Zero regrets. On Monday night, renowned speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno challenged students at Oklahoma State U. to live a life with no regrets whether dealing with a relationship, preparation for a test or a business opportunity.

To help introduce Ohno was current OSU wrestling coach and fellow Olympian John Smith.

“He shows that with sacrifice and commitment you can achieve greatness,” Smith said. “I respect what he (Ohno) has done. In a sport that is constantly striving for attention, this guy did it.”

Ohno took the audience on a trip through his life, beginning at his first exposure to speed skating when he was only 14.

“When I first saw the Olympic games, I saw something I had never seen before,” Ohno said. “I saw these guys skating around a hockey rink on 18-inch blades that are 1-millimeter-thick, going 35 to 40 miles an hour, inches from each other, leaning at these impossible angles. I thought, ‘Wow, I could do something like that.’”

From there, Ohno’s father placed him in classes and training. Within a short time he was able to place first in time trials. Instead of progressing, Ohno fell into a slump and placed last at the next year’s trials. It was there that he decided to become one of the best speed skaters.

“I didn’t dedicate myself and I didn’t sacrifice,” Ohno said. “My father told me, ‘I don’t care what you do. You need to dedicate 100 percent to whatever that is. Whatever you do you’re going to do it to the best of your ability.’”

After the sort of revelation he had, Ohno went on to make the Olympic team. Overall he has acquired eight Olympic medals, making him the most decorated winter Olympian.

In addition to his athletic accomplishments, Ohno was a guest on “Dancing with the Stars.” With dancing partner Junliane Hough, Ohno won the show.

“This 18-year-old girl taught me a lot of life lessons,” Ohno said. “The first thing I had to learn was opening up. She taught me to show my inner emotion.”

Now, Ohno travels around the country speaking to middle school kids. He gives these motivational talks hoping to make a difference in the students’ lives. By telling his life story he shows them that they can turn their lives around and achieve great things.

The Wes Watkins center was filled to the brim. With students, faculty among others in attendance, Ohno’s message reached and made an impact on many.

“I thought he was very inspirational,” OSU freshman John Engelbrecht said. “It definitely had an effect on me. It made me want to try to be more conscious of how much I put forth in everything I do.”

I was completely thrown off by Chatroulette.

A friend recently sent me a video of Ben Folds using the social Web cam site at a concert.

He set a laptop on his piano and improv-serenaded whoever popped up on the screen, from a Viking to a sad-looking kid who stared at the crowd from his bed.

The video was funny, but I couldn’t understand why people would spend their time alone, online, looking for whoever it is you find on Chatroulette.

That sparked me to conduct my own investigation, to delve into the Chatroulette world. So I decided to sit through 100 chat partners and find out what it’s all about.

For those who don’t know, chatroulette.com is a Web site that sets up a video chat between you and a random stranger anywhere in the world.

When you get connected, you talk with that person via Web cam and IM until somebody clicks “next,” and you’re assigned another person. Pretty wild.

My plan was to sit through 100 people and note what I saw, but as it turned out, half of those 100 “nexts” I clicked were because of the same reason: male genitalia, a Chatroulette epidemic.

There are apparently a staggering number of creeps who get their kicks by exposing themselves to unsuspecting viewers. It was startling to say the least, but most of all, gross and terrifying.

If the people I saw on Chatroulette gathered in one physical place, I imagine it would be the unemployment line mixed with detention mixed with an insane asylum.

It’s chock-full of full-blown weirdos. From my limited time on the site, I saw girls dressed as gorillas, men in drag and grown men talking in baby voices.

I saw two guys head-to-toe in KISS garb, tallying on a poster board how many “worlds (they) rocked.” Peculiar, to say the least.

There were some normal people out there, however rare.

I had a short conversation with a guy from Mexico who was nuts about soccer, met a kid from New England who liked to talk about Chuck Klosterman books and talked to a high schooler who spoke exclusively in Will Ferrell quotes.

