Energy (and Other) Events is a weekly mailing list published most Sundays covering events around the Cambridge, MA and greater
Boston area that catch the editor's eye.
Hubevents http://hubevents.blogspot.com is the web version.
If you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to Energy (and Other) Events email gmoke@world.std.com
What I Do and Why I Do It: The Story of Energy (and Other) EventsGeo
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Details of these events are available when you scroll past the index
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Index
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Monday, September 25
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12pm PAOC Colloquium: Allison Wing (FSU): The role of radiative-convective feedbacks in tropical cyclone formation in numerical simulations
12pm A New Theory of the Abyssal Ocean Circulation
12pm Labor and Reward in Science: Do Women Have an Equal Voice in Scholarly Communication?
12pm The Oldest Computer: Antikythera Mechanism
12pm The Political Economy of Carbon Taxes
12:30pm Health – Equitable Urban Development Across Contexts
2pm NULAB: SOCIAL NETWORK EXPERIMENTS
2:30pm The Future of Terrorism with CNN's Peter Bergen
4pm MEI Book Talk: A Revolution Undone: Egypt's Road Beyond Revolt
4:15pm The Museum, the City, and the University: Boston Art Museum Directors in Discussion
4:15pm Climate Change and the Arctic: Challenges and Opportunities
5:30pm Launch Smart Clinic – Artificial Intelligence (AI)
5:30pm HUBweek Demo Day Semi-Final
6pm The State of Electric Vehicle Deployment and Where It’s Going
6pm cristina ricupero | don’t believe a word i say
6:30pm The Rise of the Corporate Innovation Lab
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Tuesday, September 26
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8:30am Emerging Trends Series: The Road To Our Clean Transportation Future
10am Thesis Defense - Jimmy Gasore (EAPS): Quantifying Emissions of Carbon Dioxide and Methane in Central and Eastern Africa Through High Frequency Measurements and Inverse Modeling
11am Sustainability/Bike Safety/Light Fair
11:45am Harnessing terrestrial thermal photon sources
12pm Nancy Youssef – Foreign Policy, Politics, and Media Coverage
12pm Developing and Launching Products at Google Cloud Platform (MIT SDM Systems Thinking Webinar Series)
4pm Tour the Most Sustainable Building in Boston: 888 Boylston Street
5pm MIT Food & Agriculture Club Open House
5:30pm Human Rights and Violent Internal Conflict
6pm The Enemy – From Concept to “Virtual” Reality
6pm Seeing Color: Exploring Whiteness in a Racialized World
6pm Boston Green Drinks - September Happy Hour
6pm The Future of Travel & Transportation Industry
6:30pm MIT Energy Club Launch!
6:30pm Climate Forum with Cambridge City Council Candidates
7pm Daring Democracy Book Launch
7pm One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps
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Wednesday, September 27
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12pm Book Launch: Law, Religion, and Health in the United States
12pm MTL Seminar Series: "A Journey into a New Energy Future: The Critical Role of Energy Storage”
12pm Optimal Outcomes: Solve the Unsolvable – Even Without the Other Side’s Cooperation
12pm All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power
12pm Getting There: Transportation Vision to Transformative Reality
3pm xTalk: Free Speech and Academic Freedom in India and the West
3pm Machine Learning - Current and Future
4pm Towards tensegrity-based metamaterials
4:15pm Organizing for Freedom: Then and Now
6pm Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution
6pm Privacy V. Technology
6:30pm BATTLE FOR NET NEUTRALITY | POLITICS & INNOVATION
7pm Mayhem: A Memoir
7pm What’s the Catch? Diving into the sustainability of eating fish
6:30pm GLOBEDOCS invites you to a special screening of Celling Your Soul
7:30pm From Talk to Action: Taking a Stand Against Racism and Hate
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Thursday, September 28
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8:30am Climate Change, Migration and Health Symposium
12pm Digital Health @ Harvard
12pm Thoughts from West Africa: Two decades of protecting human rights and the environment
12:15pm "No Such Thing as a Little War": The Ideas Driving Great Power Military Intervention
3pm Coming Apart? Lives of the Rich and Poor Over Time in the United States
3pm Inequality in America: How Do We Achieve an Economy That Works for All
3pm Robotics Connect 2017
3:30pm Social Media Use in Public Relations: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
4pm Making Something From Nothing: Appropriate Technology as Intentionally Disruptive Responsibility
4:30pm Cultural and Humanitarian Agents Seminar w/ Diego Fernandez: "What is a Slum? Welcome to #31, Buenos Aires”
5pm Globalization without Globalism
5pm Nick Couldry: "The Mediated Construction of Reality: from Berger and Luckmann to Norbert Elias”
5:30pm Techno-Economical Challenges in Sustainable Growth of Solar Energy Utilization
6pm PUBLIC PROGRAM | FILM SCREENING: CITIZENFOUR
6pm Solar 101
6:30pm Studying Vision in Usual and Unusual Brain Development: A Change to Merge Science and Service
7pm BostonTalks Happy Hour: Connected
7pm Non-Violent Civil Disobedience (NVCD) and the Age of Antifa
7pm Climate Change along the Western Antarctic Peninsula
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Friday, September 29
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Facets of a Bright Energy Future: A 360° Perspective
8:15am BU Materials Day Workshop 2017- Integrating Metamaterials with Quantum Materials: A Design Paradigm for 21st Century Science & Technology
12pm Impact Investing in Emerging Markets: Reaching its full potential
12pm Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
12pm Medical Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Environment Conference
12:45pm Resilience in BU’s Climate Action Plan
3pm Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century
6:30pm The Long Now Evening - The future of Food (+optional dinner)
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Saturday, September 30
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9am Medical Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Environment Conference
9:30am Looking Back and Looking Forward: Writing to Defend Democracy
11am Dismantling Racism Hackathon
12pm Making Something From Nothing: Appropriate Technology as Intentionally Disruptive Responsibility
12pm Beantown Jazz Festival
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Monday, October 2
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12pm PAOC Colloquium: Bess Ward (Princeton)
12pm Archaeology Meets Earth-Science in Modern Human Origins Research in Africa
12pm ImpactFest Food For Thought: Advancing Change Through Public Narrative
12pm Vehicle Electrification in China: Preferences, Policy, and Technology Trajectories
12:10pm Remotely Sensing Biodiversity and Ecosystem Processes
12:15pm Social Intelligence, Not Artificial Intelligence
12:30pm Urban Design: How Well Do Ideas Travel?
12:30pm How Governments Mobilize Domestic Finance for Innovation - The Case of the Domestic Clean Energy Sector
4pm Understanding Nature Holistically and Without Equations
5pm A Fireside Chat with Vincent Roche
6pm Conversation 1 of Symposium, “Made in Cambridge: What’s Happening in Kendall Square?"
7pm One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported
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Tuesday, October 3
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9am Common Goals, Uncommon Partners: Seeking Solutions to Reduce Methane Emissions with The Gas Leak Allies
12pm Gary Liu
12pm Turbulence in the atmospheric and oceanic boundary layers
12pm Design Discussion on Urbanization: Clare Lyster and Mason White
2pm Community Choice Energy - Boston City Council Hearing
3pm Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online
4:30pm Starr Forum: Dealing with North Korea
5pm Ikebana: Flower arrangement demo with Master Akihiro Nishi
5:30pm Design for Good - Boston Book Launch
6pm The Future of Happiness: How Communication Technologies Will Change Our World—Or Not
6pm Empathy for Conflict Resolution
6pm "The Imagination Paradox: Participation or Performance of Visioning the City”
6pm Sustainability & Careers - Boston Area Sustainability Group Meeting
6:30pm Swiss Technologies Review with CSEM
7:30pm DREAM BIG: Democracy Matters with author/historian Timothy Snyder
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
Civic Self Defense Resources
Crowd Funding an Emergency Solar Electric Grid for Puerto Rico and Other Islands
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Monday, September 25
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PAOC Colloquium: Allison Wing (FSU): The role of radiative-convective feedbacks in tropical cyclone formation in numerical simulations
Monday, September 25
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
Dr. Wing is an atmospheric scientist who studies tropical convection, tropical cyclones, and climate. Her research interests include the organization of tropical convection and how this modulates tropical and global climate and climate sensitivity, the process of tropical cyclone formation, variability of tropical cyclone intensity, and extreme weather and climate. Dr. Wing uses theory, idealized numerical modeling, and analysis of observations and comprehensive climate models to tackle these problems.
