ILAN CHABAY
Dr. Ilan Chabay was selected to be the first Erna & Victor Hasselblad Professor of Public Learning and Understanding of Science (PLUS). He holds this newly endowed Chair jointly at Chalmers University of Technology and Göteborg University in Göteborg, Sweden. He is conducting research on how the public’s ideas about science and technology are learned, processed, used, and changed. His research focuses on 1) how models and metaphors are used and understood in communicating science and science-related social issues, 2) verbal and non-verbal measures of public engagement with science, 3) use of new role-playing computer games to study how adolescents - especially girls - engage in science, and 4) how science communication between policy makers, scientists, and citizens affects governance. After a PhD in chemical physics from the University of Chicago, Dr. Chabay was a researcher at National Institutes of Standards and Technology.  In 1982 he became associate director of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. He left in 1983 and was consulting professor of chemistry at Stanford University. At the same time, Dr. Chabay founded The New Curiosity Shop® (NCS), which was a workshop (not a store!) and consultancy from 1983 to 2001. Dr. Chabay and his staff designed and produced innovative hands-on science exhibits for over 230 institutions in 16 countries. Dr. Chabay served on the Leadership and Planning Group for NASA's Office of Space Science and directed a team that designed an innovative web-based Science Education Framework for NASA.