We are privileged to be working with a distinguished group of co-investigators, collaborators, and consultants. Their participation in the project does not imply that they would necessarily subscribe to the whole philosophical-theological framework of the project (see 'Overview of the Project'), for which the Principal Investigators take overall responsibility.
Co-investigators
Terrence Deacon PhD, Professor of Biological Anthropology and Linguistics, U.C. Berkeley.
Professor Deacon is author of The Symbolic Species: The co-evolution of language and the human brain (Allen Lane, 1997), a seminal work connecting C. S. Peirce's semiotics with palaeo-anthropology and neuroscience. He also devised the concept of the 'autocell', a hypothetical protobiotic system which we are using to model the effect of the protobiotic emergence of interpretative responses.
Niles Lehman BS, MA, PhD, Professor of Chemistry, Portland State University.
Professor Lehman is director of the Lehman Lab at P.S.U., where his group focuses on the origin of life and the 'RNA world'. He will be using the technique of continuous in vitro evolution of catalytic RNA molecules (ribozymes) to attempt to engineer a ribozyme capable of making simple interpretive responses to its chemical environment.
Bruce Weber BSc PhD, Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry, C.S.U. Fullerton.
Professor Weber is Professor of Biochemistry Emeritus, California State College Fullerton and Robert H. Woodworth Chair in Science and Natural Philosophy Emeritus, Bennington College. He is the co-author (with David Depew) of Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection (MIT Press, 1996). Professor Weber brings to the project his expertise in the biochemical aspects of origin of life research and a systems dynamics perspective on evolutionary biology.
Scientific collaborators at the host institution
Dr Leong Ting Lui, PhD, Post-doctoral Fellow in Bio-informatics, University of Exeter
Dr Leong Ting Lui is working on computer modelling of Terrence Deacon's autocell concept, and our hypothetical interpretive variant of the autocell.
Z. R. Yang PhD, Senior Lecturer in Bio-informatics, University of Exeter.
Dr Yang worked on our initial attempts to develop a computer model of the reaction kinetics of the 'autocell', and will be advisor to Dr Leong Ting Lui.
Consultants to the project
We are grateful for the contributions to the project made by the following colleagues:
John Bryant, Professor Emeritus of Biological Science, University of Exeter
Philip Clayton, Professor of Religion, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA
Niels Gregersen, Professor of Systematic Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
John Haught, Distinguished Research Professor, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
Mike Higton, Senior Lecturer in Theology, University of Exeter, Devon, U.K.
Jesper Hoffmeyer, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Stuart Kauffman, Professor of Biological Sciences and Physics and Astronomy; Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada
Jeremy Law, Dean of Chapel, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK
J. Littlechild, Professor of Biological Chemistry, Director of Exeter Biocatalysis Centre, Exeter, UK
Harold Morowitz, Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Biology and Natural Philosophy, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Rachel Muers, Lecturer in Christian Studies, University of Leeds, UK
F. LeRon Shults, Professor of Systematic Theology, University of Agder, Norway
Robert E. Ulanowicz, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Ecology with the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory
Mark Wynn, Senior Lecturer in Theology, University of Exeter, UK