About this Series
The PAOC Colloquium is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar series that brings together the whole PAOC community. Seminar topics include all research concerning the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmospheres, oceans and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars generally take place on Monday from 12-1pm. Lunch is provided to encourage students and post-docs to meet with the speaker. Besides the seminar and lunch, individual meetings with professors, post-docs, and students are arranged.
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A New Theory of the Abyssal Ocean Circulation
Monday, September 25
12:00PM
Harvard, Haller Hall (102), Geo Museum, Haller Hall (102), 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
EPS Colloquium
Raffaele Ferrari, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Oceanography, Director of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Abstract: It has been long been recognized that the large-scale circulation of the abyssal ocean is enabled by small-scale diapycnal mixing. Theories developed in the fifties and sixties posited that the diapycnal mixing drives widespread upwelling of abyssal waters and broad poleward meridional flows. We will argue that these predictions need to be revised in view of observations collected over the last twenty years which suggest that mixing is strongly enhanced towards the ocean bottom, where the breaking of internal tides and lee waves is most vigorous. The bottom-intensified mixing induces a a pattern of near-bottom up- and downwelling that is quite different from the traditionally-assumed widespread upwelling. The up- and downwelling flows result in a horizontal circulation characterized by zonal flows, while the meridional flows are confined along the ocean’s western boundaries. We will discuss the implications of these circulation patterns for the residency time of abyssal waters in the ocean and for the role of the abyssal ocean on Earth’s climate. [Background reading]
Speaker Bio: Ferrari is the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Oceanography in the Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences Department at MIT and the Director of the MIT Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate. He is interested in the dynamics of the ocean and climate with active research efforts in the areas of atmospheric and oceanic turbulence, air-sea interactions, the energetics of the ocean circulation, the impact of ocean physics on biology, and questions of paleoclimate. In his research he uses a combination of theoretical fluid dynamics, numerical modeling, and analysis of observations.
Lunch will be served at 11:45am.
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Labor and Reward in Science: Do Women Have an Equal Voice in Scholarly Communication?
Monday, September 25
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building E25-401, 45 Carleton Street, Cambridge
A Brown Bag talk with Cassidy Sugimoto
Despite progress, gender disparities in science persist. Women remain underrepresented in the scientific workforce and under rewarded for their contributions. This talk will examine multiple layers of gender disparities in science, triangulating data from scientometrics, surveys, and social media to provide a broader perspective on the gendered nature of scientific communication. The extent of gender disparities and the ways in which new media are changing these patterns will be discussed. The talk will end with a discussion of interventions, with a particular focus on the roles of libraries, publishers, and other actors in the scholarly ecosystem.
Cassidy Sugimoto researches within the domain of scholarly communication and scientometrics, examining the formal and informal ways in which knowledge producers consume and disseminate scholarship. Read more
Information Science Brown Bag talks, hosted by the Program on Information Science, consists of regular discussions and brainstorming sessions on all aspects of information science and uses of information science and technology to assess and solve institutional, social and research problems. These are informal talks. Discussions are often inspired by real-world problems being faced by the lead discussant.
Lunch will be provided; please bring your own drink and your questions.
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The Oldest Computer: Antikythera Mechanism
Monday, September 25
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard, Center for Astrophysics, Phillips Auditorium (Building A), 60 Garden Street, Cambridge
SPEAKER: Xenophon Moussas, Faculty of Physics, School of Science, Department of Astrophysics, Astronomy and Mechanics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Join for a discussion regarding the Antikythera Mechanism that was found onboard a sunken Greek ship from 150-100 BCE. It is the oldest known computer, a clockwork Cosmos. Its gears reproduce astronomical phenomena, predicting the position of the Sun and the Moon, eclipses and probably even the position of planets.
Also, visit the exhibit of the Antikythera Mechanism at Cushing-Martin Hall, Stonehill College, 320 Washington St, Easton MA from Wednesday, September 20th through Monday, September 25th, 2017
Contact: Alessandro Massarotti
Email: alemassa63@gmail.com
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The Political Economy of Carbon Taxes
Monday, September 25
12:00PM TO 1:15PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
with Jerry Taylor, President, Niskanen Center
Lunch is provided.
Energy Policy Research
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
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Health – Equitable Urban Development Across Contexts
Monday, September 25
12:30pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 9-255, City Arena, 105 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
The SPURS/Humphrey program is delighted to invite you to our fall seminar series: North American Planning Experience: Is It Relevant for the Developing World?
Our goal is to explore to what extent, and under what conditions, planning ideas generated from practice in the U.S. can travel to cities in the developing world and be implemented effectively. We’ll also consider whether planning ideas, practices and programs are traveling from the rest of the world back to the United States.
The second seminar is Monday, September 25, in City Arena, 12:30 to 2 pm, with lunch available at 12:15 pm: Health – Equitable Urban Development Across Contexts, with Marianna Arcaya and Erica C. James, respondent.
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NULAB: SOCIAL NETWORK EXPERIMENTS
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT
Northeastern, 177 Huntington Avenue, 11th Floor, Boston
Speaker: Professor Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, Sol Goldman Family Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University
Human beings choose their friends, and often their neighbors, and co-workers, and we inherit our relatives; and each of the people to whom we are connected also does the same, such that, in the end, we humans assemble ourselves into face-to-face social networks with particular structures. Why do we do this? And how might an understanding of human social network structure and function be used to intervene in the world to make it better?
Here, Christakis will review recent research from our lab describing several classes of interventions involving both offline and online networks that can help make the world better, including: (1) interventions that rewire the connections between people, and (2) interventions that manipulate social contagion, facilitating the flow of desirable properties within groups. He will illustrate what can be done using a variety of experiments in settings as diverse as fostering cooperation in networked groups online, to fostering health behavior change in developing world villages, to facilitating the diffusion of innovation or coordination in groups. Christakis will also focus on our recent experiments with “heterogenous systems” involving both humans and “dumb AI” bots, interacting in small groups. By taking account of people’s structural embeddedness in social networks, and by understanding social influence, it is possible to intervene in social systems to enhance desirable population-level properties as diverse as health, wealth, cooperation, coordination, and learning.
About the Speaker
Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is a sociologist and physician who conducts research in the area of biosocial science, investigating the biological predicates and consequences of social phenomena. He directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale University, where he is appointed as the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Social and Natural Science, and he is the Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science.
Dr. Christakis’ lab is focused on the relationship between social networks and well-being. This research engages two types of phenomena: the social, mathematical, and biological rules governing how social networks form (“connection”), and the biological and social implications of how they operate to influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (“contagion”). Ongoing investigations in the lab explore the genetic bases for human social behaviors and the application of social network principles to change population-level behavior related to health, cooperation, and economic development.
Along with long-time collaborator, James Fowler, Dr. Christakis has authored a general-audience book on social networks: Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, which has been translated into nearly twenty foreign languages.
**** Please bring your Northeastern University ID (or other photo ID) when entering the building. ****
**** This event is free and open to the public, but if you are not a member of the Northeastern University community, please email Sarah Connell at sa.connell@northeastern.edu to register
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The Future of Terrorism with CNN's Peter Bergen
Monday, September 25
2:30 pm
BU, 121 Bay State Road, Boston
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MEI Book Talk: A Revolution Undone: Egypt's Road Beyond Revolt
WHEN Monday, Sep. 25, 2017, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Fainsod Room, Littauer Building, Room 324, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) A seminar with H.A. Hellyer, Senior nonresident Fellow at the Atlantic Council's RH Centre for the Middle East and Associate Fellow in International Security at the Royal United Services Institute, on his recent book, A Revolution Undone: Egypt's Road Beyond Revolt from Oxford University Press.
Followed by a book signing at the Harvard COOP, 1400 Massachusetts Avenue in Harvard Square.
COST Free and open to the public.
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The Museum, the City, and the University: Boston Art Museum Directors in Discussion
WHEN Monday, Sep. 25, 2017, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Moderator, Yukio Lippit, Johnson-Kulukundis Family Director of the Arts, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University
Peggy Fogelman, Norma Jean Calderwood Director, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Paul Ha, Director, MIT List Visual Arts Center
Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
Martha Tedeschi, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director, Harvard Art Museums
Matthew Teitelbaum, Ann and Graham Gund Director, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS This panel brings together distinguished museum directors to discuss their leadership of major cultural institutions in urban and university settings and to share personal perspectives on their work.
