Adam Ruben is an American writer, comedian, rapper, storyteller, science communicator, and molecular biologist.
Ruben is known for hosting the show Outrageous Acts of Science [1] on the Science Channel, known outside the United States as You Have Been Warned and Loco Lab. He has also appeared on the Food Network's Food Detectives, the Science Channel's Head Rush , the Weather Channel's Weather Gone Viral, the Travel Channel's Mysteries at the Kremlin, Discovery International's Superhuman Science, the Science Channel's How Do They Do It? , the documentary Mortified Nation, and NPR's All Things Considered and The Moth Radio Hour . He is the author of Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School (Random House, 2010), [2] a satirical guide to post-baccalaureate education, and Pinball Wizards: Jackpots, Drains, and the Cult of the Silver Ball (Chicago Review Press, 2017), [3] a narrative nonfiction book about the past, present, and future of pinball. Ruben is also known for writing the monthly science humor column "Experimental Error" in the AAAS journal Science Careers. Ruben frequently gives keynote lectures and performances about science, education, career-related topics, comedy, science communication, public perception of science, and performs his one-man show about bullying, Please Don't Beat Me Up: Stories and Artifacts from Adolescence.
Ruben was born in Philadelphia in 1979 and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, where he was one of seven valedictorians at Concord High School, a National Merit Scholar and a Presidential Scholar. He majored in Molecular Biology at Princeton University, graduating in 2001 with minors in Engineering Biology, Creative Writing, and Theater & Dance, receiving the Gregory T. Pope '80 Prize for Science Writing. While at Princeton, Ruben served as the drum major of the Princeton University Band and wrote sketches and songs for the Princeton Triangle Club.
He earned his Ph.D. in Biology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 2008, where he used isothermal titration calorimetry and spectrophotometry to quantify the enthalpic and entropic contributions of enzyme-ligand interactions, specifically the binding of novel hydroxymethylcarbonyl isotere-based dipeptidomimetic compounds to the plasmepsin family of aspartic proteases used by the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum for breaking down human hemoglobin. While at Johns Hopkins, Ruben taught classes in the Expository Writing Program, the School of Education, the Department of Film & Media Studies, and the summer program Discover Hopkins; he still teaches an undergraduate class called "The Stand-Up Comic in Society." For nearly 11 years, he worked on developing a whole-organism malaria vaccine at Sanaria Inc., where he served as the Associate Director of Vaccine Stabilization and Logistics. He currently resides in D.C..
Pinball games are a family of games in which a ball is propelled into a specially designed table where it bounces off various obstacles, scoring points either en route or when it comes to rest. Historically the board was studded with nails called 'pins' and had hollows or pockets which scored points if the ball came to rest in them. Today, pinball is most commonly an arcade game in which the ball is fired into a specially designed cabinet known as a pinball machine, hitting various lights, bumpers, ramps, and other targets depending on its design. The game's object is generally to score as many points as possible by hitting these targets and making various shots with flippers before the ball is lost. Most pinball machines use one ball per turn, and the game ends when the ball(s) from the last turn are lost. The biggest pinball machine manufacturers historically include Bally Manufacturing, Gottlieb, Williams Electronics and Stern Pinball.
Peter Agre is an American physician, Nobel Laureate, and molecular biologist, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. In 2003, Agre and Roderick MacKinnon shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes." Agre was recognized for his discovery of aquaporin water channels. Aquaporins are water-channel proteins that move water molecules through the cell membrane. In 2009, Agre was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and became active in science diplomacy.
Johnny Mnemonic is a 4 player pinball machine from August 1995, manufactured by Williams Electronic Games, Inc. A total of 2,756 units were produced.
The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) is the largest biomedical research facility administered by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). The institute is centered at the Forest Glen Annex, in the Forest Glen Park part of the unincorporated Silver Spring urban area in Maryland just north of Washington, DC, but it is a subordinate unit of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC), headquartered at nearby Fort Detrick, Maryland. At Forest Glen, the WRAIR has shared a laboratory and administrative facility — the Sen Daniel K. Inouye Building, also known as Building 503 — with the Naval Medical Research Center since 1999.
NBA Fastbreak is a 1997 pinball machine released by Williams Electronics Games.
