“You’ll be based here, at the Center for Neural Science, or CNS. This new generation has tough questions to answer. Why do some physical systems have what philosophers call ‘qualia,’ the qualitative, what-it-is-like aspect of experience? Is there a way to solve the explanatory gap, what some have called the Hard Problem, of squeezing mind out of matter? Two years is provided for in terms of funding. There will be an advising committee with four members on it for each Crick Scholar. Your committees, of which I am a member of each, will oversee each Scholars’ research. We’ve taken the liberty of assigning every Crick Scholar to a lab. Additionally, we have been working with the department here and DARPA to get funding for two tenure-track positions at NYU in consciousness science, so two of you will be sticking around permanently! Let’s see if I can go from left to right here, I have a list . . . That there is Atif Tomalin, he was just at Oxford doing electrophysiological recordings of neurons in primates.”

The tall man with the mane of black hair gives a thin-lipped smile.

“And we have Mike Benson, from Harvard, who’s done work in linguistics and neuroimaging.” A square-headed guy with a crew cut wearing a crimson sweatshirt that reads HARVARD waves.

“Jessica Lem, who’s from McGill University, who also has a great record in neuroimaging.” A pretty black girl gives a friendly smile while nervously playing with the bracelet on her wrist.

“Greg Monroe from MIT does work in artificial intelligence.” Greg has a shaggy bowl cut which makes him look like a teenager. He’s sallow and doughy, and does an awkward little dip when he’s introduced.

“Alex Luce, who did his graduate work at Caltech on action potentials and single neuron dynamics.” Alex flashes a smile; he’s blond and slim of stature.

“Carmen Green, from Columbia University. She just had a paper out in Nature arguing that the whole cortex participates in conscious experiences, so we expect great things from her.” The young woman waves to everyone at the table, grins. Some of the men in the room wave back reflexively.

“Leon Schmidt, an MD-PhD from the Max Planck Institute in Germany.” A large bearish fellow nods solemnly several times.

“And finally Kierk Suren, who decided to accept this position, um, rather last minute, but we’re very happy to have him as he comes from Antonio Moretti’s lab in Madison, Wisconsin. A theoretician, his last paper was called ‘Mapping Consciousness.’ And that’s it! We’ll be giving tours of the facilities later, and you officially join your hosting labs bright and early tomorrow.”

Norman steps off the podium to polite applause. Quickly people break into small islands of conversations. Kierk is approached by a woman radiating the kind of youthful professorship achieved only by those who go right to tenure track. She smiles and offers a hand to shake.