The panel will address questions about the role of museums in debates about public and private support for the humanities and the arts; in research and learning endeavors, including creative efforts by living artists; and in conversations about citizenship, identity, and diversity. Please register and join us.
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Climate Change and the Arctic: Challenges and Opportunities
Monday, September 25
4:15PM TO 5:45PM
Harvard, Allison Dining Room, 5th floor, Taubman Building, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Join the Arctic Initiative for a conversation with Inuuteq Holm Olsen, Minister Plenipotentiary for Greenland and John P. Holdren, President Obama's Science Advisor and Co-Director of Belfer Center's Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, on the tension between development and environmental protection in the Arctic, with a focus on indigenous people.
Contact Name: ENRP@belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu
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Launch Smart Clinic – Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Monday, September 25
5:30pm to 8:30pm
MIT Tang Center 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Cost: $5 - $30
At the Artificial Intelligence Themed Launch Smart Clinic, startups present a 20-minute pitch for feedback from our panel of experts + the audience.
Launch Smart Clinics are a great place for startups to get constructive feedback on their pitch from a board-of-directors-level panel of experts and thoughtful audience members. The focus on early stage ventures encourages a sympathetic and supportive atmosphere. Audience and panel feedback often helps presenters understand their problems and offers useful tips and solutions.
Even if you’re not quite ready to present, we encourage entrepreneurs to attend the clinics to see what our panel of experts (investors and others) are looking for in a pitch, what kind of questions they ask and their suggestions for refining the business plan.
AI Startups: Apply to Present
Get feedback on what people look for when they hear pitches
Prepare yourself for the critical questions savvy investors, strategic partners and potential employees will ask you
Get tips on how to refine your business plan (it’s the business plan, not the tech, that’s under review)
The committee will consider a balance of the following criteria when evaluating applications to present:
Company stage
Relevance to the clinic’s industry theme
Level of funding to date
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HUBweek Demo Day Semi-Final
Monday, September 25
5:30 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
District Hall, 75 Northern Avenue, Boston
Get a preview of HUBweek 2017 and hear some of Boston's most impactful startups pitch their ideas at HUBweek's Demo Day Pitch Competition Semi-Final.
In the lead up to HUBweek's Demo Day presented by Bank of America on October 14, 32 selected startups will face off in a multi-round pitch competition to demonstrate their impact on our lives. With representation from over a dozen industries–from AI and robotics to healthcare and social impact–and ranging from bootstrapped organizations to those with funding north of $10 million, this group of companies represents the best of Boston's startup talent.
At the Demo Day Pitch Competition Semi-Final, these companies will compete for eight spots to pitch on stage in the Demo Day Finale during HUBweekand the chance to win over $150,000 in cash and in-kind awards. Come meet and mingle with the high-impact companies who could be Boston's next Wayfair, Hubspot, or Vertex.
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The State of Electric Vehicle Deployment and Where It’s Going
Monday, September 25
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
BU, CAS, Room 315, 685-725 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Speaker: Chris Vournakis, Senior Director, Automotive Strategy
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cristina ricupero | don’t believe a word i say
Monday, September 25
6:00pm - 8:00pm
MIT, Building E15-001, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, Lower Level, Cambridgedate
Following Cristina Ricupero’s special interest in the mechanisms of contemporary secrecy, she will focus this two-part program on espionage, a topic she has been currently developing for an exhibition project with Alexandra Midal (independent curator and professor at the design program at HEAD-Haute Ecole d’Art et Design Geneva).
With examples from contemporary art and design, sociology, philosophy, the spy novel, film and pop culture, Ricupero will show how espionage has evolved throughout time and played a major role in the political sphere of every country. If in the past, national governments spied on individuals, today with Wikileaks this trend seems to have been reversed as private individuals are in the capacity of revealing hidden governmental secrets. The world of espionage seems thus to be a golden mine where artists can dig into.
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The Rise of the Corporate Innovation Lab
Monday, 25 September
6:30 – 8:30 pm EDT
GA Boston, 125 Summer Street 13th Floor, Boston
Kevin Segel, UX Innovation Fellow, John Hancock LOFT
Brian Mullen, PhD, Innovation Strategy Manager, Brigham Innovation Hub
Brittany Hamtil, Product Experience Lead, Fidelity Labs
Carly França, Director, Product Experience Design , Fidelity Labs
About This Event
"Innovation is critical for established companies to stay relevant in the face of disruption."- CB Insights
From Insurance to Finance, established companies are creatively embracing new ways to solve the problems of their business.
Join General Assembly and leaders from Boston's top corporations as they share how their own R&D and Innovation Labs are reinforcing their place at the top of their industries.
Why it Matters?
The output or products of an Innovation Lab can vary quite a bit. They often function as an autonomous engine within an organization, tasked with finding solutions to some of the industries most complex problems. They also look inward at the organizational structure to help create efficiencies and design higher performing teams.
However, like a startup, many Labs programs fail due to lack of focus and misguided goals.
Hear from local corporate innovators doing it well, as they share how they strategically align their work with the company's business goals and prioritize where to invest their time.
By signing up for this event, you're giving our sponsors permission to contact you about upcoming events and promotions.
About the Speakers
Kevin Segel, UX Innovation Fellow, John Hancock LOFT
Brian Mullen, PhD, Innovation Strategy Manager, Brigham Innovation Hub
Brian Mullen is an entrepreneur, design engineer, and researcher with a passion for designing innovative medical products and assistive technologies. Brian holds a B.S.M.E., M.S.M.E and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Brian’s background covers many disciplines, from clinical research exploring the safety and effectiveness of treatments for people with mental illness to human centered design, universal design, design for commercial viability, and teaching new product development. Brian’s work has led to clinical publications, awards, and presentations in multiple fields, as well as pending patents.
Previous to joining the iHub Brian founded an early stage medical device company, Therapeutic Systems, to translate the technology he developed in graduate school to the market. The mission of the company was to help people who are struggling with brain disorders such as autism, ADHD, PTSD and anxiety based disorders, by providing them therapeutic wearable technologies that included monitoring and sensory based neuromodulation as an intervention (you can watch his TedX talk on designing for people with mental illness).
As CEO, Brian lead Therapeutic Systems in winning MassChallenge in 2011, the UMass Innovation Challenge, a VentureWell E-Team award, raised seed investment, and launched a class I product and generated revenue through sales.
Brian is passionate about supporting early stage innovation. Outside of his work at the iHub, Brian is a mentor for entrepreneurs and startups in top national programs. Brian’s unique background helps innovators in the early stages by figuring out the problem, flushing out ideas, develop concepts, creating action plans building business models, and crafting and presenting value propositions and pitches.
Brittany Hamtil, Product Experience Lead, Fidelity Labs
Brittany has worn the “designer” badge in many forms, helping craft compelling digital and physical experiences for over 10 years.
She built her foundation in communication design at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and later received a Master of Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University. Her work has expanded from traditional graphic design to marketing communications, interaction design, user research and testing, copywriting, agile product development, and a little bit of front-end development. Technology has always been a strong focus in her career, opting for work more rooted in balancing technical opportunities with human needs.
Today Brittany is a Product Experience Lead at Fidelity Labs, the innovation arm of investment giant Fidelity Investments, where she explores ambiguous problem spaces and exciting new technologies.
Carly França, Director, Product Experience Design, Fidelity Labs
Carly França was raised on the mean country roads of Boise, Idaho. She Studied Graphic Design and Advertising Design at the Art Institute of Colorado and the Art Institute of San Diego, CA.
She spent her most formidable years working for a local marketing automation software startup you've never heard of called Balihoo. There she developed a habit of incessant “why” asking which evolved her out of the “creative team” and onto the “product team” in the role of User Experience Designer.
She left Boise in 2013 to head up design at another software startup you’ve never heard of in Phoenix, AZ that no longer exists; it’s a rough world out there.