Hands down, though, the highlight of my little experiment happened when I was getting bored around the 80th or so “next,” looking forward more to the 100th and final chat partner than another dude showing me his goodies.

After a few boring exchanges, up popped a framed picture of Chris Hansen, of “Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator” fame.

Hansen’s picture stood there, silently judging me, and in the chat box to the right read: “Why … why don’t you take a seat? Have a seat right over there.”

I’m not sure there’s an actual productive use for this thing. Marketing research, maybe?

To me, it seems like a time-waster, more like the game Web site Sporcle than anything productive.

It’s someplace to go when you’re bored or your friends have stopped listening to you, and you get the urge to be bizarre somewhere.

From its users to its creation, everything about Chatroulette is surreal.

A 17-year-old Russian kid started the site with the help of his parents’ $10,000 investment. As of last month, he still operates it from his childhood bedroom.

As many as 1.5 million users are on it at a given time, and he sustains the site with revenue from an online dating service placing ads on the site.

All things considered (and omitting the unfortunately prevalent indecent exposure), Chatroulette is pretty entertaining, but only when taken in very small doses.

After I signed off, I felt like I had to shower and go to church. The site is gaining popularity, and growing at a frenetic pace, but I doubt I’ll be going back there anytime soon.

Even though I did go to an all-boys high school, there’s only so much male “exposure” I can take.

Eric Lander, a Princeton U. alumnus and principal leader of the Human Genome Project, described the genetic mapping process, as well as developments that have occurred since the project’s completion, to a packed crowd at his alma mater on Monday night.

“I really, really want to give you a sense of the discoveries, and a feeling and pace of what’s going on with respect to the genome project,” Lander said, in an attempt to share “what’s really going on … what excites us as scientists,” rather than presenting “the cartoon version.”

Lander called the current era one of the most remarkable times in any scientific field.

“Once in the history of every scientific discipline you get to see the whole — you have fragmentary pieces, but very rarely do you get to see the whole,” he said, citing the discovery that the world was round and the completion of the periodic table as parallel revolutions in geography and chemistry, respectively.

“We can’t imagine what it would be like to learn chemistry without knowing the periodic table,” he explained. “That’s what’s happening in biology right now.”

Lander said that the genome project provides far more questions than answers.

“We need to be able to know how to read it to know which genes turn on what, which genes code for proteins … We need to know not just the gene sequence in general, but all the variation in the human population,” he said.

But Lander said that the speed at which the field has advanced in recent years indicates that, in the near future, “we won’t be able to imagine what it was like to live in the 1980s, when molecular biologists went out into the jungles in search of genes” — much like we cannot imagine living in a world without an accurate map.

Lander also acknowledged the contributions to the field by David Botstein, director of the University’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, noting that Botstein’s method for mapping genes enabled the Human Genome Project.

“David … said we should make a genetic map so we can be systematic … a map from which finding the genes for any disease would be possible,” he explained.

In March, Lander and Botsein, along with Francis Collins, a leader of the Human Genome Project and the curent director of the National Institutes of Health, shared the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research for their work on genetics.

Lander noted that the Human Genome Project was the first organized project to make all  information freely available to everyone.

The Human Genome Project “involved changes in technology; it involved changes in our culture — collaborations between different countries, 20 different centers — everyone working towards a common goal,” he said.

A surprise of the Human Genome Project was that the number of protein-coding genes was much fewer than anyone expected, Lander recalled. Scientists initially expected that there would be roughly 100,000 such genes, but the project revealed that only 21,000 protein-coding genes existed.

He also noted that “most of the evolution that distinguished [humans] has been in non-coding genes,” adding that only 10 percent of the human genome has changed over the course of human existence.

“The mutation rate is sufficiently slow that 5 percent goes back to when humans were in Africa, and only 5 percent since the human population has existed outside of Africa,” he explained.

“The real secret about the human genome is how many secrets there are left to discover,” Lander said.

