Prof. Lawrence Lessig

On July 16th, our club’s webmasters, Lois and Gerry Elman, attended the World Technology Awards in New York City. As a member of the World Technology Network, Gerry has participated in the nomination process for awards in the law category since 2001 and in several of these festivities.

Coincidentally, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig won the World Technology Award in Law in 2001 and again this year.  Lessig is famous for his writings on the law of cyberspace and his criticism of certain aspects of intellectual property law.  His latest book, Remix, calls for change in copyright law to facilitate creative mashups including material sampled from existing work.  He is the father of the Creative Commons organization.

Asst. Prof. Christina Smolke

Seated at the table with Gerry and Lois was Christina Smolke, an Assistant Professor in the Bioengineering Department at Stanford. 

Gerry reports:

Now imagine you’re at the Oscars, men in tuxedos, women in evening dress — but in this version the category isn’t “best picture” or “best actor” but rather “individual achievement expected to have lasting impact in their field of enveavor” such as biotechnology, design, information technology, law, or another of the twenty categories for individual nominees and ten categories for corporations.

James Clark & Ali Velshi co-anchor the World Technology Awards 2009

On the stage from which just six hours previously I had presentedmy own talk, CNN business anchor Ali Velshi and WTN Chairman James Clark declared “… and the 2009 World Technology Award for biotechnology goes to … Christina Smolke and Maung Nyan Win.” It seemed to me that Christina hesitated just a moment, maybe not so sure she’d heard correctly, or perhaps composing her thoughts while taking a breath, and then she strode confidently to the stage, picking her way among the closely packed dinner tables in the sold-out room.

Modestly accepting the award, represented by a double-helix ladder-shape embedded within a cuboid of crystal, she gave a brief summary of what their peers regard as groundbreaking work.

Returning home to Swarthmore,  I learned more. The current issue of the Stanford Magazine had been delivered to my mailbox at home while we were in New York, and now I was able to sort through a few days’ accumulation of snail mail. The cover of the July/August issue features a fanciful image representing a cross between a mechanical gear train and nucleic acid base-pairs. Its accompanying story is entitled “Do-it-Yourself DNA: Bioengineers are harnessing genetic raw material to create living ‘machines.’ Where might it all lead?” It’s a report on the latest work of Christina Smolke’s team. Wow!

Gerry & Lois Elman at the 2009 World Technology Awards in New York City

Click here for a list of 2009 award winners and finalists.