The Science and Transcendence Advanced Research Series (STARS) program awarded $20,000 planning grants to twenty interdisciplinary research teams. STARS sponsors ground-breaking interdisciplinary research on the ways science, in light of philosophical and theological reflection, points towards the nature, character and meaning of ultimate reality. STARS research will be undertaken in a highly innovative way: through small teams of scientists and humanities scholars.
“I am delighted with the extraordinary quality and ground-breaking approaches to interdisciplinary research by these twenty winning teams,” said Robert John Russell, STARS Principal Investigator and the Ian G. Barbour Professor of Theology and Science in Residence at the Graduate Theological Union. "The wide range of scientific research spans key topics from fundamental physics and evolutionary biology to the neurosciences and mathematics. The implications for our understanding of human spirituality, ethics, aesthetics and religion are very promising.”
Over the next two years, STARS will award five major research grants of $100,000 each. In 2008 two of these grants may be renewed at $200,000. The awards at every level will be based on the recommendations of a panel of distinguished judges.
STARS is a program of the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences (CTNS) in Berkeley , California . For more than twenty-five years, CTNS has worked to build bridges between theology and science through research, teaching, and public service.
STARS is funded through a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.