| biography. |
[16 Sep 2008|12:32am] |
All through high school, Reid Scott was the awkward kid who was always carrying a few too many books. His hair was a bit too long, glasses a bit too big, his too-short khakis didn’t match the plain black or navy blue t-shirts he wore constantly and dear goodness, the New Balance sneakers that looked like they belonged in gym class never left his feet. He was kind of tall, kind of skinny, and his shoulders were kind of broad for the rest of him. For the most part, people left him alone. He enjoyed his physics and biology, and talking about different scientific phenomena that remained unexplained, and his jargon was difficult to understand if you didn’t have an extensive knowledge of the quantum mechanics the world operates by. Hell, it was difficult to understand even if you did have an extensive knowledge of quantum mechanics and a dictionary on hand. He was raised by Betty and Barnabas Scott, the former an overbearing homemaker and the latter a government employed military scientist. His father, Barney, earned a good living working on research that was classified as top secret. He couldn’t discuss his work at home, but he instilled as much love for science into his son as he could from an early age. He was greatly pleased to find that Reid’s IQ had followed the path of great Scotts before him. He was always destined for greatness – it was in his genes.
It started with religion. Betty Scott was always diligent about taking her son to mass, Sunday school, and reading the good book to him whenever she had the chance. He always did as he was asked, after all Reid wasn’t the type of boy to question his mother’s authority, and it wasn’t until he was seven or eight that he began to ask questions. How was the world built in only a week? Where did all the animals come from? What about the theory of evolution and survival of the fittest? It was all too much for Betty to handle. Reid’s mind couldn’t come to terms with the facts he held as truth in the scientific world not matching up with the seemingly made up fairytale of religion. He learned quickly not to ask his mother anymore, and instead delved deeper into both religion and science, trying to find a way to reconcile his passion and his faith. As he grew older, the only decisive gap in Evolution became the place that religion could fill in the rest of the story. How do you go from being an organism to being a conscious being? I think, therefore I am, but how do a series of biological thought processes add up to what a human being truly is – a person with thoughts, feelings, beliefs and opinions? The only conclusion he could come to was that in order to find out how that leap was made, scientifically speaking, artificial intelligence was the key. If he could develop a machine that thought for itself, he could study it and find out how to resolve his ideological crisis. It seemed an impossibility when he was younger, but the more he learned, the harder he worked toward his ultimate goal.
Neuroscience. Upon graduating as Valedictorian of his high school class, and tripping on the stage on his way to the podium, he went on to study neurobiology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In addition to feeding his desire to know everything about everything, he found himself actually branching out and speaking to people. He was among his peers at Johns Hopkins – these were all students that worked incredibly hard to get where they were, and would not stop until they got where they wanted to be. He even ended up meeting a girl that he liked that liked him in return. After some gentle coaxing, his girlfriend got him to go shopping with her, because those JC Penney’s jeans and New Balance sneakers needed to go. She got his hair cut, taught him how to shave without cutting his own face, and encouraged him to get contacts so that he could get rid of those pesky glasses. It took a long time for him to warm up to the idea, but she even got him to go to the gym with her. He was gawky and uncoordinated, but she was patient and gifted enough to help him work out without hurting himself or those around him. By the time she was finished with him, he looked like a completely different person. Frankly, he would have cut off his left hand to make her happy, so the changes didn’t really mean much to him. He noticed that girls were more likely to excuse his stammering, but that didn’t matter, because he was in love. He might have been different on the outside, but on the inside he was still the same ol’ Reid who didn’t quite understand why his New Balance sneakers didn’t go with his ironed khakis.
After completing his undergraduate degree, Reid decided that he enjoyed school so much he didn’t want to leave. He moved from his home in Arlington, Virginia – which broke his mother’s heart – into an apartment in D.C. with a girl he met through a newspaper ad. In order to pay for the portion of his graduate work that his academic scholarships wouldn’t cover, he got a job at a government research lab. He completed his Masters in two years, then spent the next three years commuting to Baltimore part time to work on his Ph.D. Through that program Reid became acquainted with a professor at Harvard University while presenting research at a symposium. Accepting an invitation to do exactly the kind of research he's always been interested in, Reid packed his belongings for a temporary stay in Cambridge, Massachusetts that turned into a year-long research experience. He recently returned to Washington D.C. to continue his doctoral degree at Johns Hopkins.
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