Carly came to Boston in Early 2014 and was lured into the corporate world of Fidelity Investments by a stable paycheck, Legos, and the promise of working on start-up like “incubators” inside Fidelity Labs. For the past 2 years, she has had a blast working with a cross-functional team to create Fidelity’s newly released “Student Debt Tool” which helps humans with Student Debt understand their current loan picture is, and assess different ways of getting out of it.
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Tuesday, September 26
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Emerging Trends Series: The Road To Our Clean Transportation Future
Tuesday, September 26
8:30 AM – 10:30 AM EDT
CIC Boston, 50 Milk Street, #20th floor, Boston
Cost: $0 – $50
After immense success reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the electric sector across the Northeast, public and private sector leaders are increasingly focusing on the transportation sector. Fueling the transportation system with clean energy presents opportunities to spur economic development, reduce greenhouse gas emissions reductions and save consumers billions of dollars in energy costs.
Join NECEC for its Emerging Trends Series event on how zero emissions vehicles and the infrastructure that powers them can drive us towards a clean transportation future. Our panel of industry and public sector leaders will discuss the opportunities and challenges of getting more ZEVs on the road, and what steps the Northeast can take to create a cleaner transportation system.
Speakers include:
Marion Gold, Commissioner, Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission
Mary Sotos, Deputy Commissioner for Energy, Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection
Sophie Shulman, Manager, Charging Infrastructure Partnerships, Electrify America
Tim Kreukniet, Vice President of Business Development, EV-Box
Alistair Pim, Vice President, Innovation & Partnerships, NECEC (moderator)
NECEC’s Emerging Trends Series are networking and educational events that discuss hot topics, growing markets and emerging trends in the clean energy industry. Forums are hosted at NECEC Sponsor offices and free to NECEC Members and Sponsors.
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Thesis Defense - Jimmy Gasore (EAPS): Quantifying Emissions of Carbon Dioxide and Methane in Central and Eastern Africa Through High Frequency Measurements and Inverse Modeling
Tuesday, September 26
10:00am to 11:00am
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
A public presentation of the thesis will be given by the candidate.
CHAIR OF DEFENSE:
Prof. Shuhei Ono, MIT, EAPS
THESIS COMMITTEE:
Prof. Ronald G. Prinn, MIT, EAPS, CGCS, JPSPGC, Advisor
Prof. Susan Solomon, MIT, EAPS
Dr. Matthew Rigby, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, UK
Copies of the thesis may be obtained from the EAPS Education Office (54-912). All interested faculty, staff and students are invited to attend.
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Sustainability/Bike Safety/Light Fair
Tuesday, September 26
11:00am to 2:00pm
Northeastern, Snell Library Quad, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Please stop by this fall's Sustainability/Bike Safety/Light Fair (heavily discounted LED lamps and fixtures)! Minor bike repairs and bicycle registration thanks to Northeastern University Police Department. BBQ. Bike safety giveaways, raffles. Information tables: NU Sustainability-related groups, multiple student groups, MassRides & Boston Cyclists' Union & MassBikes!
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Harnessing terrestrial thermal photon sources
Tuesday, September 26
11:45am to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 34-401A, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Dr. Svetlana Boriskina (MechE Research Scientist) gives a talk hosted by Applied Physics @ MIT:
Food will be provided.
Abstract: I will discuss challenges and opportunities in controlling and harvesting the radiative energy of terrestrial thermal sources. Unlike solar radiation, thermal emission from terrestrial sources can be controlled and tailored via optical design. For example, bringing emitters and absorbers into the regime of near-field coupling allows breaking many fundamental limits that stymie development of high-efficiency solar energy conversion platforms. On the other hand, long distances travelled by propagating infrared photons through the Earth’s atmosphere allow using the ultra-cold outer space as the heat sink for the terrestrial energy conversion engines. I will outline design strategies for one such engine, a ‘reverse solar cell’ system – also known as a thermoradiative cell – that can generate electric power via non-equilibrium thermal emission. The technological area where the importance of the terrestrial thermal radiation control really hits home is in personalized thermal management. I will demonstrate new fabrics that achieve passive temperature control of human body via spectrally-selective scattering of photons across visible and infrared spectral ranges.
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Nancy Youssef – Foreign Policy, Politics, and Media Coverage
Tuesday, September 26
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Nancy Youssef is a national security correspondent with The Wall Street Journal. She was previously a national security correspondent for BuzzFeed News, The Daily Beast and McClatchy Newspapers.
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Developing and Launching Products at Google Cloud Platform (MIT SDM Systems Thinking Webinar Series)
Tuesday, September 26
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Webcast at http://sdm.mit.edu
Google is acclaimed worldwide for innovation. In this webinar, MIT SDM alumnus Ari Liberman, a product manager at Google Compute Engine, will provide an inside look at how one of the world’s best companies continues to produce some of history’s most innovative products—while helping customers do the same.
Liberman will provide highlights of decision-making in product design, prototyping, and experimentation at Google.
The webinar will reveal:
how Google Compute Engine uses data science to prioritize product features and maximize agile program management; and
Google’s approach to continuous product excellence and how this deepens user trust.
A Q&A will follow the presentation. We invite you to join us!
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Tour the Most Sustainable Building in Boston: 888 Boylston Street
Tuesday, September 26
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Cost: $10 for Members; $30 Non-members: $5 for Student Members; $10 for Student Non-members
“Boston Properties reduced energy intensity by 19.8%, water intensity by 21.8% and greenhouse gas emissions intensity by 31.5% below the 2008 base year, far exceeding its 2020 targets. In 2017 the company will consider new goals in each of these areas.” Bisnow June 2017
888 Boylston, completed in 2016, is one of the most sustainable buildings in Boston. It has been designed to optimize energy efficiency, and is expected to operate 47% more efficiently than buildings of the same type in a similar climate zone.
Sustainability features include a dedicated outside air system with active chilled beams, heat recovery, LED lighting, and rainwater harvesting. The roof and crown of the building accommodate solar photovoltaic panels and fourteen vertical axis wind turbines, which together produce enough power for 15 homes. Other technologies include Boston-based EnerNOC’s Energy Intelligence System, an IP based network for the building management system, sensors for temperature, humidity and CO2, and a Security Robot called PRU2D2.
Learn how Boston Properties conceived, decided which clean technology to use and delivered this state of the art property.
Register early – this tour is limited to 40 people!
Meet at Prudential Center Plaza on Boylston Street in front of the building.
Join us directly after to grab a brew and conversation at Lir, 903 Boylston. First round is on us!
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MIT Food & Agriculture Club Open House
Tuesday, September 26
5:00 – 7:00 PM
Meadhall, 4 Cambridge Center, Cambridge
RSVP at http://cglink.me/r353173 (Registration to CampusGroups is free, just sign up with an MIT or personal email address)
Interested in working or studying food and agriculture? Curious about the MIT Food & Agriculture Club? Come join fellow students who are passionate about food and agriculture, chat about what we do and how you can get involved, and enjoy the appetizers provided at Meadhall.
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Human Rights and Violent Internal Conflict
Tuesday, September 26
5:30 pm to 7:00 pm
BU, George Sherman Union, Conference Auditorium, 775 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Professor David Cingranelli examines sources of conflict in developing societies, with particular attention to government violations of human rights such as torture and political imprisonment and discrimination against women. Those practices violate internationally recognized human rights and create grievances among citizens, which in turn can lead to violent protests, acts of terrorism and even civil war.
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The Enemy – From Concept to “Virtual” Reality
Tuesday, September 26
6:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building N51, 265 Massachusetts, Cambridge
Enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at The Enemy, a cutting edge Virtual Reality (VR) experience that explores three international political conflicts. Acclaimed photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa and MIT Media Lab professor Fox Harrell will share how their collaboration led to this groundbreaking exhibition, from its conceptual stage to “virtual” reality.
Free. No pre-registration necessary.
Presenters:
Karim Ben Khelifa, photojournalist
D. Fox Harrell, MIT Professor of Digital Media & AI in Comparative Media Studies Program & the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab
This program is offered in conjunction with The Enemy, on view October 5, 2017.
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Human Rights and Violent Internal Conflict
Tuesday, September 26
5:30 pm to 8:00 pm
BU, George Sherman Union, Conference Auditorium, 2nd Floor - 775 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
David Cingranelli, Professor of Political Science at Binghamton University, SUNY on "Human Rights and Violent Internal Conflict." Part of the Boston University Modern Armenian History & Literature Lecture Series, as organized by the Charles K. and Elisabeth M. Kenosian Chair in Modern Armenian History and Literature in the Department of History. This event is free and open to the public. Reception to follow.
