The Origins Institute (OI) is an interdisciplinary science research institute at

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical Ga ...

Hamilton, Ontario Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Hamilton has a population of 569,353, and its census metropolitan area, which includes Burlington and Grimsby, has a population of 785,184. The city is approximately southwest of T ...

. It began its operations as an institute on July 1, 2004. The OI's vision is to promote origins research that addresses fundamental, unresolved big questions in science, such as: "How did the universe begin?", "How did stars, galaxies and planets form?", "What is the origin of matter and of the elements?", "How did life begin on Earth, and can it also develop on other planets?", "What was the nature of the Universal Ancestor, and how did life evolve from it?", and "How did intelligent beings arise and evolve on Earth"?. The Origins Institute research is categorized into six interconnecting themes: space-time (particle physics), elements and matter (nuclear astrophysics), structure of the universe (astronomy), life (evolutionary biology, astrobiology), species (biodiversity), and consciousness (neuroscience). Reflecting the trans-disciplinary nature of the research done at the OI, professional members within the institute hail from many fields, including

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

astrobiology Astrobiology, and the related field of exobiology, is an interdisciplinary scientific field that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. Astrobiology is the multidisciplinary field that investig ...

astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the h ...

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...

, and

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

Ralph Pudritz Ralph E. Pudritz is a theoretical astrophysicist tenured at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is an expert in the field of astrophysical jets, particularly those involved in star formation. Professor Pudritz obtained his und ...

, a theoretical astrophysicist at McMaster, spearheaded the OI project and was its first director
Jonathon Stone
a computational biologist from McMaster, was the institute's first associate director. Well-known academics David Deamer,

Martin Rees Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 23 June 1942) is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, ...

and

Stuart Kauffman Stuart Alan Kauffman (born September 28, 1939) is an American medical doctor, theoretical biologist, and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. He was a professor at the University of Chicago, University of Pennsylv ...

sit on the OI advisory council. The current director of the institute is Professor Paul Higgs.

Outreach and conferences

One of the focuses of the Origins Institute is public outreach. To that end, the OI hosts an annual season of public lectures and weekly colloquia that draw in top scientists from around the world. The OI also runs a 3D theatre to show movies on scientific topics to the public. The OI furthermore hosts scientific conferences that address origins themes. Its meeting have included 'Astrobiology and the Origins of Life' (May 2005), 'The Genomics Revolution and the Origin of Humanity' (August 2006), 'Origins of Dark Energy', organized jointly with the

Perimeter Institute Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI, Perimeter, PITP) is an independent research centre in foundational theoretical physics located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1999. The institute's founding and major benefactor i ...

(May 2007), 'Darwin's Legacy: Natural Selection as an Organising Principle in Science' (May 2009) in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Darwin's "Origin of Species", 'The Origins of Stars and Their Planetary Systems' (June 2012), 'Star Formation Jamboree' (May 2013), and 'The Origins and Evolution of Bacterial Genomes" (Dec 2014).

List of directors

*2004 - 2015 -

*2015–present - Paul Higgs

List of associate directors

*2004 - 2015
Jonathon Stone

External links

Origins Institute
{{authority control Research institutes in Canada McMaster University