A conference is held with world renowned scientists to identify the greatest threats to the Earth.

New York, NY, January 12, 2012 --(PR.com)-- From December 9th to the 12th, 2011, The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation sponsored a conference called, Coping with Future Catastrophes on Little Saint James Island in the US Virgin Islands.

The conference brought together some of the best scientific minds in the country and focused on the need to identify the greatest threats to the Earth today. Such threats included acts of bioterrorism, nuclear calamities and/or nuclear warfare, overpopulation, asteroid and meteor threats, super volcanoes, mass tectonic earthquakes, rogue self-replicating nano-machines, superintelligent computers and high-energy chain-reactions that could disrupt the fabric of space itself.

The conference was organized by cognitive scientist, Marvin Minsky, a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and the co-founder of MIT’s AL (Artificial Intelligence) Laboratory. “We need to identify the greatest threats to our Earth but we also need to prioritize them,” Minsky explained.

Once a list of prioritized threats was established, the goal of the conference was to put together a panel of experts in each field to review the list at a second conference to be held in the near future. Ultimately, the purpose of these meetings would be to establish an organization or NGO that would monitor this priority list, adjust it accordingly and work on preventative measures.

“To date there are many governmental and non-governmental organizations, such as the CDC, Center for Disease Control or the WHO, the World Health Organization, that monitor potential global catastrophes but they tend to focus on one field of study,” Minsky affirmed. "There is a need for an organization to oversee and collect data from all of these groups, to prioritize looming disasters and to establish preventative measures."

Attending the first conference was a rich array of renowned scientists, authors and entrepreneurs, including: Martin Nowak, Professor of Biology and Mathematics and Director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University, Lawrence Krauss, Professor of Physics, Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University and Gregory Benford, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California in Irvine.

The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation was founded by Jeffrey E. Epstein in 2000. The Foundation directly funds cutting edge research in science, ranging from computer intelligence, to neuroscience and quantum physics.

For more information contact:

The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation
www.jeffreyepstein.org

Christina Galbraith
Galbraith_christina@yahoo.com

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Contact Information:
The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation
Christina Galbraith
(917) 573-7604
Contact via Email
www.jeffreyepstein.org

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