Stephen Emmott

Last updated

Stephen Emmott
Stephen Emmott.jpg
Stephen Emmott speaking in 2006
Born
Stephen Emmott

(1960-06-03) 3 June 1960 (age 63) [1]
Alma mater University of York (BSc)
University of Stirling (PhD)
Known forMicrosoft
Ten Billion [2]
Scientific career
Fields Neuroscience
Biological computation
Computational science
Institutions
Thesis The visual processing of text  (1993)

Stephen Emmott (born 3 June 1960) is a British scientist, entrepreneur and chief scientist of Scientific. [4] [5] Emmott was named one of London's most influential scientists, and one of the most influential people in London by the Evening Standard in 2012. [6]

Contents

Education

Emmott studied at the University of York, where he completed a B.Sc. in Biological Sciences (experimental psychology), graduating in 1987 with First Class honours.

He obtained a PhD in computational neuroscience from the Centre for Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, University of Stirling in 1993, supervised by Professor Roger Watt. Having been deeply influenced and inspired by the work of David Marr and David Rumelhart, Emmott's doctoral research focused on modelling and understanding the computations the brain performs to produce vision. He chose the visual processing of text because it is the canonical example of a physical structure designed around how the brain works, rather than the other way round. [7]

Career

After obtaining his PhD., Emmott took up a post-doctoral scientist position at AT&T Bell Labs in Holmdel, N.J, US, between 1993 and 1996. He worked in Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias's division, undertaking research into biological-inspired computing, applied to some of the earliest medical, financial and e-commerce applications of the Internet.

Emmott returned to London in January 1997 to lead the advanced research laboratory of NCR Corp (which then owned teradata). His work and the work of his Laboratory became recognised for numerous innovations at the intersection of science, technology and finance. This included the invention of Agent-based Internet auctions, [8] the digital wallet [9] and a biologically-inspired, probabilistic method to predict the behaviour of financial markets. [10]

Microsoft

In 2003, Emmott joined Microsoft as chief scientist, and head of computational science. [11] Emmott's vision was ‘to pioneer new computational methods, tools and technologies to enable new kinds of science and accelerate radical solutions to the unprecedented challenges and opportunities of our time.’

Emmott's scientific leadership created numerous scientific and technological advances. These include the new science of biological computation and ‘Living Software’; [12] [11] [13] [14] programmable Artificial Photosynthesis as a potentially breakthrough cheap, global energy technology; [15] [16] the world's first predictive mechanistic model of all life on Earth (General Ecosystem Model); [17] [18] [19] the first mechanistic model of the Global Carbon Cycle; [20] and the development of a computational platform enabling hyper-parallelisation of the Scientific Method (e.g., [21] ).

Scientific

In 2019, Emmott created Scientific, [5] a new science and technology company dedicated to creating transformational science-based innovation that generates a step-change in returns for investors, and genuinely radical global impact outcomes.

Public service

From 2005 to 2010, Emmott was scientific advisor to the Chancellor of The Exchequer. He was a member of the UK Government's 10 Year Science & Innovation Framework Committee, 2004. He was appointed by the UK government Minister for Science as a trustee of the UK's National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts, 2008–2012. He was an adviser to the Finnish Prime Minister's Science & Innovation Strategy, 2008. Emmott is Professor of Biological Computation, University College London, and was Professor of Computational Science (visiting), University of Oxford, 2007–2014.

Ten Billion

Emmott is author of 10 Billion. [22] [23] [24] [25] It is about the climate, ecological, agricultural, resource, pollution, energy, migration and geo-political impact of a human population of 10 Billion.

Royal Court

10 Billion began as ‘a new kind of scientific lecture’, delivered by Emmott, over twenty nights at London's Royal Court Theatre, directed by Katie Mitchell. [22] It won widespread critical acclaim. Sarah Hemming of the Financial Times described it as ‘immensely, distressingly powerful’ and ‘one of the most disturbing evenings I’ve ever spent in a Theatre’. [26] The Guardian's Michael Billington stated that “what is impressive is that Professor Emmott argues his case with an implacable logic. He is quiet, humane and deeply concerned and when he says, at the end, "I think we're fucked" you have to believe him.” [27] Ten Billion was named as ‘Theatrical Performance of the Year’ in 2012 by The Guardian .

