2014 Breakthrough Prize Symposium

The 2014 Breakthrough Prize Symposium was held November 10, 2014 at UC San Francisco and co-hosted by Stanford University and UC Berkeley.

The day featured talks on cancer, genetics, neurobiology and stem cells from the Breakthrough Prize in Life Science laureates, as well as Nobel Prize winners Stan Prusiner, Elizabeth Blackburn and Mike Bishop. UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann hosted a panel discussion on the future of the biological sciences, open to the general public, with the six new life sciences laureates. Videos are available here.

In the physics track, Stanford President John Hennessy and Department of Physics Chair Peter F. Michelson gave introductory speeches. Lectures on diverse aspects of particle physics, string theory and cosmology were given by prize laureates Nima Arkani-Hamed, Juan Maldacena, Alexander Polyakov and Ashoke Sen, along with presentations by renowned physicists Leonard Susskind, George Efstathiou, Renata Kallosh, Eva Silverstein, Savas Dimopoulos and Shamit Kachru. Early in the day, Yuri Milner, led a panel discussion on the future of physics research with laureates Andrew Strominger, Michael Green, John Schwarz and Joseph Polchinkski. Videos are available here.