Economic security, sustainable development, clean energy and energy security, better regulations, greater innovativeness and the growing share of Polish economy in the international market; these are the main priorities of the Polish government and Ministry of Economy. How is Poland going to handle the 21st Century challenges? How will Poland find its niche in the globalized economy? These are the questions that will be discussed by the Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, Mr. Waldemar Pawlak.

Born in 1959, Mr. Waldemar Pawlak graduated from the Warsaw University of Technology with an engineering degree in automotive and construction machinery. He has served as a member of the Polish Parliament since 1989; as President of the board of the Warsaw Commodities Exchange from 2001 to 2005; as Prime Minister of Poland in 1992 and again in 1993 to 1995; and as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Poland since November 2007.

This seminar is jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, the U.S.-Polish Trade Council, and the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Los Angeles.

The National Plant Diagnostic Network (NPDN) was created to enhance the capabilities of existing diagnostic laboratories in the nation to detect and report introduced pathogens, pests and weeds of high consequence to plant agriculture and natural ecosystems.  An important goal of the network is to coordinate diagnostic and scientific expertise at land-grant universities, state departments of agriculture, agencies within the USDA (CSREES and APHIS), and other organizations involved in agricultural production and security.  The program, which is administered through the USDA, was established in 2002 through funding created by the Homeland Security Act in response to concerns that agricultural pests and pathogens could be used as agents of bio-terrorism.  Responsibilities of the NPDN include the compilation and establishment of diagnostic protocols for priority agents, the development of a web-based distributed plant pest diagnostic and reporting system for the nation, the provision of up-to-date information on plant pests for the nation, the development of analytical tools to exploit these data, and the recruitment and training of first detectors.  The national network is organized into 5 regions, with regional centers located at the University of California, Davis (Western Region), Kansas State University (Great Plains Region), Michigan State University (North Central Region), the University of Florida (Southern Region), and Cornell University (Northeastern Region).  A parallel network for veterinary medicine, the National Animal Health Laboratory Network, also has been established with regional centers located at the same institutions as the NPDN regional centers.  The mission and design of the NPDN, its programs, and progress towards meeting network objectives, will be presented and discussed.

Richard Bostock is a professor and former chair (1999-2005) of the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis.  In 2002, he was appointed as the founding Director of the Western Region of the National Plant Diagnostic Network (NPDN).  The NPDN is a distributed system comprised of public institutions for the purpose of quickly detecting and identifying high consequence pests and pathogens.  The network links plant health professionals, researchers and diagnostic labs throughout the region, providing a way for them to share information about occurrences of plant diseases and pests that could have an impact on the region's most economically important crops.   This information also is reported to first responders and decision makers. Funding for the network is provided through the United States Department of Agriculture. Dr. Bostock received his Ph.D. in Plant Pathology at the University of Kentucky in 1981, and was appointed to the faculty at UC Davis that year.  His research and teaching interests are the biochemistry and molecular biology of plant-microbe interactions and general plant pathology.  He teaches several courses in the department and in the Science and Society program on various aspects of plant pathology, plant-microbe interactions, and issues related to food production. 

Among his other activities, Dr. Relman currently serves as Chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIH), Chair of the Institute of Medicine's Forum on Microbial Threats (U.S. National Academies of Science), member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, and advises several U.S. Government departments and agencies on matters related to pathogen diversity, the future life sciences landscape, and the nature of present and future biological threats.  He co-chaired a three-year study at the National Academy of Sciences that produced a report entitled, "Globalization, Biosecurity, and the Future of the Life Sciences" (2006). He is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology. Dr. Relman received the Squibb Award of the IDSA in 2001, and was the recipient of both the NIH Director's Pioneer Award, and the Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, in 2006.

This talk describes a novel methodology to understand global energy systems and their evolution. We are incorporating state-of-the-art open tools in information science and technology (Google, Google Earth, Wikis, Content Management Systems, etc.) to create a global real time observatory for energy infrastructure, generation, and consumption. The observatory will establish and update geographical and temporally referenced records and analyses of the historical, current, and evolving global energy systems, the energy end-use of individuals, and their associated environmental impacts. Changes over time in energy production, use, and infrastructure will be identified and correlated to drivers, such as demographics, economic policies, incentives, taxes, and costs of energy production by various technologies. As time permits Dr. Gupta will show, using Google Earth, existing data on power generation infrastructure in three countries (South Africa, India and the USA) and highlight examples of unanticipated crisis (South Africa), environment (USA) and exponential growth (India). Finally Dr. Gupta will comment on how/why trust and transparency created by democratization of information that such a system would provide could motivate cooperation, provide a framework for compliance and monitoring of global treaties, and precipitate action towards carbon-neutral systems.

Rajan Gupta is the leader of the Elementary Particles and Field Theory group at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a Laboratory fellow.  He came to the USA in 1975 after obtaining his Masters in Physics from Delhi University, India, and earned his PhD in Theoretical Physics from The California Institute of Technology in 1982. The main thrust of his research is to understand the fundamental theories of elementary particle interactions, in particular the interactions of quarks and gluons and the properties hadrons composed of them. In addition, he uses modeling and simulations to study Biological and Statistical Mechanics systems, and to push the envelope of High Performance Computing. Starting in 1998 his interests broadened into the areas of health, education, development and energy security. He is currently carrying out an integrated systems analysis of global energy systems. In 2000 Dr. Gupta started the forum “International Security in the new Millennium” at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Its goals are to understand global issues dealing with societal and security challenges.