More information http://www.bu.edu/ihi/calendar/?eid=203246
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Seeing Color: Exploring Whiteness in a Racialized World
Tuesday, September 26
6:00pm to 8:00pm
Northeastern, Curry Student Center, Ballroom, 346 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Keynote Speaker Franchesca Ramsey
Franchesca Ramsey is an actress, writer and video blogger based out of New York City. With over 200k subscribers on her two YouTube channels, she produces original videos which include song parodies, impersonations and original characters along with socially conscious and topical comedy sketches. In 2012 her viral video "Sh*t White Girls Say... to Black Girls" was viewed over 5 millions times in just 5 days, garnering coverage on MSNBC, ABC, Ebony Magazine, The Daily Mail and the Anderson Cooper talk show to name a few. Most recently she was a writer and contributor for the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore on Comedy Central. Today she's the host and head writer for the award winning web series, "MTV Decoded."
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Boston Green Drinks - September Happy Hour
Tuesday, September 26
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Scholars, 25 School Street, Boston
Join the conversation with sustainability professionals and hobbyists. Enjoy a drink and build your connection with our green community!
Boston Green Drinks builds a community of sustainably-minded Bostonians, provides a forum for exchange of sustainability career resources, and serves as a central point of information about emerging green issues. We support the exchange of ideas and resources about sustainable energy, environment, food, health, education.
Please note that our website is currently experiencing difficulties. We are aware, and are working on it!
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The Future of Travel & Transportation Industry
Tuesday, September 26
6:00PM – 8:30PM
WeWork Mass Avenue, 625 Massachussetts Avenue, 2nd Floor, Cambridge
Cost: $11.54 - $32.64
During this TechMeeting we will hear from leading research labs, innovative startups and large corporations on the future of Travel &Transportation Industry.
AGENDA
06:00 pm Registration
06:30 pm Introduction - Open Innovation Club
06:40 pm Panel on the Future of Travel &Transportation Industry
07:15 pm 6+ Startups Pitches (3 min pitch and 1 min Q&A)
07:45 pm Networking cocktail
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MIT Energy Club Launch!
Tuesday, September 26
6:30pm 8:30pm
Walker Memorial, 142 Memorial Drive Cambridge
You are cordially invited to the MIT Energy Club Launch!
Admission is free. Delicious non-pizza dinner will be served.
Interested in energy technology and business?
Curious about exciting energy events happening around MIT?
Want to explore taking on a leadership role for yourself within the Energy Club?
Then come to the Launch on September 26th, and meet MIT peers immersed in energy fields that you care about: batteries, solar, oil & gas, self-driving cars,
electricity access in the developing world...you name it we got it.
From 6:30-7:30pm, you can talk 1-on-1 with representatives from the Energy Club's many communities and events, including: Energy Night, Energy Hackathon, Energy Conference, Sloan Business School Energy Club, Joules: Women in Energy, Energy4Development, and many more!
From 7:30-8:15pm, a panel of experts will debate recent exciting developments in renewable energy. (More details to come.)
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Climate Forum with Cambridge City Council Candidates
Tuesday, September 26
6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Citywide Senior Center, 806 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Climate resilience begins with people. It is the collective response by the residents and government of Cambridge that is paramount in creating a resilient community today and ensuring a place, space, and sustenance for all in the future.
Green Cambridge, in collaboration with Cambridge Mothers Out Front, the Cambridge Residents Alliance, A Better Cambridge, and Cambridge Bicycle Safety, invites you to participate in our Candidates’ Night Climate Resilience Forum on Tuesday, September 26th 6:30-9 PM at the Citywide Senior Center. Our groups have a shared vision of a connected, affordable, sustainable city that prioritizes the health and well-being of current and future Cantabrigians.
Moderated by Cantabrigian Derrick Jackson, an award-winning journalist , former Boston Globe columnist, author, and fellow with the Union of Concerned Scientists, this event offers the candidates running for Cambridge City Council an opportunity to to reflect on and to share with voters ways in which they would bring bring greater resilience to our community.
The evening will open with an overview of the issues from Green Cambridge and co-sponsors, community building with the audience followed by questions to candidates. Candidates will be asked share their priorities for Cambridge on how they propose to address equity and affordability while grappling with a rapidly changing environment of increased food and household energy costs: hotter, drier days: shifting rain patterns sea level rise; and unstable resource supply chains that are beyond our control.
CHILDCARE PROVIDED.
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Daring Democracy Book Launch
Tuesday, September 26
7:00 PM
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
You are invited to the official launch of Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen's new book, Daring Democracy, at the Harvard Coop!
The event will start at 7pm on September 26th (1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge, MA). Frances and Adam will give a talk about democracy in America and will then sign copies of the book.
Hope to see you there!!
Here is the description as it appears on the back cover:
Americans are distraught as tightly held economic and political power drowns out their voices and values. Legendary Diet for a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappé and organizer-scholar Adam Eichen offer a fresh, surprising response to this core crisis. This intergenerational duo opens with an essential truth: It’s not the magnitude of a challenge that crushes the human spirit. It’s feeling powerless—in this case, fearing that to stand up for democracy is futile. It’s not, Lappé and Eichen argue. With riveting stories and little-known evidence, they demystify how we got here, exposing the well-orchestrated effort that has robbed Americans of their rightful power. But the heart of this unique book is solutions. Even in this divisive time, Americans are uniting across causes and ideologies to create a “canopy of hope” the authors call the Democracy Movement. In this invigorating “movement of movements” millions of Americans are leaving despair behind as they push for and achieve historic change. The Movement and democracy itself are vital to us as citizens and fulfill human needs—for power, meaning, and connection—essential to our thriving. In this timely and necessary book, Lappé and Eichen offer proof that courage is contagious in the daring fight for democracy.
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One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps
Tuesday, September 26
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store and the Nieman Foundation welcome Nieman Storyboard founder ANDREA PITZER—author of The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov—for a discussion of her latest book, One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps.
About One Long Night
For over 100 years, at least one concentration camp has existed somewhere on Earth. First used as battlefield strategy, camps have evolved with each passing decade, in the scope of their effects and the savage practicality with which governments have employed them. Even in the twenty-first century, as we continue to reckon with the magnitude and horror of the Holocaust, history tells us we have broken our own solemn promise of "never again."
In this harrowing work based on archival records and interviews during travel to four continents, Andrea Pitzer reveals for the first time the chronological and geopolitical history of concentration camps. Beginning with 1890s Cuba, she pinpoints concentration camps around the world and across decades. From the Philippines and Southern Africa in the early twentieth century to the Soviet Gulag and detention camps in China and North Korea during the Cold War, camp systems have been used as tools for civilian relocation and political repression. Often justified as a measure to protect a nation, or even the interned groups themselves, camps have instead served as brutal and dehumanizing sites that have claimed the lives of millions.
Drawing from exclusive testimony, landmark historical scholarship, and stunning research, Andrea Pitzer unearths the roots of this appalling phenomenon, exploring and exposing the staggering toll of the camps: our greatest atrocities, the extraordinary survivors, and even the intimate, quiet moments that have also been part of camp life during the past century.
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Wednesday, September 27
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Book Launch: Law, Religion, and Health in the United States
WHEN Wednesday, Sep. 27, 2017, 12 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein West A (2019), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Health Sciences, Law
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.
DETAILS In July 2017, Cambridge University Press will publish Law, Religion, and Health in the United States, co-edited by outgoing Petrie-Flom Center Executive Director Holly Fernandez Lynch, Faculty Director I. Glenn Cohen, and Elizabeth Sepper, Associate Professor of Law at Washington University School of Law. This edited volume stems from the Center’s 2015 annual conference, which brought together leading experts to identify the various ways in which law intersects with religion and health care in the United States, examine the role of law in creating or mediating conflict between religion and health care, and explore potential legal solutions to allow religion and health care to simultaneously flourish in a culturally diverse nation.
