My interests and activities are broad, but all revolve around the theme of making the world (universe(s)?) a better place. I conduct research that combines science, engineering, and ethics to assess what, given present circumstances and particular ethical frameworks, might be the best thing(s) for us to be doing. I also develop teaching materials and approaches to help others in their efforts.
I am currently a PhD candidate in Pennsylvania State University's Geography Department and Rock Ethics Institute. My dissertation research, with advisor Bill Easterling, is on discounting, ethics, and climate change assessment. I also work on reducing global catastrophic risk, which is anything that could end human civilization or even cause human extinction.
CV: pdf
Contact info: sbaum [at] psu.edu
Networking: Facebook * LinkedIn * Twitter
At present I am particularly interested in networking with people who are or would like to be working on any aspect of global catastrophic risk.
Photos: html
Updates: Old Updates
8 Mar 2010: Several website modifications are now up. There are new sections for my views on several aspects of ethics and for my magazine and online publications. Also, my academic publications page has been overhauled, now providing short summaries of each publication and linking to new html pages for most of them. Finally, I've revised my research page, linking to new pages on astrobiology, artificial general intelligence, and discounting. Hopefully these modifications will make this site more helpful.
Upcoming Conferences:
Association of American Geographers, April 14-18, 2010, Washington, DC.
Society for Risk Analysis, December 5-8, 2010, Salt Lake City.
About this site: This site is kindly hosted by Knightsbridge Online. The formatting of this site was adapted from W3C's Starting with HTML + CSS page.
Created 15 Jun 2007 * Updated 8 Mar 2010