Lander was appointed by President Obama as one of the three co-chairs of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in December 2008.

Depending on whom you ask, you will probably hear a different reason for the legalization — in some form or another — of marijuana. Many would prefer legalization solely for medical users. Some point out that legalizing and taxing marijuana would help refill depleted state coffers. Others note that marijuana is generally considered to be less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco; that it was outlawed for corrupt, illegitimate reasons to begin with; that marijuana-related arrests (89 percent of which are for possession, not trafficking or selling) now make up half of all drug-related arrests.

The United States’s first experiment with prohibition (1920-1933) was repealed and generally regarded as a failure, and if the smell wafting around Cornell U.’s Barton Hall on Sunday night was any indication, this ill-conceived experiment has not worked either. Just as surely as moonshine was quaffed in speakeasies 90 years ago, marijuana is still smoked. In the most recent anonymous survey conducted by Gannett Health Services, almost 20 percent of the responding Cornellians said they had smoked marijuana in the past 30 days.

The most convincing and fundamental reason for re-thinking the current federal policy on marijuana use is simple: It would return control to the government. No matter the perceived “problems” with current marijuana usage — and those vary from person to person — one possible solution to is letting the government regulate and benefit from the marijuana industry that can no longer be ignored. But when policymakers stick to their “War on Drugs” guns, march out the police and close their eyes, the problem does not disappear.

There are positive signs: 14 states currently allow medical marijuana, and six allow dispensaries to sell medical marijuana. The cannabusiness is booming. California, despite an impotent and nearly bankrupt government, saw $2 billion of potentially taxable revenue from the medical marijuana industry last year. So, things are not all bad on the bud front. But, policy inertia is notoriously difficult to overcome — marijuana has been illegal for a long time and too many people are content with what they see as a perfectly acceptable status quo. We must consider the ugly side of the status quo — murderous drug wars, inflating rates of incarceration, a steady stream of funding for criminal organizations — to make a reasoned judgment on the many questions surrounding marijuana policy.

As one of the most revered reefers of all time crooned: “None but ourselves can free our minds.”

Dr. James E. Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Science, arrived at Cornell U. Monday to discuss the imminent reality of climate change. Hansenhas spent the last 30 years studying the reality of humans’ impact on climate change.

The lecture comes after the publication of Hansen’s first book in 2009, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About The Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.

“If that title doesn’t get your attention, I don’t know what will,” said Prof. Frank DiSalvo, chemistry and chemical biology and director of the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future, as he introduced Hansen.

Hansen originally gave his lecture, entitled “Global Climate Change: What Must We Do Next,” after the Copenhagen Climate Conference failed to achieve its goal of climate change mitigation. However, Hansen said that this failure did not disappoint him, as the goals of the agreement would not have been enforceable and would only have resulted in another wasted ten to fifteen years.

Hansen highlighted the large knowledge gap between scientists and the public, and he described how America’s reliance on fossil fuels will leave problems for future generations. Such behavior contradicts the universal traditions of parental sacrificing, Hansen said.

The idea that his grandchildren will inherit the planet that Hansen and other living humans leave behind motivates him to make changes, Hansen said.

“I [don’t] want my grandkids to say that grandpa understood what was going on and he didn’t try to make it clear,” he said.

“We’ve reached a point where if we don’t begin to get on a different course in the next several years, we’re going to pass some tipping points. The reason this can happen is because the climate system has great inertia,” Hansen said. “It takes the climate system time to begin to respond to the forces that humans are applying to it, but once it does respond, it can go past tipping points where the dynamics of the system begin to take over and changes proceed out of our control.”

But Hansen said there are limitations on the effects of personal conservational steps, and real change must occur through targeting fossil fuel policy and carbon pricing.

“We could get back below 350 [parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere], especially with the help of improved forestry and agricultural practices which can be used to help store [carbon dioxide] in the forest and the soil. So it is technically feasible to do this, and it makes sense,” Hansen said. However, as oil reserves around the world are tapped and new coal factories are built, policy makers are not adhering to pledges to reduce global warming emissions, he added.

