte expanded many of the ideas from his Wired columns into a bestselling book Being Digital (1995), which made famous his forecasts on how the interactive world, the entertainment world and the information world would eventually merge. Being Digital was a bestseller and was translated into some twenty languages. Negroponte is a digital optimist who believed that computers would make life better for everyone. However, critics such as Cass Sunstein have faulted his techno-utopian ideas for failing to consider the historical, political and cultural realities with which new technologies should be viewed. Negroponte’s belief that wired technologies such as telephones will ultimately become unwired by using airwaves instead of wires or fiber optics, and that unwired technologies such as televisions will become wired, is commonly referred to as the Negroponte switch. In 2000, Negroponte stepped down as director of the Media Lab as Walter Bender took over as Executive Director. However, Negroponte retained the role of laboratory Chairman. When Frank Moss was appointed director of the lab in 2006, Negroponte stepped down as lab chairman to focus more fully on his work with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) although he retains his appointment as professor at MIT. In November 2005, at the World Summit on the Information Society held in Tunis, Negroponte unveiled the concept of a $100 laptop computer, The Children’s Machine, designed for students in the developing world. The price has increased to US$180, however. The project is part of a broader program by One Laptop Per Child, a non-profit organisation started by Negroponte and other Media Lab faculty, to extend Internet access in developing countries. Negroponte is an active angel investor and has invested in over 30 startup companies over the last 30 years, including Zagats, Wired, Ambient Devices, Skype and Velti. He sits on several boards, including Motorola (listed on the New York Stock Exchange) and Velti (listed on the London Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ). He is also on the advisory board of TTI/Vanguard. In August 2007, he was appointed to a five-member special committee with the objective of assuring the continued journalistic and editorial integrity and independence of the Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones & Company publications and services. The committee was formed as part of the merger of Dow Jones with News Corporation. Negroponte’s fellow founding committee members are Louis Boccardi, Thomas Bray, Jack Fuller, and the late former Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn. Negroponte has influenced modern day futurists, such as David Houle. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017551