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Expansion and Growth

The importance of expansion and growth; exploring space, human cells and China. With Carlos Frenk, Robert Lanza and Jeanne-Marie Gescher.

How expansion and growth affects us in geopolitics, using China as an example, in space, as we increasingly understand how the universe is expanding and in our own bodies, as we discover more about how our cells replicate and change and how we can manufacture them for ourselves. Rajan Datar is joined by Professor Carlos Frenk from Durham University in the UK, a World renowned computational cosmologist who shares his thinking on the latest research about the infinite expansion of the universe. By Jeanne- Marie Gescher, an expert on China, who explores why she thinks the West’s focus on the economy is missing the point. China is indeed embarked on some ambitious economic reform - but it is underpinned by something even more ambitious: that the state will be able to choreograph the market. The top-down state is at the heart of everything, as it has been for thousands of years. And by Dr Robert Lanza, the Chief Scientific Officer at Ocata Therapeutics in the USA and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Robert’s current research focuses on stem cells and regenerative medicine and their potential to provide therapies for some of the world’s most deadly and debilitating conditions.

Photo: an artist's impression of cells expanding (illustration by Shan Pillay)

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41 minutes

Last on

Wed 18 Nov 2015 02:06GMT

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Carlos Frenk

Professor Carlos S. Frenk is Director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University’s world-renowned theoretical cosmology research group. Along with collaborators from all over the world, he builds model universes in state-of-the-art supercomputers, trying to understand how the structures in our Universe evolved from simple beginnings to the complex structures composed of stars and galaxies that we see today.

Robert Lanza

Robert Lanza, M. D. is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Ocata Therapeutics (formerly Advanced Cell Technology), and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. His current research focuses on stem cells and regenerative medicine and their potential to provide therapies for some of the world’s most deadly and debilitating conditions. 

He was part of the team that cloned the world’s first human embryo, as well as the first to successfully generate stem cells from adults using somatic-cell nuclear transfer (therapeutic cloning).

Jeanne-Marie Gescher

Jeanne-Marie Gescher has advised business and government on China for over a quarter of a century.

Her new book, All Under Heaven: China's Dreams of Order, examines China and its history.

Founder of one of the earliest private advisory firms in China, she has also observed and advised policy institutions on the social, human and environmental changes that have taken place and on their implications, for China and the wider world.

Jeanne-Marie has been honorary legal advisor to successive British ambassadors to the PRC from 1989 to 2015; she is a twice-elected former chair of the British Chamber of Commerce in China. In 2001, she was awarded an OBE for her China work. She is a Leaders Quest Ambassador.

Broadcasts

  • Mon 16 Nov 2015 02:06GMT
  • Mon 16 Nov 2015 05:06GMT
  • Tue 17 Nov 2015 09:06GMT
  • Tue 17 Nov 2015 13:06GMT
  • Tue 17 Nov 2015 23:06GMT
  • Wed 18 Nov 2015 02:06GMT

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