“There is a huge gap between the reality and the rhetoric … It’s basically business as usual,” Hansen said.

Hansen said an across-the-board carbon fee should be created in America, with the money being returned to the public — which he said is both beneficial to local economies and acceptable in the international community.

However, Hansen differs significantly from many large environmental organizations, which push for the creation of a cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

“The big environmental groups … are supporting the cap-and-trade approach. But you look at it and you see that it is not going to be that effective,” Hansen said. “They say it might be imperfect but the train has left the station. Well, actually nothing has left the station here.”

“Boy, these big organizations have become part of the problem,” he said.

Hansen is no stranger to controversy. One introductory speaker at Monday’s lecture, Prof. David Wolfe, horticulture, highlighted how Hansen risked his career as a government employee under the Bush administration when his research was censored. Hansen also has recently reversed his previously anti-nuclear position and now supports fourth generation nuclear energy, which burns past today’s nuclear power’s 99 percent efficiency.

Touching on the title of his book, and on the critics who suggest he created the artificial notion of global warming through the name “Grandfather of Global Warming,” Hansen referred to pictures of his two grandchildren throughout his lecture. He cited the birth of his first grandchild as the reason he came back to the public forum after retreated into his scientific studies in the 1990s.

Rick Kaplan, executive producer of CBS Evening News with Katie Couric and U. Illinois alum, spoke to students at UI on the topic of change in not only broadcast news and advertising, but also media in general.

The event was sponsored by the department of advertising. Jan Slater, department of advertising head, said Kaplan has been coming to the University for 17 years. His goal with these speeches is to educate and inform, with an emphasis towards journalism and advertising students.

Kaplan’s topic changes every year, Slater added. Last year’s topic was about President Obama’s first 100 days in office.

“In general, his topic is always how to better prepare the students for what the real world will be like,” she said. “He’s living it everyday, and he sees all the changes that are happening in his industry.”

This year’s talk was called “The Character and Shape of Today’s News Coverage.” Kaplan’s main focus was on the trends in the news and advertising industry over the years.

“There were 24 million people watching news on a given day last year,” Kaplan said. “Thirty years ago, it was over 100 million.”

Kaplan cited fragmentation, or the ability to get news from hundreds of different sources, as the main culprit of declining viewership, declining revenue and struggling news channels.

CNN, Kaplan said, is an example of a news organization that has been “in a freefall,” with some of their shows losing over 70 percent of their viewers. Kaplan also pointed out business channel CNBC, which made a profit of over 700 million dollars from a viewership of around 200,000 people.

In the talk, Kaplan spoke about the relation between declining news viewership and changes in the advertising industry. If no one is watching the news, advertisers will also struggle to generate revenue. He added that advances in technology, such as in digital video recorders, or DVRs, have altered how advertisers intend to convey products to the public.

“How can you get my message out without the audience fast forwarding it?” Kaplan said.

Colby Roate, sophomore in Media, said she sees these changes as opportunities to adapt, as well as a challenge for her forthcoming career in advertising.

“We’re going to find new ways to reach our audiences and get out of this situation,” she said.

Professor Brian Johnson, department of journalism head, said he sees a promising outlook for journalists.

“The changes in the media are really to the benefit of journalists. As the industry fractured, more opportunities opened up for journalists,” Johnson said. “There might be more job searching, but the need for journalists will only increase.”

The best advice for young journalists, Kaplan added, is to “be self sufficient.”

Author Ken Auletta remembers being at a dinner party that Larry Page, co-founder of Google, also attended. When asked what each guest considered to be the most important thing that needed to happen in the world, Page answered this: colonizing Mars.

“He couldn’t do that,” Auletta said. “But Google has colonized Earth.”

Auletta, author of “Googled: The End of the World as We Know it,” spoke at Indiana U. about the impact Google has had on the world in regards to education, advertising and journalism.

