By Halley Posner, February 7, 2022
Watch the Bulletin virtual program “At doom’s doorstep: It is 100 seconds to midnight” featuring Science and Security Board members Robert Latiff, Suzet McKinney, Steven Miller, and Robert Socolow in conversation with Bulletin president & CEO Rachel Bronson.
These experts discussed the factors that went into setting the 2022 Doomsday Clock time and ways we can #TurnBackTheClock. Student attendees joined the moderated discussion before transitioning to a small-group Q&A led by Science and Security Board members Daniel Holz and Robert Rosner. Watch a recording of the moderated program above to learn more.
Read the 2022 Doomsday Clock Statement and listen to all of our virtual programs.
Robert Latiff retired from the US Air Force as a major general in 2006. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Notre Dame and a research professor at George Mason University’s School of Engineering. He is also a member of the Intelligence Community Studies Board and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Latiff’s new book, Future Peace: Technology, Aggression, and the Rush to War, looks at the role technology plays in leading us into conflict. He is also the author of Future War: Preparing for the New Global Battlefield.
Suzet McKinney is the Principal and Director of Life Sciences for Sterling Bay where she oversees relationships with the scientific, academic, corporate, tech, and governmental sectors involved in the life sciences ecosystem. She also leads the strategy to expand Sterling Bay’s footprint in life sciences nationwide. She previously served as CEO and Executive Director of the Illinois Medical District, where she managed a 24/7/365 environment that included 560 acres of medical research facilities, labs, a biotech business incubator, universities, raw land development areas, four hospitals and more than 40 healthcare related facilities. In 2020, Dr. McKinney was appointed by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker as Operations Lead for the State of Illinois’ Alternate Care Facilities, a network of alternate medical locations designed to decompress the hospital system during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. McKinney holds her Doctorate degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and received her Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Brandeis University. She received her Master of Public Health degree and certificates in Managed Care and Health Care Administration from Benedictine University in Lisle, IL.
Steven Miller is Director of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he is a member of the Committee on International Security Studies (CISS). Miller is also Co-Chair of the US Pugwash Committee, and is a member of the Council of International Pugwash. Miller co-directed the Academy’s project on the Global Nuclear Future Initiative with the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board chair, Robert Rosner.
Robert Socolow is professor emeritus in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. From 2000 to 2019, he and Steve Pacala were the co-principal investigators of Princeton’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative, a twenty-five-year (2001-2025) project supported by BP. His best-known paper, with Pacala, was in Science (2004): “Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies.” Socolow is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an associate of the National Research Council of the National Academies, a fellow of the American Physical Society, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His awards include the 2009 Frank Kreith Energy Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the 2005 Axelson Johnson Commemorative Lecture award from the Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences of Sweden (IVA). In 2003 he received the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award from the American Physical Society.
Rachel Bronson is the president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, where she oversees the publishing programs, management of the Doomsday Clock, and a growing set of activities around nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, climate change, and disruptive technologies. Before joining the Bulletin, she served for eight years at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in a number of capacities including: vice president of studies, vice president of programs and studies, and senior fellow, global energy. She also taught “Global Energy” as an adjunct professor at the Kellogg School of Management.
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