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Dr. Zach Hall was the first President of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). CIRM funds stem cell research at research institutions and companies throughout California. The organization was established in 2004 with the passage of Proposition 71, which provided $3 billion in funding. Our grants support research with embryonic, adult and reprogrammed (iPS) stem cells, all with the goal of bringing new medical therapies to the people of California and the world.

Previously, Dr. Hall was Director, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Director of the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Development at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. Dr. Hall is the author and editor of An Introduction to Molecular Neurobiology, a widely used textbook, and has published more than 100 original papers and reviews in scientific journals.

In our 1/4/2006 interview, Dr. Hall discusses

• Timing for availability of therapies based on stem cell research
• The relationship between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning
• CIRM accomplishments in its first year of existence (2005)

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Ben Bova’s new novel, The Immortality Factor, is published by Tor Books. Dr. Bova is President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He has written 120 futuristic novels and nonfiction books, and has been involved in science and high technology since the very beginnings of the space age.

Dr. Bova received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, “for fueling mankind’s imagination regarding the wonders of outer space.” In 2008 Dr. Bova won the Robert A. Heinlein Award “for his outstanding body of work in the field of literature.”

In his various writings, Dr. Bova has predicted the Space Race of the 1960s, the discovery of organic chemicals in interstellar space, virtual reality, human cloning, the discovery of life on Mars, and stem cell therapy.

Dr. Bova has worked with film makers and television producers such as Woody Allen, George Lucas, and Gene Roddenberry. In 2001 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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