“It made everything accessible,” he said. “It became the equivalent of the remote control.”

“We knew the Google book was important and certainly timely,” said School of Journalism Dean Brad Hamm.

Hamm said Auletta is a great writer and over the past few decades has profiled some of the biggest people in the field.

With countless information only a click away, Auletta said Google transformed education, both for the good and bad. He referred to a moment when his nephew wrote a paper that received a good grade. When Auletta asked him where he found the information, his nephew admitted to using Google.

“It’s not the same,” Auletta said. “You lose something.”

He emphasized the importance of digging deeper with books and research. Yet he said he understood the upside of Google and how exposure to many more voices online was also a benefit.

IU sophomore Lily Carreo agreed.

“I like books, I work at the Lily Library and I like the books, but my father likes e-books,” she said.

Her favorite part of Auletta’s speech included his discussion on transformative technology. Auletta said during a conversation with someone he interviewed, the person asked him if he had ever heard of anything more transformative than the Internet.

“What about electricity?” Auletta commented.

In regards to advertising, Auletta said advertisers love the system that leaves a trail of interested consumers. With ads on the side of pages, advertisers can find out what was searched, who clicked on their ads and how many times.

There are some mistakes that traditional media has made, he said. This includes the pessimistic attitude of the media that tends to believe Google is a cold businessman. What he found was that the people working at Google were interested in making the Internet more efficient.

Yet the technology can have drawbacks.

He mentioned broadcast TV and how networks will not be able to afford four-million-dollar shows when the audience continues to shrink due to their time online.

“Technology does not necessarily make it better,” he said.

Auletta said during his research for the book he realized that although the Google engineer understood efficiency, he did not understand journalism. Auletta said the founder of Google does not understand the importance of copyright for a writer. A man he interviewed for the book proposed he publish it online for free. Auletta said this was impossible, asking who would pay his salary and who would market his book.

There are many forms of media suffering from the online technology, and Auletta predicted many more magazines and radio stations to close.

“Some will be saved,” he said. “Some can survive.”

Resources are shrinking for these media though, and he admits it is a tough time for journalists. Yet there is a good side to the Internet, he said.

He referred to pictures put online from phones, recording moments that a journalist was not able to. Although this multiplies the number of journalists a person has access to, it also takes away the authority of a trained journalist.

“The world is happening at great speed,” he said.

Auletta said he has hope that newspapers will survive based on credibility and loyalty.

“When I look at the world today I actually come to think there are two types of people,” he said. “The first is lean back and he whines and complains that Google is evil. The other is lean forward. He remains optimistic because, yes it’s scary, but there are many opportunities. The Googles in this world see opportunity.”

The narratives may vary, but members of the Georgetown U. community from immigrant backgrounds have all found notes of uncertainty and unexpected limitations in their American experience.

“Despite your legal status you continue to be an alien in someone else’s land, and unfortunately few differentiate between legal and illegal immigrants. Your accomplishments continue to be seen in doubt, and it seems you are in a constant war trying to prove your position in society,” said Georgetown senior Daniel Rico, assistant outreach coordinator in the Center for Latin American Studies.

The path to permanent residency is complex, demanding application through a family member, employment, investment, the diversity lottery, asylum or some provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, according to Rico.

“Currently, the fees to become a resident or citizen are too high,” said Georgetown freshman Yasmin Serrato, a first-generation American whose parents went through the process for legal residency. “Financial barriers should not cause individuals who desire to live in this country to live in fear.”

About 40 million foreign-born people live in the United States today. Of those, 11 million are unauthorized, according to B. Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of International Migration. According to the Department of Homeland Security, there were 1,130,818 legal permanent residents in the United States in 2009.

According to Rico, whether one is a permanent resident or an undocumented immigrant, perception can be a roadblock, a point he illustrated by offering the example of his own college acceptance.

