Dr. Dani Bassett, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, will speak at 7:00 p.m., Wednesday, April 19th, at Marietta College on “On Being Curious.” Bassett is delivering the 2023 Ellis L. and Jennie Mae Krause Lecture in Science.
Bassett is the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor at Penn with appointments in the Departments of Bioengineering, Electrical & Systems Engineering, Physics & Astronomy, Neurology, and Psychiatry.
They are also an external professor of the Santa Fe Institute. Bassett is most well-known for blending neural and systems engineering to identify fundamental mechanisms of cognition and disease in human brain networks. They received a B.S. in physics from Penn State University and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge, UK, as a Churchill Scholar and as an NIH Health Sciences Scholar. Following a postdoctoral position at UC Santa Barbara, Bassett was a Junior Research Fellow at the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Alma McDonough Auditorium. The lecture series, which began in 2002, is supported by gifts from the late Dr. Richard M. Krause ’47, the son of E.L. and Jennie Mae Krause. Dr. Krause served on the College’s Board of Trustees for 22 years.