About the book: While the law can create conflict between religion and health, it can also facilitate religious accommodation and protection of conscience. Finding this balance is critical to addressing the most pressing questions at the intersection of law, religion, and health in the United States: should physicians be required to disclose their religious beliefs to patients? How should we think about institutional conscience in the health care setting? How should health care providers deal with families with religious objections to withdrawing treatment? In this timely book, experts from a variety of perspectives and disciplines offer insight on these and other pressing questions, describing what the public discourse gets right and wrong, how policymakers might respond, and what potential conflicts may arise in the future. It should be read by academics, policymakers, and anyone else - patient or physician, secular or devout - interested in how US law interacts with health care and religion.
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MTL Seminar Series: "A Journey into a New Energy Future: The Critical Role of Energy Storage"
Wednesday, September 27
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 34-401, Grier Room, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Christina Lampe-Onnerud, Cadenza Innovation
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Optimal Outcomes: Solve the Unsolvable – Even Without the Other Side’s Cooperation
WHEN Wednesday, Sep. 27, 2017, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Pound Hall, Room 101
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Program on Negotiation
SPEAKER(S) Jennifer Goldman-Wetzler, Ph.D., Founding Principal, Alignment Strategies Group
CONTACT INFO Julie Barrett, jbarrett@law.harvard.edu
DETAILS About the Book:
This talk will bring to life the concepts in Dr. Jennifer Goldman-Wetzler’s forthcoming book, "Optimal Outcomes," and will introduce a set of practices that allow you to free yourself from even the toughest situations and conflicts – at work, at home, and in public life – even without cooperation from the other side. Jennifer Goldman will discuss how to identify what undermines your ability to solve the problem, discover new levers for change, harness difficult emotions, imagine and test sustainable optimal outcomes, and take the pattern-breaking actions required to bring lasting transformation. Through the Optimal Outcomes Method, Dr. Goldman will offers practices and tools to transform relationships, teams, and organizations.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Jennifer Goldman-Wetzler is an organizational psychologist and Founding Principal of Alignment Strategies Group, a consultancy that helps leaders optimize organizational vitality and growth. For two decades she has advised senior leaders at global corporations and large non-profit and governmental institutions including IBM, Intel, Eli Lilly, Bayer, Barclays, Citigroup, KPMG, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, and the United Nations.
Jennifer also serves as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she created and teaches the popular course “Transforming Conflict from Within” on how leaders can successfully face even the most challenging long-term conflicts. She is also an executive coach at the Executive Education Program at Columbia Business School.
A former Graduate Research Fellow at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security with a Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University, Jennifer is author of the book Emotions in Long-term Conflict (2014) and is currently working on her next book, "Optimal Outcomes". She has authored articles and chapters in publications including The Huffington Post, Chief Learning Officer Magazine, The International Journal of Conflict Management, The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice.
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All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power
Wednesday, September 27
12:00-1:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496 Pye Room, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Thomas Wright, Brookings Institute
Why is the liberal order unraveling, what comes next, and how should the United States respond? Tom Wright will argue that the defining feature of contemporary world politics is the return of balancing and the intensification of great power security competition albeit in an age of interdependence and globalization. This competition will play out at a regional level and is unlikely to result in major power war. Wright argues that the United States should pursue a strategy of responsible competition to preserve the liberal international order.
Thomas Wright is the director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institute. He is also a non resident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. Previously, he was executive director of studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, and senior researcher for the Princeton Project on National Security. Wright has a doctorate from Georgetown University, a Master of Philosophy from Cambridge University, and a bachelor's and master's from University College Dublin. He has also held a pre-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a post doctoral fellowship at Princeton University.
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Getting There: Transportation Vision to Transformative Reality
Wednesday, September 27
12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
BU, 75 Bay State Road, Boston
RSVP at http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07eel56mgb2a834c64&llr=sgxoeyrab
Join Harvard Graduate School of Design Lecturer Lily Song and leading practitioners for a discussion of the factors that drive transformative, equitable change in transportation networks around cities. Lunch will be provided.
Phone 617-358-8080
Contact Email ioc@bu.edu
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xTalk: Free Speech and Academic Freedom in India and the West
Wednesday, September 27
3:00pm to 4:15pm
MIT, Building 3-370, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Two streams join to form the Western Tradition – the Greek and the Christian – both with significant tensions regarding freedom of enquiry. By contrast, pluralism is enshrined in the oldest Indian texts. A tradition of free enquiry continued during the medieval period with Akbar and Dara Shikoh, but then declined. Prof Shailendra Mehta will offer a philosophical perspective on pluralism and freedom of enquiry as enunciated by a recently discovered seminal text by a medieval Indian scholar, Mallavadin.
Prof Mehta is Director of MICA in Ahmedabad, India, also Distinguished Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
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Machine Learning - Current and Future
Wednesday, September 27
3:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
Google, 355 Main Street, Cambridge
Join us, Google Product Managers and your peers for a discussion of Google Cloud Machine Learning featuring Girish Reddy , CTO, SpringML and Manuel Amunategui VP Data Science, SpringML.
Agenda:
3:00pm - Welcome & Registration
3:30pm - Cloud ML Roadmap
4:30pm - Machine Learning use cases
5:30pm - Q & A and Cool Google Giveaways
6:00pm - Happy Hour and Networking
Key Takeaways
Gain insight into Google’s vision for the future of Cloud ML.
Learn the practical applications of Machine Learning and use of Google Cloud.
Understand the business and technical advantages of using Google Cloud for Machine Learning.
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Towards tensegrity-based metamaterials
Wednesday, September 27
4:00pm
Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin G115,33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Julian Rimoli (Georgia Tech)
The term tensegrity, derived from tensional integrity, refers to a certain class of structural systems composed of bars and strings. Through adequate pre-stressing of their string members, tensegrity structures generally become mechanically stable. Traditional approaches for modeling their behavior assume that (i) bars are perfectly rigid, (ii) cables are linear elastic, and (iii) bars experience pure compression and strings pure tension. In addition, a common design constraint is to assume that the structure would fail whenever any of its bars reaches the corresponding Euler buckling load. In reality, these assumptions tend to break down in the presence of dynamic events. In the first part of this talk, we will present a physics-based reduced-order model to study aspects related to the dynamic and nonlinear response of tensegrity-based structures. With very few degrees of freedom, our model captures their buckling and post-buckling behavior as well as their dynamic response. We then adopt our model to show how, under dynamic events, buckling of individual members of a tensegrity structure does not necessarily imply structural failure. In the second part of this talk, we will focus on the development of tensegrity-based metamaterials. Perhaps due to the lack of adequate symmetries on traditional tensegrity elementary cells, the design of 3-dimensional tensegrity lattices has remained an elusive goal. In this work, we first develop a method to construct 3-dimensional tensegrity lattices from truncated octahedron elementary cells. The required space-tiling translational symmetry is achieved by performing recursive reflection operations on the elementary cells. We then analyze the mechanical response of the resulting lattices in the fully nonlinear regime and show that this new topology exhibits unprecedented static and dynamic mechanical properties.
Speaker Bio: Julian J. Rimoli is an Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Rimoli obtained his Engineering Diploma in Aeronautics from Universidad Nacional de La Plata in 2001. In 2004 he moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies at Caltech, receiving his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Aeronautics in 2005 and 2009 respectively. Upon graduation Dr. Rimoli accepted a postdoctoral associate position at the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics of MIT, where he performed research for over a year and a half. In January 2011, Dr. Rimoli joined Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering. His research interests lie within the broad field of computational mechanics of materials and structures, with particular focus on aerospace applications. Dr. Rimoli has a special interest in problems involving multiple length and time scales, and in the development of theories and computational techniques for seamlessly bridging them. He is a member of AIAA, ASME, and USACM, has been selected to participate at the National Academy of Engineering US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, and is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Donald W. Douglas Prize Fellowship, the Ernest E. Sechler Memorial Award in Aeronautics, the James Clerk Maxwell Young Writers Prize, the Lockheed Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Class of 1940 Teaching Effectiveness Award, and the Goizueta Junior Faculty Professorship.
Applied Mechanics Colloquia
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Organizing for Freedom: Then and Now
WHEN Wednesday, Sep. 27, 2017, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Ash Center Foyer, Suite 200N, 124 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
SPEAKER(S) Hollis Watkins, Founder and President of Southern Echo, SNCC Veteran and Freedom Singer; and Marshall Ganz, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School.