“When I was accepted to Georgetown University I faced heavy criticisms from some community members back home. They did not believe that an immigrant, especially one coming from an uneducated family, could be accepted to a school like Georgetown,” Rico said. “It became such a big issue that there was actually an attempt to prove that I had somehow forged my application.”

Juan Gomez, a Georgetown junior,  has been faced with a more precarious situation in proving his own standing since he first set foot on U.S. soil when he was a one-year-old.

Gomez considers himself an American, but his legal status is not as straightforward. His parents were deported to Colombia in an early-morning immigration raid in 2007 — a story that caught the attention of national news outlets such as The Washington Post — and though he and his brother are permitted to stay in the United States under an order of supervision, they are barred from exiting the country. His parents remain in Colombia.

While Gomez is enrolled at Georgetown as an international student, he is required to apply to the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services in order to return home to Miami for semester breaks; he isn’t sure where he would live if denied.

“There is always the fear of uncertainty,” Gomez said.

Gomez attended a local community college before transferring to Georgetown, as in-state four-year schools were not an option due to lacking financial resources, Gomez said. At community college, U.S. citizens pay $80 per credit. Gomez, who officially attended as an international student, paid $330. He said that when he applied to Georgetown as a transfer student, he received a generous financial aid package, making possible his matriculation in fall 2008.

Illegal immigrants are allowed to attend public school from kindergarten through high school, and 50,000 to 70,000 graduate from high schools each year. But many college applications ask for legal residence status. In addition, even if illegal immigrants apply as international students, they often do not have the same access to financial aid.

Lisa He, Georgetown junior and president of the Asian American Student Association, said she believes that immigration reform directly affects the Asian community, in addition to other groups on campus.

“We take this issue greatly to our hearts because 40 percent of the immigration community composes of Asian Pacific Islanders,” she said. “And of that 40 percent, 1.8 million have used illegal ways to reach to America. This alarming statistic thus demonstrates that there is a large undocumented community of Asians in the U.S.”

The numbers are so steep because gaining entry to the U.S. legally can be a taxing process, according to many from immigrant backgrounds. Georgetown freshman Michael Appau came to the United States after living in Ghana for 14 years. Appau, a permanent resident card holder, considers himself lucky to have had a less challenging time gaining citizenship than some of his relatives and friends back in Ghana.

“It was [easy] to some extent. My parents had to apply for me … and they had to do a lot of paperwork to acquire citizenship. On my end, it just involved me taking a DNA test, and a lot of other shots because I guess they thought I was a leper,” Appau added lightly. “I was really lucky because my parents had all the required documents already so I didn’t have it as hard as some people I knew who really struggled to get the documentation.”

Last month, over a hundred Georgetown students marched for immigration reform on the National Mall. Supporters hope that changes in U.S. immigration policies are imminent, since the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act hit the floor of the House in December 2009. Among the proposals is a change in tuition fees for prospective college students who are undocumented.

Supporters of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, which is embedded in the new legislation, cite the potential for states to offer in-state tuition fees to students who are illegal immigrants. The DREAM Act would also allow students who entered the United States before the age of 15 the opportunity to become citizens through a multi-step process, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The College Board, which is made up of 5,600 schools and colleges, has voiced its support of the DREAM Act, which had first appeared in the House in March 2009 before its inclusion in December’s legislation.

“The College Board is working to remove the barriers to a college education for all students. Undocumented students deserve the same chance to go to college and fully participate in our society as other students,” Gaston Caperton, the organization’s president, said in a news release in April 2009. “We must not turn our back on these deserving young people.”

The legislation first pitched in December would also offer assurance to undocumented families threatened by the prospect of separation.

Gomez voiced his strong support, saying he hopes for comprehensive immigration reform that would allow his parents to re-enter the country. Under the current system, they must wait until 2017 to reapply to enter the country legally. Gomez plans to stay in the States after finishing his college education, but he hopes to be reunited with his family, pending a sea-change in immigration policy.

