The Second Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences will be held in Rome, on November 8th, 2012 at the Academy Library in Villa Torlonia. On this occasion, the new Foreign Members Catherine Mével and Hans V. Westerhoff will be given formally the Academy diploma.

PROGRAMME

Opening address by the President of the National Academy of Sciences, prof. Emilia Chiancone,

Award of the Academy diploma to the Foreign Members Dr. Catherine Mével and Prof. Dr. Hans V. Westerhoff

‘Active serpentinization of the oceanic mantle’ Dr.Catherine Mével, Conseil National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut de Physique du Globe, Paris

‘Science for Personalized Medicine at last: ICT and the tower of Babel’, Prof. Dr.Hans V. Westerhoff, The University of Amsterdam, The University of Manchester, and VU University Amsterdam, co-coordinator of ITFoM

Catherine MEVEL is a CNRS researcher at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). She is currently the Director of the ECORD Managing Agency. Her main focus concerns the interaction between the oceanic lithosphere and seawater, and its impact on geochemical cycles. She is currently focusing her scientific activity on the serpentinization of mantle-derived rocks in the deep sea floor that releases hydrogen and sustains microbiological activity.

Hans V. Westerhoff is Professor of Microbial Physiology at the Free University of Amsterdam (VUA) and of Synthetic Biology and Systems Biology at the University of Manchester. His current research interests concern ‘systems biology’, a new inter-disciplinary approach to the study of biology that focuses on the complex interactions characterizing each biological system, be it a cell, a micro-organism, or the human body, with obvious applications in the medicine of the future. H.V. Westerhoff has created the first school of Systems Biology in the Netherlands.