National Academy of Sciences Roundtable on Technology

Oceanographer and Center Blog contributor Frank R. Hall recently attended the Meeting of the Roundtable on Science and Technology Sustainability at the National Academy of Sciences. He is pictured with two of the roundtable members: Dr. Denise Stephenson-Hawk and Dr. Mohammad Hassan. More on them below.

MOHAMED H.A. HASSAN is Executive Director of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), President of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) and Chairman of the Honorary Presidential Advisory Council for Science and Technology in Nigeria. After obtaining his D.Phil. (University of Oxford, 1974), he returned to Sudan as professor and Dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Khartoum. He was the 1985 TWAS Fellow in Mathematical Sciences. He received the Comendator (1996), Grand Cross (2005), and National Order of Scientific Merit, Brazil; and Officer, Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 2003. Dr. Hassan’s membership includes: Founding Fellow, AAS, 1985; Fellow, Islamic World Academy of Sciences, 1992; Honorary Member, Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Físicasy Naturales, 1996; Corresponding Member, Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer, Belgium, 2001; and Foreign Fellow, Pakistan Academy of Sciences, 2002. His fields cover theoretical plasma physics, wind erosion, sand and dust transport, and diffusion of dust
particles.

DENISE STEPHENSON HAWK is Chairman of the Stephenson Group, LLC and a science, policy, and education consultant. She is a former provost of Spelman College and professor at Clark Atlanta University, recently held a position as the NCAR associate director for the Societal-Environmental Research & Education Laboratory (SERE). Through her multifaceted career in academia, government, and the corporate arena, Stephenson Hawk has often worked at the interface between science, education, and policy. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University in geophysical fluid dynamics. While at Clark Atlanta, Stephenson Hawk served as founding director of the interdisciplinary Earth Systems Science Program and co-led a program to enhance the mathematics and science achievement of Atlanta public school students. She has served on many NSF, NASA, and NOAA science and education advisory committees, as well as on the NOAA Science Advisory Board and the UCAR University Relations Committee.