Book

10 Billion was published as a book in 2013. [23]

The Guardian 's John Gray concluded that, “The shift in thinking that will be needed if we are to prepare ourselves for living in a different world begins with reading Emmott's indispensable book.” [28] Clive Cookson of the Financial Times said the book was “a stark, simple and short warning about the coming catastrophe, which [Emmott] feels is inevitable, resulting from [the living] human population [growing from 7 to 10 billion] and over-exploitation of the world’s resources.” [29] In a review of 10 Billion in Nature, Hania Zlotnik noted: “His slim, even terse book [presenting] his view on the “unprecedented planetary emergency we've created” — primarily examines the transformation of the global environment by human activity, a transformation that includes climate change, increasing water shortages and growing urbanization. Emmott's assessment of the capacity of people and technology to prevent the global crises that confront us is grim.” [30] Kirkus Reviews analyzed the book by highlighting its portrayal of the dire consequences of human overpopulation and environmental degradation, emphasizing Emmott's authoritative background, succinct presentation, and proposed solutions while suggesting the urgency of addressing global environmental crises. [31]

On The Guardian’s environment network, Chris Goodall called it "error-strewn, full of careless exaggeration and weak on basic science.” [32]

Film

10 Billion was made into a feature-length documentary film, produced by Oxford Film & Television [25] directed by Peter Webber. It was supported financially by Ingenious Media, Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, Sky Atlantic, HanWay Films and the Roland Mouret Foundation. It premiered at London's Curzon Cinema in December 2015 and screened at cinemas worldwide. Subsequently, it premiered on Sky Atlantic in 2016.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neuroscience</span> Scientific study of the nervous system

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system, its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, psychology, physics, computer science, chemistry, medicine, statistics, and mathematical modeling to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons, glia and neural circuits. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the "epic challenge" of the biological sciences.

Science is a rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world. Modern science is typically divided into three major branches: the natural sciences, which study the physical world; the social sciences, which study individuals and societies; and the formal sciences, which study formal systems, governed by axioms and rules. There is disagreement whether the formal sciences are science disciplines, as they do not rely on empirical evidence. Applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as in engineering and medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computational biology</span> Branch of biology

Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the field also has foundations in applied mathematics, chemistry, and genetics. It differs from biological computing, a subfield of computer science and engineering which uses bioengineering to build computers.

Neuromorphic computing is an approach to computing that is inspired by the structure and function of the human brain. A neuromorphic computer/chip is any device that uses physical artificial neurons to do computations. In recent times, the term neuromorphic has been used to describe analog, digital, mixed-mode analog/digital VLSI, and software systems that implement models of neural systems. The implementation of neuromorphic computing on the hardware level can be realized by oxide-based memristors, spintronic memories, threshold switches, transistors, among others. Training software-based neuromorphic systems of spiking neural networks can be achieved using error backpropagation, e.g., using Python based frameworks such as snnTorch, or using canonical learning rules from the biological learning literature, e.g., using BindsNet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Systems biology</span> Computational and mathematical modeling of complex biological systems

Systems biology is the computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological systems, using a holistic approach to biological research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugene Koonin</span> American biologist

Eugene Viktorovich Koonin is a Russian-American biologist and Senior Investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). He is a recognised expert in the field of evolutionary and computational biology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Furber</span> British computer scientist

Stephen Byram Furber is a British computer scientist, mathematician and hardware engineer, and Emeritus ICL Professor of Computer Engineering in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester, UK. After completing his education at the University of Cambridge, he spent the 1980s at Acorn Computers, where he was a principal designer of the BBC Micro and the ARM 32-bit RISC microprocessor. As of 2023, over 250 billion ARM chips have been manufactured, powering much of the world's mobile computing and embedded systems, everything from sensors to smartphones to servers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christof Koch</span> American neurophysiologist

Christof Koch is a German-American neurophysiologist and computational neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural basis of consciousness. He was the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. He remains at the Institute as a Meritorious Investigator. He is also the Chief Scientist of the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation in Santa Monica, that funds research meant to alleviate suffering, anxiety and other forms of distress in all people.

Computational science, also known as scientific computing, technical computing or scientific computation (SC), is a division of science that uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and solve complex physical problems. This includes

Neuroinformatics is the emergent field that combines informatics and neuroscience. Neuroinformatics is related with neuroscience data and information processing by artificial neural networks. There are three main directions where neuroinformatics has to be applied:

The Blue Brain Project is a Swiss brain research initiative that aims to create a digital reconstruction of the mouse brain. The project was founded in May 2005 by the Brain and Mind Institute of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. Its mission is to use biologically-detailed digital reconstructions and simulations of the mammalian brain to identify the fundamental principles of brain structure and function.

