All sessions are free and open to the public.
Professors from the School of Engineering who worked with humanists to plan the symposium were eager to invite practitioners from industry rather than peers from the academy. Patrick Hanrahan, a professor of computer science who in 1993 won an Oscar for a visual effects program he developed that was used in the movie Jurassic Park , was particularly helpful in recommending provocative and imaginative speakers, according to Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, professor of comparative literature and director of the presidential lectures program. Panelists will include historians of cinema and experimental filmmakers, designers who developed special effects for the movies Titanic, Toy Story 2 and Antz, and an astrophysicist who looks at black holes and neutron stars as if they were special effects. One of the byproducts is that intellectual relationships have been created because of the presidential lectures that have never existed before. A year ago, for example, I would never have guessed that Steve Chu and I would end up presenting a seminar together at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro.