Newsmakers

TED Prize awards Wilson a wish

Edward O. Wilson, the Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus, has recently been named a recipient of the TED Prize, which awards $100,000 to the winner to spend on a wish “to change the world.” Run by the nonprofit Sampling Foundation, the TED program (an acronym for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) will also give 2007 wish awards to former President Bill Clinton and photojournalist James Nachtwey. Their wishes will be revealed on March 8 at a conference in Monterey, Calif. In addition to the $100,000, a group of companies including Apple, General Motors, and Starbucks have pledged support to help fulfill the wishes.

According to the program, the wishes should “deliver something, creative, big, bold, and wonderful.” In books and lectures, Wilson has expressed his desire to preserve all of the species of life now on Earth and to put aside the differences between science and religion-based explanations of how life was created. For more on the award, visit http://www.ted.com/tedprize.

It was also recently announced that Wilson, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, has received the 2006 George B. Stibbitz Communications Pioneer Award of the American Computer Museum.

Postdoc’s project awarded social science fellowship

Postdoctoral fellow Daniel Aldrich (Program on U.S.-Japan Relations) was recently awarded the prestigious Abe Fellowship to conduct research on the factors that impact postdisaster recovery in Japan, India, and the United States. A 2005 Ph.D. recipient from Harvard’s Department of Government, Aldrich received the award for his project involving the study of the role of civil society in postdisaster recovery. The project is built on the premise that an understanding of the factors that inhibit or enhance rebuilding requires an investigation of social capital, symbolized by voluntary associations and neighborhood groups.

The Abe Fellowship is funded by the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.