Keynote Speakers

Alice Levine
“Paging Lord Byron: Editing and Discovery”

Alice Levine, Professor of English and Assistant Chair for Advisement in the English Department at Hofstra University, works extensively with undergraduate majors. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago in 1979.

Her scholarly research focuses on 18th- and 19th-century English Romanticism, especially the work of Lord Byron, and on the interrelations of poetry and music, on which subjects she has published essays and spoken at national and international conferences.

She is the editor of Byron's Poetry and Prose, A Norton Critical Edition (2009); coeditor of Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics: A Facsimile of Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library, Volumes I-IV (1986-88); and coeditor of Rereading Byron: Essays Selected From Hofstra University’s Byron Bicentennial Conference (1993).

As a director of both the Byron Society of America and the Keats-Shelley Association of America, she is involved with those organizations' efforts to provide scholars of the Romantic period with access to individuals, resources, and publications that may be helpful to them in their research, teaching, and careers.

Lawrence Smith, MD
Dean, Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine
Executive vice president and chief medical officer, North Shore-LIJ Health System
“The Future of American Medical Education”

The health system’s chief medical officer since September 2006, Dr. Smith is the senior physician, responsible for the overall professional management of clinical, education, research and operational issues related to all medical and clinical affairs throughout North Shore-LIJ. He is the founding dean of Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, which will open in the summer of 2011.

Dr. Smith joined North Shore-LIJ in May 2005 as chief academic officer and senior vice president of academic affairs. In this capacity, Dr. Smith strengthened the health system’s graduate medical education programs and expanded medical school affiliations, significantly enhancing North Shore-LIJ’s ability to recruit medical students and residents. In addition, Dr. Smith was responsible for overseeing the health system’s medical student education programs and academic faculty appointments. He was also accountable for establishing close relationships with doctors and hospitals throughout North Shore-LIJ that enhanced the health system’s partnerships with staff and community-based physicians, and improved physician recruitment efforts.

Before joining North Shore-LIJ, Dr. Smith was at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, where he served as dean (beginning in 2002) and chairman of medical education, founder and director of the school’s Institute for Medical Education, professor of medicine and an attending physician. He joined the faculty of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1994 as vice chairman of the Department of Medicine and residency program director. Prior to his career at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Dr. Smith practiced general medicine at Stony Brook University Hospital, where he became a full-time faculty member, director of education and program director of the hospital’s residency program in internal medicine. He began his career practicing general internal medicine in Huntington, NY.

Dr. Smith has held senior leadership positions in national societies for medical education and residency training, authored numerous peer-reviewed publications in the area of medical education, and has received many awards and honors from national and international organizations. He is a member-at-large of the National Board of Medical Examiners and a member of the Board of Visitors of Fordham College. Also, he is a former regent of the American College of Physicians and former member of the board of directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Dr. Smith is the first recipient of the Lawrence Scherr, MD, Professorship of Medicine at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine. He was honored with the 2008 Dema C. Daly Founders Award by the Association of Program Directors of Internal Medicine, of which he is a former president. In addition, he was awarded the Solomon A. Berson Alumni Achievement Award in Health Science by New York University School of Medicine.

Dr. Smith earned a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Fordham University and a medical degree from the New York University School of Medicine. His residency in internal medicine at Strong Memorial Hospital was followed by military service as a captain in the Army Medical Corps at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center in Denver.

David C. Cassidy
“Adventures of a Scholarly Researcher”

Cassidy received his B.A. and M.S. degrees in physics at Rutgers University and the Ph.D. in physics and history of science in a joint program between Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was a post-doctoral fellow in history of science at the University of California-Berkeley and an Alexander von Humboldt fellow in the Institute for History of Science and Technology at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He was an assistant professor at the University of Regensburg, Germany and an associate editor of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein at Princeton and Boston universities. He is currently professor in the Natural Science Program at Hofstra University, where he teaches physics and history of science for non-science majors.

Dr. Cassidy's publications include Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg (1993); Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and the Bomb (2010); J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century (2009); and Einstein and Our World (2004). He is the recipient of the Pfizer Award of the History of Science Society, the Science Writing Award of the American Institute of Physics, and an honorary of doctorate of science awarded by Purdue University. More information may be found on his website www.dcassidybooks.com.