Piet Hut is a Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. His work focusses mainly on astrophysics, but he also actively pursues research in geology, paleontology, general physics, computer science, and natural philosophy. He is the founder of a number of initiatives, including the KIRA Institute, a center with the broad goal of studying the world based different ways of knowing. In addition to his scientific research, he has written on the interdisciplinary study of consciousness according the perspective of science, the Western phenomenogical tradition, and the Tibetan Buddhist "Great Perfection" or Dzogchen (rdzogs chen) tradition. (Zach Rowinski 2004-05-27)