With activists at the grassroots level taking a stand, Rico thinks the chances of passage could swell.

“Many organizations have demonstrated that they are able to mobilize not only illegal, but also legal immigrants and sympathizers. The most recent rallies demonstrate that this issue is of great importance and that by ignoring it, you are ignoring the needs and demands of millions of people,” Rico said. “Most importantly, the national rallies have demonstrated that this issue has the potential to unite people across states.”

GU sophomore Ana Cenaj, who grew up in Albania, expects to be receiving her U.S. citizenship this year. Cenaj said that as a minority student she has felt welcomed at Georgetown.

“I’m proud of my Albanian heritage and of my identity,” she said. “I find that when people focus so much on stereotypes they often lose sight in the beauty that surrounds them. Georgetown is a beautiful and open-minded community that provides its students with a sense of individuality and diversity that is truly admirable.”

Former software tycoon and entrepreneur Bill Gates spoke to The Daily Californian Monday, following a presentation to the U. California-Berkeley community about social and health inequities in poor countries and the importance of quality education.

Gates, former chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation and current co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, gave a speech at Zellerbach Hall titled “Giving Back: Finding the Best Way to Make a Difference” before opening up the floor for questions from audience members.

In the interview with The Daily Californian, Gates elaborated on the goals of the foundation and spoke about the importance of universities in combating global problems.

The Daily Californian: It seems that there are two central goals for the foundation-global health and assistance to low-income minority students. How do these two different objectives coalesce into a common purpose for the foundation?

Bill Gates: We decided we’d go after the greatest global inequity, which was health and the related things, and then we decided we’d go after the thing we think is most important for the U.S., which is for education, better teachers, scholarships. … So there’s really two big things-what the U.S. needs and what would make the world more equitable.

DC: There are other organizations out there that do similar types of work. Is there something that differentiates the foundation from other organizations?

BG: Well, the more people who get involved in these causes the better. We love having foundations, funding research on teacher excellence, or getting great online courses up there, because it’s all complimentary. Somebody funds the creation of a vaccine that gets delivered through a common vaccine system. Unfortunately, in global health, the amount of philanthropy is fairly modest. There isn’t much. I remember an early malaria grant we gave, which doubled the amount of money being spent on malaria. … We are fairly unique simply because of the scale of resources we’re putting into it.

DC: What can university students do to advance the organization’s goals?

BG: Well, universities as a whole are where a lot of the science advances are coming, whether it’s understanding medicine or biology or governance or policies, and you know, part of the reason universities are so great at looking at things in new and different ways-it’s their diversity, it’s the young people, intelligence … the new thinking that you bring to these problems. Then, of course, once you’re done at the university, there’s a question of what do you choose to work on in your full time, or with part of your time, or just your voice politically, or donations …

DC: How important is research like that done here at the University of California, Berkeley in combating these problems?

BG: Well, Berkeley’s a fantastic university … It’s phenomenal, and so our foundation is often giving grants to Berkeley to help advance the science, help us understand whether it’s soil mapping or disease or some of the innovative things being done with cell phones. So this is a great university, and it was actually pretty early in recognizing that these global needs, that exposing students to that, would directly drive innovations … Every university can keep doing more, but it’s been on the forefront.

DC: Does the work at Microsoft translate in any way to the work you do here at the foundation? How do the skills or stresses translate over from one to the other?

BG: Well, there’s a lot in common. Picking great scientists and backing them to do hard things that people don’t think can get done, having clear metrics, getting the word out about great things, getting people excited, doing that on a global basis-those are things that I bring from my Microsoft experience. Now, our delivery conditions are much more difficult. We’re not selling through a computer shop. We’re taking vaccines (to) the very poorest parts of the world … That’s far more challenging, and so we’ve got to mix skills … I’ve gotten exposed to a lot of new things, but the basic idea of what does a project look like, optimism about innovation, I think that’s helped me a lot to do the foundation work.