DETAILS The Ash Center invites you to a discussion with Hollis Watkins, Founder and President of Southern Echo, SNCC Veteran and Freedom Singer. The talk with be moderated by Marshall Ganz, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School.
The event is an installment of the Ash Center's Race and American Politics Series. Race and American Politics is a multidisciplinary series of seminars and roundtable conversations led by Leah Wright Rigueur, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Refreshments will be provided.
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Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution
Wednesday, September 27
6 pm
Harvard Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Free Public Lecture and Book Signing
Jonathan Losos, Monique and Philip Lehner Professor for the Study of Latin America; Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology; Curator in Herpetology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University
Nature abounds with instances of convergence: structures or adaptations that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists, most notably Harvard’s Stephen Jay Gould, also point out examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change—a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze—caused evolution to take a different course. What role does each force play in the natural world? Are today’s plants, animals and humans, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes? Jonathan Losos will discuss these questions and more as he presents content from his new book Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution.
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Privacy V. Technology
WHEN Wednesday, Sep. 27, 2017, 6 – 7:10 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, JFK Jr. Forum, Institute of Politics, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR JFK Jr. Forum, Institute of Politics
SPEAKER(S) Harvey Levin, Executive Producer, TMZ.com and TMZ TV
Jason Chaffetz (Moderator), Fall 2017 Resident Fellow, Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School, U.S. Congressman (R-UT) (2009-2017), Former Chair, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Contributor, Fox News Network
CONTACT INFO JFK Jr. Forum Office
617-495-1380
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BATTLE FOR NET NEUTRALITY | POLITICS & INNOVATION
Wednesday, September 27
6:30 – 8:30 pm EDT
GA Boston, 125 Summer Street 13th Floor, Boston
RSVP at https://generalassemb.ly/education/battle-for-net-neutrality-politics-innovation/boston/41170
Norman Guadagno, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Carbonite
About This Event
The future of the internet in America has never been more uncertain. In April, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unveiled a plan to end protections for net neutrality, the principle that internet service providers must treat all Internet data as the same. Join Norman Guadagno, Chief Evangelist and SVP of Marketing at Carbonite, to learn the vital importance of net neutrality and why it must be preserved.
Why It Matters?
Net neutrality fuels job creation and innovation by ensuring equal access to information and resources. If net neutrality is reversed, the world’s five largest broadband service providers will gain control over who can access information, and how fast they can access it. That means ISPs could:
Manipulate web traffic to support their own financial or political interests
Favor some advertisers by speeding up or slowing traffic to a site
Sell consumers' browsing histories without permission.
What Will You Takeaway?
Attendees can expect to learn:
The general principles of net neutrality
Why a reversal of net neutrality will hurt the economy, the American public, and your business
Hear how these policies could impact the innovation economy
By signing up for this event, you're giving our sponsors permission to contact you about upcoming events and promotions.
About the Speaker
Norman Guadagno, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Carbonite
Norman Guadagno hones in on that unique place where company brand meets customer need and harnesses in it a way that adds value for customer and company alike. Together with the Marketing team, Norman drives brand strategy, product marketing and overall market awareness for Carbonite worldwide.
Before joining Carbonite, Norman was Senior Vice President of Marketing Strategy at the digital marketing agency Wire Stone, working with clients such as Microsoft, Boeing and Nike. Prior to Wire Stone, Guadagno held senior marketing roles at Microsoft and Oracle, as well as leading creative agencies. Guadagno began his career in the software industry focusing on user interaction.
Norman holds an M.A. in Psychology from Rice University and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Rochester.
About Our Partners
Carbonite provides data protection solutions for businesses and the IT professionals who serve them. Our solution suite provides a full complement of backup, disaster recovery, high availability and migration solutions for any size business in locations around the world, all supported by secure and scalable global cloud infrastructure.
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Mayhem: A Memoir
Wednesday, September 27
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes Granta magazine editor SIGRID RAUSING—author of History, Memory, and Identity in Post-Soviet Estonia and Everything is Wonderful—and bestselling author GISH JEN for a discussion of Mayhem, Rausing's memoir of the impact of addiction on her family.
About Mayhem
In the summer of 2012 a woman named Eva was found dead in the London townhouse she shared with her husband, Hans K. Rausing. The couple had struggled with drug addiction for years, often under the glare of tabloid headlines. Now, writing with singular clarity and restraint, Hans’ sister, the editor and publisher Sigrid Rausing, tries to make sense of what happened.
In Mayhem, she asks the difficult questions those close to the world of addiction must face. "Who can help the addict, consumed by a shaming hunger, a need beyond control? There is no medicine: the drugs are the medicine. And who can help their families, so implicated in the self-destruction of the addict? Who can help when the very notion of ‘help’ becomes synonymous with an exercise of power; a familial police state; an end to freedom, in the addict’s mind?"
An eloquent and timely attempt to understand the conundrum of addiction—and a memoir as devastating as it is riveting.
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What’s the Catch? Diving into the sustainability of eating fish
Wednesday, September 27
7 - 9 pm
Harvard Medical School, Armenise Auditorium, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston
More information at http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/seminar-series/
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GLOBEDOCS invites you to a special screening of Celling Your Soul
Wednesday, September 27
Registration opens up at 6:30pm | Screening begins at 7:00pm
Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/globedocs-presents-celling-your-soul-screening-tickets-37494856124
In one short decade, we have totally changed the way we interact with one another. The millennial generation, the first to be socialized in a digital world, is now feeling the unintended consequences.
CELLING YOUR SOUL is a powerful and informative examination of how our young people actually feel about connecting in the digital world and their love/hate relationship with technology. It provides empowering strategies for more fulfilling, balanced, and authentic human interaction within the digital landscape.
The film reveals the effects of "digital socialization" by taking viewers on a personal journey with a group of high school and college students who through a digital cleanse discover the power of authentic human connectivity, and that there is "No App" or piece of technology that can ever replace the benefits of human connection.
The screening will be immediately followed by a panel with:
Joni Siani Producer
Moderated by The Boston Globe's Janice Page
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From Talk to Action: Taking a Stand Against Racism and Hate
Wednesday, September 27
7:30 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Beacon Hill Friends House, 8 Chestnut Street, Boston
This interactive session is designed to look critically at racism in our communities and our nation by examining the roots of white supremacy and how the past impacts our present. Shay Stewart-Bouley is currently the Executive Director of Community Change Inc., a nearly 50-year- old anti-racism organization based in Boston that organizes and educates for racial equity with a specific focus on working with white people.
Shay's talk is part of the Beacon Hill Friends House Spring Speakers Series, “Working for Racial Justice Today,” in which speakers from our community will look at the history of racism in Boston, New England, and around the world, and what we can do here and now to confront it.
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Thursday, September 28
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Climate Change, Migration and Health Symposium
Thursday, September 28
8:30 am–12:30 pm
Radcliffe Gymnasium, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
Climate-induced migration will be a central feature of the 21st century, with grave consequences for global health. The crisis in Syria was precipitated by a 1,000 year drought; we should expect more such crises in the years to come.
The Harvard Global Health Institute will host a symposium on Climate Change, Migration and Health. Dr. Jennifer Leaning, Director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, will deliver the keynote address. Expert panels will address the humanitarian response to climate-induced migration, the implications for law and policy, and the imperative for improved empirical research to better understand this growing crisis.
A continental breakfast will be served at 8:30am and the program will begin at 9:00am. A brown bag lunch will be provided after the program is concluded at 12:30pm.
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Digital Health @ Harvard
Thursday, September 28
12:00 pm
Harvard, 23 Everett Street, 2nd Floor, Cambridge
Vish Viswanath, Ph.D.
This is a talk in the monthly Digital Health @ Harvard Brown Bag Lunch Series, which is co-hosted by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
Editorial Comment: Not sure this is the correct address. Contact https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/digitalhealth# for further information.
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Thoughts from West Africa: Two decades of protecting human rights and the environment
Thursday, September 28
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Alfred Brownell, Environmental attorney/Founder, Green Advocates
Increasing demand for land and resources is resulting in colossal foreign direct investments parachuting into very poor countries without the absorptive capacity to manage these investments and the sometimes egregious implications for human rights and the environment. Liberian environmental attorney and activist Alfred Brownell, who recently fled the country due to increasing threats, will take you through a journey on land grabbing in Liberia by two of the world’s largest oil palm corporations under the pretext of foreign direct investment. He will argue this mode of investment is threatening not just the food security and livelihoods of indigenous and local communities but how it continues to undermine ecosystem integrity, peace and stability of Liberia, which has resulted into a series of conflicts.
