We asked each of our scientists to give us their thoughts on their professions and what they think the future holds for humanity.

What would you recommend for students wanting to pursue a similar career?
I think it doesn't matter what discipline you study as long as you accept that your discipline is going to be linked with other disciplines and the results of every discipline have to mesh with that of others. Very much as E.O. Wilson describes in his Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.

What do you like best about your profession?
[I like best] being able to see patterns that have never been seen before. The trick here is obviously that I generate these patterns myself from data that I analyze a certain way. Because I am impatient, I use other people's data, which goes much faster than collecting one's own data. To cover up, though, I call this "analyzing secondary data." So what I like best in my profession is that I can use secondary data to generate patterns and relationships that have never been seen before.

What makes you most fearful for the future?
That we don't have a good mechanism for learning from history. Thus, every generation must learn, from painful experience, that warmongering leads only to widespread misery and that environmental destruction undermines human welfare. But what I am most afraid of are the combined effects of global warming, human population growth, religious delusions and the corporate control of our democratic institutions. I fear that these — acting in concert — are sufficient to push us into a political-environmental crisis so big that it will threaten the continuity of our civilization.

What makes you most hopeful for the future?
That young people do not inherit in their DNA all the stupid things previous generations have been coming up with.