The University Honors and Scholars Center kicked off Ohio State’s premiere Nobel Prize Panel event last Wednesday with a full room of students, faculty, and staff.
The panel, developed by the Honors and Scholars Center in partnership with the East Asian Studies Center, aimed to promote academic excellence among undergraduate students and faculty members. During the 2023-2024 academic year, the center held a series of smaller, informal sessions highlighting the prizes and their impact on society.
“We wanted more students to experience the excitement of academic and scholarly achievement while showcasing the excellent minds of our own faculty, which ties in with the recent awards,” said Professor Ola Ahlqvist, associate vice provost of Academic Enrichment and executive director of the Honors and Scholars Center.
This year, four faculty experts sat on the panel to discuss the 2024 awards in chemistry, physics, literature, and peace. The panel was moderated by Professor David Staley, a prolific scholar in history and host of the “Voice of Excellence in Arts and Sciences” podcast.
Staley guided the conversation across the four panelists, allowing them to provide background on the prizes and how the winners made breakthroughs in each category.
Professor Mark Foster, who teaches chemistry and biochemistry, explained the history of scientists’ studies of proteins since the 1970s and how protein building is a niche field in modern science.
“The sequencing wasn’t enough. From the 1970s to today, there were people like me working in laboratories to use experiments to determine the three-dimensional structures of proteins,” Foster said. “We went from 150,000 structures in the database to now over two million structures, and immediately those things have an impact.”
As the audience learned more about artificial intelligence’s role in helping find patterns to create protein structures, Professor Deliang Wang, Ohio State distinguished scholar and a leader in neural networks, focused his discussion on the evolution of AI.
According to the Nobel Prize website, “John Hopfield created a structure that can store and reconstruct information. Geoffrey Hinton invented a method that can independently discover properties in data, and which has become important for the large artificial neural networks now in use.”
While the earlier prizes had more evident and concrete reasons behind the winnings, Professor Mitch Lerner said the Nobel Peace Prize was not as clear to see.
Lerner, professor of history and director of the East Asian Studies Center, described the prize winners’ subject, which brought attention to nuclear weaponry, says the prize winner had two objectives. One was to lobby the Japanese government for better treatment of the victims of the bombing for medical care and legal rights.
“The second goal, and the one I feel is important in the eyes of the Nobel Prize committee, was their effort to make sure the horrors of nuclear war were part of the global public conversation. They played a critical role in making humanists part of public consciousness and pressuring international legislators to work for nuclear disarmament,” Lerner said.
Also earning recognition on the international stage is Korean poet Han Kang. Although some of her poems have not been translated into English, Professor Hayanna Kim, assistant professor of Korean literature and performance, said Kang’s use of spaces, italicizing, commas, and listening to the audiobook helps give context to the poetry.
“On the surface level, it reads so well. It’s crisp and simple. She seems to engage with ordinary topics, for example, breastfeeding a child. It’s not until you read an actual piece of her poetry that you begin to realize the depth of it,” Kim said.
Guests in the audience wrapped up the event with questions for each of the panelists.
Ultimately, the conversations recognized the use of artificial intelligence to advance science and find outcomes, while others explained its controversy in hindering humans’ analysis, skill development, and narrative construction.
Nobel Prize Since 1901, there have 627 Nobel Prizes awarded. Every year, awardees gather in Stockholm, Sweden and Oslo, Norway to celebrate the accomplishments.