Conversations on Religion, Ethics, and Science (CORES)

Principal investigators:

Barry Ritchie joined the ASU Department of Physics and Astronomy in 1984 and served as associate chair and then chair of the department from 1995-2006. From 2012-2016, he was the university’s vice provost for academic personnel and senior advisor to the provost. Ritchie has maintained research programs in experimental nuclear and particle physics for over forty years, has over 200 scientific publications to his credit, and has won numerous awards for his undergraduate teaching and graduate student mentoring. He has maintained an active interest in the study of science and religion, helping organize events at ASU that featured Templeton Prize Laureates John Polkinghorn and Holmes Rolston III. He also served as a member of the advisory committee for the Templeton Research Lectures at ASU, “Facing the Challenges of Transhumanism: Religion, Science and Technology,” directed by Regents Professor Hava Tirosh-Samuelson

Although not an employee of ASU, Ben Sanders has served as a full-time campus minister at the university for over 20 years, co-directing the Campus Christian Center along with Sarah Sanders. He is the past president of ASU’s Council of Religious Advisors (2018-2020), a group comprised of campus ministries and faith-based organizations representing Baha’i, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim traditions who work together peacefully to provide religious services, spiritual counseling, education, support, and opportunities for involvement to thousands of ASU students. As executive director of the Arizona Center for Christian Studies, he works with a consortium of Christian study centers and interested academics to integrate faith and learning through lectures, classes, conferences, discussion groups, research projects, publications, websites, and other academic initiatives, including the Conference on Faith and Science (COFAS), a series of annual events that began in 2019.