A collaboration of scientists and artists in formation, exploring Locomotion/Emotion; perception of complex movement and the dynamics of beauty. Begun in May 2009 and on going, it was co-organized with Jane Wang, a fellow Radcliffe Fellow (Prof. of Physics, Cornell University). We met again in Spring 2011 under the auspices of The Radcliffe Institute Exploratory Seminar program.
During our year at The Radcliffe Institute, we were struck by the similarity in our responses - as a dancer/ as a physicist - to complex and rhythmic movement across the spectrum of human and natural world motion: human dance, animal, insect locomotion, and fluttering leaves. These movements evoke poetic feelings in us, and we wanted to understand how and why. The seminar opened a dialogue with artists and scientists, particularly those in cognitive and brain sciences, to articulate our common fascination and response to movement in nature and humans, gain insight into their perception and identify research topics for future collaborations that might have real world application and learn how to talk about science and art.
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Exploratory Seminars are "brainstorming" sessions intended to explore new frontiers, jumpstart collaborations, or initiate future research plans and provide maximum freedom for intellectual exploration and innovative thinking.
Wang is a Professor at Cornell University holding a joint appointment at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the department of Physics. She received her PhD in physics from the University of Chicago (1996), was an NSF-NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford University, England (1996-1997), and a visiting member at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (1997-1999). She has been at Cornell since 1999, and was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (2007- 2008). She received Cornell University’s Provost's Award for Excellence in Research (2005), a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (2001-2006), an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program award (2001-2004), and a David and Lucille Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering (2002-2007). She is a member of the American Physical Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
His lab at Wellesley College and Harvard Medical School has been awarded grants from the Whitehall Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His studio is in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At Harvard he received a Masters of Medical Sciences (1998) and PhD (2001) in Neurobiology. In Nepal, Kathmandu University Medical School was Director of Education for Physiology and Pathophysiology. Elected Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows in recognition of his contributions to our understanding of the neural basis for vision and his work in the emerging field of Vision and Art.
Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University(07/08), M.S. and Ph.D. (’07, ’00) in Computer Science from USC. At USC, was Research Assistant Professor of Computer Science in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and Research Associate with the Integrated Media Systems Center and Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems. Visiting Associate Professor of Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science at Tufts University and François received the Diplôme d'Ingénieur from the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon (France), Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies (M.S.) from the University Paris IX - Dauphine (France)
He is a trustee of the International Foundation for Music Research, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, listed in Who Who’s in the World (Marquis), and serves on the French National Research Agency (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) Blanc Programme Panel. He has published papers in Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Journal of Neuroscience, Proceedings of the Royal Society (UK), Scientific American, and Trends in Cognitive Science. He organized the first public forum on music and brain (at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London), the first research workshop on the cognitive neuroscience of dance (at the Wellcome Institute, London), and a founding member of the Editorial Board of the Social Neuroscience. His research has been featured in BBC Classic magazine, BBC Radio, BBC-TV, Channel 4, New Scientist, REDES, llustreret Videnskab, CNN, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Times of London, and in STERN, Panorama, Quo, and VSD magazines, as well as in book and journal translations in Japanese and Italian.