Shannon Luminary Lecture Series

In honor of Claude Shannon – the father of information theory and arguably of all communications and networked systems – Bell Labs has created the Shannon Luminary Lecture Series and Award. This series of talks by the leading visionary researchers, developers, thinkers and entrepreneurs from all fields of scientific, technological, engineering, mathematical, or related artistic endeavor will explore all topics of high impact and relevance to the future of human existence.

The next lecture will be given by Stephen Friend, scientist, physician, entrepreneur, Chairman of Sage Bionetworks and member of the Apple Health team. In his career, he has played a major part in understanding how gene expression affects health and disease, from the first discovery of a cancer susceptibility gene in the 1980s to the launch of a vast collaboration of researchers to greatly accelerate genetics research, aiming to tackle diseases at a fundamental level.

Friend will give his perspective on the roles of art and technology in understanding risk and consequences of a future in which artificial intelligence, along with massive crowdsourced data, will reveal novel insights empowering our choices, and posing potential dilemmas.

We will present Friend with the Shannon Luminary Award in recognition of his visionary contributions to science and society.

The lecture will be given at 2:00 PM, May 4, 2017 in the Hamming Innovation Hall on the Murray Hill Bell Labs campus.