Dr. Stuart Kauffman
Co-Project Director
Dr. Stuart Alan Kauffman is the chair of the content team for The Shape of History Media and Education Project. He is also the project’s co-director and co-executive producer of the planned multi-part documentary series.
Kauffman is a theoretical biologist, philosopher and medical doctor who, after completing his medical degree in 1968 from the University of California, San Francisco, went on to do work on developmental genetics, complex systems science, the origin of life on Earth and molecular organization. He currently lives and works independently in Santa Fe, NM.
He was a professor at the University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Senior Professor and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and Professor of Biological Sciences, Physics, Astronomy at the University of Calgary. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania and Affiliate Professor at the Institute for Systems Biology. He has authored six books including, most recently, A World Beyond Physics (2019).
Kauffman’s numerous awards includes a 1987 fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation awarded annually to American citizens who have shown “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.” He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Gold Medal of the Accademea Lincea, and holds an Honorary Doctorate from the Université Nouvelle de Louvain, Belgium.
Kauffman is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection as discussed in his book The Origins of Order (1993). He developed the “Kauffman models”, which are random networks that exhibit a kind of self-organization that he termed “order for free.”
In 1967 and 1969 he used random Boolean networks to investigate generic self-organizing properties of gene regulatory networks. Using these models, he proposed that cell types are dynamical attractors in gene regulatory networks, that cell differentiation can be understood as transitions between attractors, and that genetic networks are dynamically critical, poised at the “edge of chaos.”
Recent evidence suggests that cell types in humans and other organisms are attractors and the network is in fact critical. He also proposed the self-organized emergence of collectively autocatalytic sets of polymers, specifically peptides or RNA, for the origin of molecular reproduction, which have found experimental support in molecular fossils in Archea and bacteria from more than 2 billion years ago. He holds the founding patent with Marc Ballivet on Combinatorial Chemistry, now a multibillion dollar industry.
Other work concerns topics in economics concerning the evolution of economic webs and cumulative technological evolution. Topics in physics include a new state of matter hovering reversibly between the quantum and classical worlds where he holds a founding patent], and the failure of the Newtonian Paradigm of entailing laws for the evolution of our or any biosphere.
George A. Colburn
Project Director
George A. Colburn (georgecolburn.com) is a historian who has worked extensively as a multi-media distance education programming director and as an independent documentary filmmaker.
After receiving his Ph.D. at Michigan State University, he spent eight years at the University of California, San Diego, directing a National Endowment for the Humanities project that created course packages for hundreds of distant education programs at colleges and universities around the country, and provided opinion columns for hundreds of newspapers written on the course topic by some of the nation’s outstanding scholars.
In 1979, Dr. Colburn added audio and video components to some projects, including prime-time documentary series such as “Connections” with James Burke of the BBC and “Cosmos” with Dr. Carl Sagan, two science-oriented series that reached record audiences on PBS.
After leaving UCSD, Colburn worked for several years with the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies to create a multi-media course entitled “The Chinese” that was linked to “The Heart of the Dragon” series, winner of the International Emmy for documentaries in 1984. In this role he produced 25 programs for distance education programs throughout the country.
He is best known in the documentary television field for his extensive work since 1991 on the military and political careers of Dwight D. Eisenhower. The premiere of Dr. Colburn’s latest documentary on “Ike” took place in September 2020 as part of the dedication for the opening of the Eisenhower Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Also to be released in the coming year are two other feature documentaries written, produced and directed by Dr. Colburn: “Young Hemingway & The Path to Paris” and “Navajo Code Talkers: A Journey of Remembrance.”
Chris Haws
Senior Production Consultant
Chris Haws is the Senior Production Consultant for The Shape of History Media and Education Project. He brings a distinguished background in science communication to the venture – from working as a producer and director at the BBC, to senior positions with Discovery Inc., to lecturing on the psychophysics of 3D viewing, to consulting on the psychology of grief and loss.
After receiving an M.A. Honors degree in Psychology at Aberdeen University in Scotland, Haws wrote, produced and directed a wide range of award-winning science programs at the BBC, such as “Tomorrow’s World,” “Horizon,” “Medical Express” and “The Risk Business.” He left in 1982 for the launch of Channel 4, the first independent television network, where he produced and directed science documentaries on a variety of subjects including nuclear power, Chaos theory, neuroscience, String theory and Biodiversity.