Barend Mons is a molecular biologist by training and a leading FAIR data specialist. The first decade of his scientific career he spent on fundamental research on malaria parasites and later on translational research for malaria vaccines. In the year 2000 he switched to advanced data stewardship and (biological) systems analytics. He is currently a professor in Leiden and most known for innovations in scholarly collaboration, especially nanopublications, knowledge graph based discovery and most recently the FAIR data initiative and GO FAIR. Since 2012 he is a Professor in biosemantics in the Department of Human Genetics at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) in The Netherlands. In 2015 Barend was appointed chair of the High Level Expert Group on the European Open Science Cloud. Since 2017 Barend is heading the International Support and Coordination office of the GO FAIR initiative. He is also the elected president of CODATA, the standing committee on research data related issues of the International Science Council. Barend is a member of the Netherlands Academy of Technology and Innovation(ACTI). He is also the European representative in the Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI) of the National Academies of Science for engineering and medicine in the USA. Barend is a frequent keynote speaker about FAIR and open science around the world, and participates in various national and international boards.
The Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts & Sciences is an academic division of the Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. The school is located on the university's Homewood campus. It is the core of Johns Hopkins, offering comprehensive undergraduate education and graduate training in the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.
Russell J. Howard is an Australian-born executive, entrepreneur and scientist. He was a pioneer in the fields of molecular parasitology, especially malaria, and in leading the commercialisation of one of the most important methods used widely today in molecular biology today called “DNA shuffling" or "Molecular breeding", a form of "Directed evolution".
Brendan Scott CrabbFASM is an Australian microbiologist, research scientist and director and chief executive officer of the Burnet Institute, based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Irwin William Sherman was a biology professor emeritus. He taught at University of California, Riverside for 42 years and retired as executive vice chancellor. Sherman is known for his studies of malaria.
Virander Singh Chauhan is an Indian scientist and a Rhodes Scholar working in the fields of genetic engineering and biotechnology. He is known for his contributions to the development of a recombinant vaccine for malaria. and for synthetic structural peptides with biological functions. He was honored by the Government of India in 2012 with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri. He is the present Chancellor of the Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management.
David James Kemp OAM FAA was an Australian plant geneticist and parasitologist.
The Malaria Eradication Scientific Alliance (MESA) is an organization founded on the research carried out by the Malaria Eradication Research Agenda (malERA). "malERA" was a project carried out by the scientific community to identify the steps and future research that must be done in order to eradicate malaria. It was created after the Malaria Forum in 2007, hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, reestablished malaria eradication as a long-term goal. "malERA" first launched in 2008, and resulted in a research and development agenda which was published in a PLoS Medicine magazine in 2011. MESA was formed in 2012 to continue the goals of malERA through research and development of methods to fight malaria.
Yagya Dutta Sharma is an Indian molecular biologist, professor and head of the department of biotechnology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi. An elected fellow of all three major Indian science academies — Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, and National Academy of Sciences, India — Sharma is known for his research on the molecular biology of malaria. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology for his contributions to medical sciences in 1994.
Deepak Gaur was an Indian molecular biologist, and a professor at the School of Biotechnology of Jawaharlal Nehru University. Known for his studies on Plasmodium falciparum, Gaur is a recipient of the N-Bios Prize. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to medical sciences in 2017.
Peter Preiser is chair of the School of Biological Sciences and a professor of molecular genetics and cell biology at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. He specialises in the study of the malaria parasite and is head of the team at NTU that has discovered a route to a possible vaccine for the disease.
Carin Bondar is a Canadian biologist, writer, filmmaker, speaker and television personality. She is a host of Outrageous Acts of Science, Stephen Hawking's Brave New World, and Worlds Oddest Animal Couples.
Alan Frederick Cowman AC, FRS, FAA, CorrFRSE, FAAHMS, FASP, FASM is an internationally acclaimed malaria researcher whose work specialises in researching the malaria-causing parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, and the molecular mechanisms it uses to evade host responses and antimalarial drugs. He is currently deputy directory of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne, and his laboratory continues to work on understanding how Plasmodium falciparum, infects humans and causes disease. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 2011 and awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia in 2019 for his "eminent service to the biological sciences, notably to molecular parasitology, to medical research and scientific education, and as a mentor."
The Hobbit is a pinball machine designed by Joe Balcer and released by Jersey Jack Pinball in March 2016. It is based on The Hobbit films of the same name which is based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s 1937 novel The Hobbit.
Stephen L. Hoffman is an American physician-scientist, tropical medicine specialist and vaccinologist, who is the founder and chief executive and scientific officer of Sanaria Inc., a company dedicated to developing PfSPZ vaccines to prevent malaria.