How AI Is Reshaping Global Research and Innovation

Benjamin Z. Houlton is the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and a Cornell University professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Global Development Section of the Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment. Ben began his tenure as the 12th Cornell CALS dean on Oct. 1, 2020, and was reappointed to a second five-year term in 2024. As dean, he shares responsibility for leadership of Cornell Cooperative Extension throughout New York state with the College of Human Ecology.

Chuck Ng is an entrepreneur, technology investor, and community leader working at the intersection of science, AI, and global collaboration. He has invested in and advised multiple leading technology and life sciences companies, including unicorns such as Databricks, Ironclad, and Mammoth Biosciences, and has served as an advisor or partner to global technology leaders including Meta, SK Telecom, Alibaba, and Futurewei. Previously, he co-founded several companies, including Eureka Therapeutics, a cancer and T-cell therapy company, and served as Chairman of the Audit Committee of Vimicro (Nasdaq: VIMC) and Zenta Group (Nasdaq: ZGM). Beyond his professional work, Chuck is deeply involved in entrepreneurship, education, and community building, having served in leadership roles across global alumni and leadership organizations and mentored founders and researchers at institutions including Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Columbia, Brown, Tsinghua, and University of Macau. He also co-founded the World Leading Scientists Institute to support deeper collaboration between leading scientists across the US and Asia, and is a graduate of UC Berkeley with dual MBA degrees from INSEAD and Tsinghua University.

Dr. Barry Barish was born in 1936 and received his Bachelor’s and Doctorate in Physics from UC Berkeley in 1957 and 1962. He joined the faculty at Caltech, where he spent most of his career, before joining UC Riverside in 2018. Dr. Barish’s research spans high-energy physics, including early work confirming the weak neutral current, and he later led the MACRO experiment studying magnetic monopoles and cosmic rays.

Dr. Barish became LIGO’s principal investigator in 1994, restructuring the project and founding the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which led to the first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015. He was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work, shared with Rainer Weiss and Kip Thorne. Dr. Barish also directed the Global Design Effort of the International Linear Collider from 2005 to 2013.