In 1995 Haws joined Discovery Communications as Vice President of Production, becoming Discovery Europe’s first commissioning editor and overseeing 250 hours of original programming a year. In 1998 he moved to Discovery’s headquarters in Washington DC to serve as Senior Vice President and Executive Producer at Discovery Networks International (DNI).
Throughout this time, Haws continued to be closely associated with training initiatives within the international broadcast community, teaching science and factual programming production in England, Denmark, France, Australia, Scotland and Germany. For many years, he has been a closely associated with the annual World Congress of Science and Factual Producers as a speaker, moderator, panelist, session producer and steering committee member.
Haws served on the Advisory Board of Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership (now The Discovery Education Alliance) as well as on a number of NSF Grant disbursal committees, specializing in the public understanding of science both in the media and in the general public. He also advises the science community on media relations, and the media community on scientific literacy. He was Senior Science Advisor to the Discovery Communications’ Science Channel and Discovery Education’s principal STEM initiative.
A consulting advisor to the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange, Haws lectured in Hollywood on the topic of 3D in Education, later joining the 3DatHome Consortium’s Human Factors Steering Committee. This led to his appointment as a consultant to the American Optometric Association, advising their membership on the psychophysics of the 3D viewing experience.
Building on his MA in Psychology, Haws obtained post-graduate qualification as a certified grief counselor (2017). He now consults to individuals, hospital groups, advocacy organizations and corporations across the Washington DC area on the many types of grief and loss.
Haws’ current television projects include the global future of zoos; solar science for kids; imaging technology in science; the ethics and practice of voluntary euthanasia and the role of scientific literacy in society.
Paul Marcus
Director of Marketing
Paul Marcus is an experienced creative marketer and producer with an extensive business resume working with a multitude of industries including entertainment, restaurant, retail, and telecommunication companies.
Mr. Marcus started his marketing career while still in his 20s by working with large advertising and marketing agencies in Chicago and New York. There he serviced large consumer accounts including Burger King, 7-Up. Midas Muffler, Century 21, and Pan Am Airways, among others. When he was recruited by McDonald’s advertising agency in the mid-1970s as a vice president in New York, he took over the McDonald’s account and successfully expanded it, including multiple campaign awards.
McDonald’s national strategic agency, Simon Marketing Worldwide, recruited him to head up their McDonald’s business and he joined them in the mid-1980s as a partner in the Los Angeles-based firm. After creating and developing some of the most successful marketing campaigns in McDonald’s history (e.g. the Happy Meal), he expanded the company’s footprint to 14 offices worldwide and helped build the company’s gross revenue from a $35 million firm when he joined to a $1.2 billion public company.
His business development responsibilities included servicing television network clients, ABC, NBC and CBS, where he created sponsorships and audience building programs. Other clients he signed included Coca-Cola, Sprint, Target, Walt Disney, Paramount, Hallmark, Toys R Us, Nestle, among others.
In 2008, Mr. Marcus began an independent career by concentrating on producing and marketing documentaries for public television. He was Director of Development for the successful and award- winning public television series, Ancient Roads from Christ to Constantine, a 6-hour television series based on the founding of the world’s largest religion. Currently he is Director of Development for Starbright Media. Projects include the distribution and sponsorship of upcoming documentaries on Ernest Hemingway’s early life, the journey back to the battlefields of World War II by six Navajo Code Talkers, and the path to hero status by Dwight D. Eisenhower in World War II.
Dean Love
Senior Location Producer
Dean Love is an Emmy award-winning documentary producer/director/cameraman/editor for Dean Love Films, Inc. in New York City. He has produced almost 200 programs during his 30 years in the business. They have appeared on National Geographic TV, the Discovery Channel, PBS, TLC and the Animal Planet.
His major credits include The Walter Cronkite commentaries, the Walter Cronkite Tribute, “The FBI Files” and other programming for national distributors in the U.S. and abroad.
His production work outside the U.S. includes such award-winning programs as “Guardians of Angkor” – shot in the minefields of Cambodia – and “Cave of the Glowing Skulls” based in Honduras. Most recently, he produced and directed a National Geographic special based in England entitled “The Secrets of the Virgin Queen.”
For several years he was based in Singapore where he was producing/directing “Komodo: To Capture a Dragon”, and working as a consulting producer for “The Navajo Code Talkers, ” a feature documentary being shot on five major World War II battlefields in the Pacific.