Human overpopulation describes a concern that human populations may become too large to be sustained by their environment or resources in the long term. The topic is usually discussed in the context of world population, though it may concern individual nations, regions, and cities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arieh Warshel</span> Israeli chemist, biochemist and biophysicist (born 1940)

Arieh Warshel is an Israeli-American biochemist and biophysicist. He is a pioneer in computational studies on functional properties of biological molecules, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and holds the Dana and David Dornsife Chair in Chemistry at the University of Southern California. He received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Michael Levitt and Martin Karplus for "the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human Brain Project</span> Scientific research project

The Human Brain Project (HBP) was a €1-billion EU scientific research project that ran for ten years from 2013 to 2023. Using high-performance exascale supercomputers it built infrastructure that allowed researchers to advance knowledge in the fields of neuroscience, computing and brain-related medicine. Its successor was the EBRAINS project.

The White House BRAIN Initiative is a collaborative, public-private research initiative announced by the Obama administration on April 2, 2013, with the goal of supporting the development and application of innovative technologies that can create a dynamic understanding of brain function.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Highfield</span> British science journalist (1958–present)

Roger Ronald Highfield is an author, science journalist, broadcaster and Science Director at the Science Museum Group.

Molecular Operating Environment (MOE) is a drug discovery software platform that integrates visualization, modeling and simulations, as well as methodology development, in one package. MOE scientific applications are used by biologists, medicinal chemists and computational chemists in pharmaceutical, biotechnology and academic research. MOE runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS. Main application areas in MOE include structure-based design, fragment-based design, ligand-based design, pharmacophore discovery, medicinal chemistry applications, biologics applications, structural biology and bioinformatics, protein and antibody modeling, molecular modeling and simulations, virtual screening, cheminformatics & QSAR. The Scientific Vector Language (SVL) is the built-in command, scripting and application development language of MOE.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Upinder Singh Bhalla</span>

Upinder Singh Bhalla is an Indian computational neuroscientist, academic and a professor at National Centre for Biological Sciences of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He is known for his studies on neuronal and synaptic signalling in memory and olfactory coding using computational and experimental methods and is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. 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, in 2007, for his contributions to biological sciences. The Infosys Science Foundation awarded him the Infosys Prize 2017 in Life Sciences for his pioneering contributions to the understanding of the brain's computational machinery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Earliest known life forms</span> Putative fossilized microorganisms found near hydrothermal vents

The earliest known life forms on Earth may be as old as 4.1 billion years old according to biologically fractionated graphite inside a single zircon grain in the Jack Hills range of Australia. The earliest evidence of life found in a stratigraphic unit, not just a single mineral grain, is the 3.7 Ga metasedimentary rocks containing graphite from the Isua Supracrustal Belt in Greenland. The earliest direct known life on land may be stromatolites which have been found in 3.480-billion-year-old geyserite uncovered in the Dresser Formation of the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia. Various microfossils of microorganisms have been found in 3.4 Ga rocks, including 3.465-billion-year-old Apex chert rocks from the same Australian craton region, and in 3.42 Ga hydrothermal vent precipitates from Barberton, South Africa. Much later in the geologic record, likely starting in 1.73 Ga, preserved molecular compounds of biologic origin are indicative of aerobic life. Therefore, the earliest time for the origin of life on Earth is at least 3.5 billion years ago, possibly as early as 4.1 billion years ago — not long after the oceans formed 4.5 billion years ago and after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago.

Biomedical data science is a multidisciplinary field which leverages large volumes of data to promote biomedical innovation and discovery. Biomedical data science draws from various fields including Biostatistics, Biomedical informatics, and machine learning, with the goal of understanding biological and medical data. It can be viewed as the study and application of data science to solve biomedical problems. Modern biomedical datasets often have specific features which make their analyses difficult, including:

References

  1. "EMMOTT, Stephen". Who's Who 2013, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2013; online edn, Oxford University Press.(subscription required)
  2. "Ten Billion".
  3. "Scientific".
  4. "Is it too late to save the planet?". Financial Times. Retrieved 22 August 2019.
  5. 1 2 "Scientific". www.scientific.london. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  6. "London's 1000 most influential people 2012: Innovators, Scientists". Evening Standard. 8 November 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  7. Emmott, Stephen J. (1993). The visual processing of text (Ph.D. thesis). University of Stirling. hdl:1893/1837.
  8. US 6871190,Seymour, Mark&Emmott, Stephen J.,"System and method for conducting an electronic auction over an open communications network",published 2005-03-22, assigned to NCR Corp.
  9. US 6424845,Emmott, Stephen J.; Woods, Sarah& Johnson, Graham I.,"Portable communication device",published 2002-07-23, assigned to NCR Corp.
  10. US 6480832,Nakisa, Ramin C.,"Method and apparatus to model the variables of a data set",published 2002-11-12, assigned to NCR Corp.
  11. 1 2 Heger, M. (2010). "Tech meets bio: software and technology companies have increasingly been taking a more active role in biological research: Roni Zeiger, Michael Montalto, Ajay Royyuru and Stephen Emmott" (PDF). Nature Medicine. 16 (8): 844–847. doi:10.1038/nm0810-844. PMID   20689541. S2CID   205381392.
  12. "Programming Life: Living Software - Stephen Emmott - PICNIC '10". Vimeo. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  13. Lakin, M. R.; Youssef, S.; Polo, F.; Emmott, S.; Phillips, A. (2011). "Visual DSD: A design and analysis tool for DNA strand displacement systems". Bioinformatics. 27 (22): 3211–3213. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btr543. PMC   3208393 . PMID   21984756.
  14. Dalchau, N.; Smith, M. J.; Martin, S.; Brown, J. R.; Emmott, S.; Phillips, A. (2012). "Towards the rational design of synthetic cells with prescribed population dynamics". Journal of the Royal Society Interface. 9 (76): 2883–2898. doi:10.1098/rsif.2012.0280. PMC   3479904 . PMID   22683525.
  15. Creatore, C.; Parker, M. A.; Emmott, S.; Chin, A. W. (18 December 2013). "Efficient Biologically Inspired Photocell Enhanced by Delocalized Quantum States". Physical Review Letters. 111 (25): 253601. arXiv: 1307.5093 . Bibcode:2013PhRvL.111y3601C. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.253601. PMID   24483744. S2CID   35661971.
  16. Hemmig, Elisa A.; Creatore, Celestino; Wünsch, Bettina; Hecker, Lisa; Mair, Philip; Parker, M. Andy; Emmott, Stephen; Tinnefeld, Philip; Keyser, Ulrich F. (13 April 2016). "Programming Light-Harvesting Efficiency Using DNA Origami". Nano Letters. 16 (4): 2369–2374. Bibcode:2016NanoL..16.2369H. doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b05139. ISSN   1530-6984. PMC   5003508 . PMID   26906456.
  17. Purves, D.; Scharlemann, J.; Harfoot, M.; Newbold, T.; Tittensor, D. P.; Hutton, J.; Emmott, S. (2013). "Ecosystems: Time to model all life on Earth". Nature. 493 (7432): 295–297. Bibcode:2013Natur.493..295P. doi: 10.1038/493295a . PMID   23325192. S2CID   4404544.
  18. Purves, Drew W.; Scharlemann, Jörn P. W.; Smith, Matthew J.; Lyutsarev, Vassily; Hutton, Jon; Emmott, Stephen; Tittensor, Derek P.; Newbold, Tim; Harfoot, Michael B. J. (22 April 2014). "Emergent Global Patterns of Ecosystem Structure and Function from a Mechanistic General Ecosystem Model". PLOS Biology. 12 (4): e1001841. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001841 . ISSN   1545-7885. PMC   3995663 . PMID   24756001.
  19. "This rare GEM can model our world". Financial Times. 18 January 2013. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  20. Smith, M. J.; Purves, D. W.; Vanderwel, M. C.; Lyutsarev, V.; Emmott, S. (29 January 2013). "The climate dependence of the terrestrial carbon cycle, including parameter and structural uncertainties". Biogeosciences. 10 (1): 583–606. Bibcode:2013BGeo...10..583S. doi: 10.5194/bg-10-583-2013 . ISSN   1726-4189.
  21. Yordanov, Boyan; Dunn, Sara-Jane; Kugler, Hillel; Smith, Austin; Martello, Graziano; Emmott, Stephen (7 July 2016). "A method to identify and analyze biological programs through automated reasoning". npj Systems Biology and Applications. 2: 16010–. doi: 10.1038/npjsba.2016.10 . ISSN   2056-7189. PMC   5034891 . PMID   27668090.
  22. 1 2 "Ten Billion". Royal Court. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  23. 1 2 Emmott, Stephen (2013). 10 billion. London: Penguin. ISBN   9780141976327. OCLC   829960881.
  24. "10 Billion". Hanway Films. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  25. 1 2 "Oxford Films - Ten Billion". Oxford Films. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  26. "Ten Billion, Royal Court Upstairs, London". Financial Times. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  27. Billington, Michael (19 July 2012). "Ten Billion – review". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  28. Gray, John (5 July 2013). "Population 10 Billion by Danny Dorling and Ten Billion by Stephen Emmott – review". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  29. "Crowded Planet". Financial Times. 12 July 2013. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  30. Zlotnik, Hania (4 September 2013). "Population: Crowd control". Nature. 501 (7465): 30–31. Bibcode:2013Natur.501...30Z. doi: 10.1038/501030a . ISSN   1476-4687.
  31. "TEN BILLION". Kirkus Reviews . 1 September 2013. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
  32. Goodall, Chris (9 July 2013). "Stephen Emmott's 10 billion book is unscientific and misanthropic". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 21 August 2019.