Alfred Lahai Gbabai-Garbla Brownell Sr. is the Founder of Green Advocates, Liberia’s First Public Interest environmental law and human rights organization. Mr. Brownell started Green Advocates to work with impoverished, rural communities to ensure them a voice in decisions affecting their communities’ natural resources and is one of the lead campaigners reforming Liberia’s land and natural resources sectors. Between 2006 -2012, he campaigned for the recognition of the customary land and property rights of indigenous communities throughout Liberia. Mr. Brownell is also widely recognized internationally for his leadership in the field of natural resource rights. Among others, he serves on the Steering Committee of the Corporate Accountability Working Group of the International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net) and coordinates inputs from African civil society organizations into to the drafting of a UN treaty on business and human rights. Regionally, he serves as Head of Secretariat and Facilitator of the Mano River Union Civil Society Natural Resources Rights and Governance Platform, which is planning on bringing a multi-state lawsuit at the ECOWAS Court against seven African governments for their failure to protect the rights of local communities Mr. Brownell holds an LLM in Environmental law and Energy from the University of Tulane Law School, an LLB/JD from the University of Liberia, and a B.Sc. in General Agriculture from the University of Liberia.
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"No Such Thing as a Little War": The Ideas Driving Great Power Military Intervention
WHEN Thursday, Sep. 28, 2017, 12:15 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, 1 Brattle Square - Room 350, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR International Security Program
SPEAKER(S) Jacqueline L. Hazelton, Assistant Professor, Department of Strategy and Policy, U.S. Naval War College
CONTACT INFO susan_lynch@harvard.edu
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Coming Apart? Lives of the Rich and Poor Over Time in the United States
Thursday, September 28,
3:00pm to 4:00pm
MIT, Building 4-270 ,77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Income inequality in the United States has increased consistently since the 1980s, but has this growing economic gap led to larger cultural distance between the rich and poor? Using results from a machine learning algorithm, Marianne Bertrand will discuss how the lives and attitudes of the rich and poor have diverged from the 1960s to the 2010s.
Marianne Bertrand is the Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Social Enterprise Initiative at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Her research focuses on racial bias and inequality in the US and India. Marianne serves as co-chair of J-PAL’s Labor Sector, co-editor of the American Economic Review, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
This event is part of the D2P2: Data, Decisions, Public Policy lecture series, organized by J-PAL and the MIT Department of Economics. The D2P2 Lectures feature leading academics and other experts who share knowledge derived from modern applied economics research to demonstrate how it can inform better public policy decision-making. Speakers will discuss their groundbreaking research and practice and how it can be applied to improve people’s lives.
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Inequality in America: How Do We Achieve an Economy That Works for All
Thursday, September 28
3:00pm to 4:30pm
Northeastern University, Shillman Hall, 220, 115 Forsyth Street, Boston
The Economic Policy Forum Fall 2017
Discussions with prominent policymakers and thinkers on critical economic questions
The inaugural event will feature Jeffrey Frankel of the Kennedy School Harvard discussing:
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Robotics Connect 2017
Thursday, September 28
3:00 – 8:30 PM
One Broadway, 5th Floor, Cambridge
Save the date for Venture Cafe’s Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) mini-conference, “Building Markets for Artificial Intelligence”, taking place on September 28, 2017.
From ground, sea, and air, explore Boston firms solving real world challenges and developing the robotics market. This special ‘conference night’ event seeks to bring together the brightest minds who are building, funding, and innovating in the Greater Boston area’s robotics and AI communities.
Come prepared to not only hear the best ideas and see the latest technologies but also to participate in building Boston’s robotics innovation.
More information at http://vencaf.org/roboticsconnect/
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Social Media Use in Public Relations: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Thursday, September 28
3:30 pm to 4:30 pm
BU, COM, Room 209, 640 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Dr. Donald K. Wright
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Making Something From Nothing: Appropriate Technology as Intentionally Disruptive Responsibility
Thursday, September 28
4:00pm to 6:00pm
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdtLM4umTKQUU6k-xTcqHbsl8NMdfyyflW8a2VmaPzcA3d8fQ/viewform
Registration required, location confirmed with registration.
The Collaborative Creative Resistance performances exemplify transpedagogical cultural work that occurs outside conventional studio settings, instructional practices and educational institutions. The Collaborative Creative Resistance performance will take place on campus. The performance situates itself within public spaces through participatory demonstrations of clay preparation, mixing and filter production in collaboration with participants.
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Cultural and Humanitarian Agents Seminar w/ Diego Fernandez: "What is a Slum? Welcome to #31, Buenos Aires”
WHEN Thursday, Sep. 28, 2017, 4:30 – 6:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Plimpton Room, Barker 133, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Cultural and Humanitarian Agents Seminar
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS)
SPEAKER(S) Diego Fernandez, Secretary for Social and Urban Integration, Buenos Aires
Moderator: Doris Sommer, Ira Jewell Williams Jr., Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African American Studies, Harvard University; Director, Cultural Agents Initiative
COST Free and open to the public
TICKET WEB LINK https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8wedUkGahhhQSd7
CONTACT INFO Graduate student coordinators:
Alen Agaronov alen.agaronov@mail.harvard.edu
Amy Cheung amc078@mail.harvard.edu
Polly Lauer pwlauer@gmail.com
DETAILS Diego Fernández oversees one of the most ambitious and visionary projects in the history of Buenos Aires - integrating the "shantytown" of Villa 31 into the fabric of Argentina's capital by expanding educational infrastructure and bringing running water, a sewage system, and electricity to its 40,000 residents. Previously, Fernández was the Chief of Staff of the Buenos Aires Ministry of Education. In 2009 he also co-created G25, a non-profit organization that seeks to bridge the public and private sectors and foster public engagement. This seminar will explore the aspirations of the Villa 31 project and consider the role of creative and architectural interventions as part of transformative urbanization.
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Globalization without Globalism
Thursday, September 28
5:00-6:30pm
Harvard, Emerson 210, Harvard Yard, Cambridge
Lecture: Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School
Abstract: Economic globalization is associated in contemporary discourse with a preference for cosmopolitanism over patriotism; international equality over national equality; economic liberty over political accountability; and global governance over the nation state. Professor Rodrik will argue that the tensions implied by these choices are largely false.
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Nick Couldry: "The Mediated Construction of Reality: from Berger and Luckmann to Norbert Elias"
Thursday, September 28
5:00pm to 6:30pm
MIT, Building 56-114, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
In this talk Nick Couldry outlines the project of his recent book, The Mediated Construction of Reality (Polity October 2016, co-written with Andreas Hepp). The book offers a critical reevaluation and rearticulation of the social constructivist ambitions of Berger and Luckmann’s 1966 book The Social Construction of Reality while radically rethinking the implications of this for a world saturated not just with digital media, but with data processes. Couldry outlines how a materialist phenomenology can draw not just on traditional phenomenology, but on the social theory of Norbert Elias, particularly his concept of figurations, to address the challenges of social analysis in the face of datafication. Elias, Couldry argues, is a particularly important theorist on whom to draw in making social constructivism ready to face the deep embedding of the social world with digital technologies, and more than that, to outline the challenges for social order of such a world. More broadly, Couldry will argue for a reengagement of media theory with the broader tradition of social theory in the era of Big Data, in the face of a radical expansion of what media are and how mediation is embedded in everyday social orders.
Nick Couldry is a sociologist of media and culture. He is Professor of Media Communications and Social Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is currently a Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research Lab, and during 2017-2018 a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University. He is the author or editor of twelve books including most recently The Mediated Construction of Reality (with Andreas Hepp, Polity, 2016), Ethics of Media (2013 Palgrave, coedited with Mirca Madianou and Amit Pinchevski), Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Polity 2012) and Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism (Sage 2010).
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Techno-Economical Challenges in Sustainable Growth of Solar Energy Utilization
Thursday, September 28
5:30 PM Social
6:30 PM Dinner
7:30 PM Presentation
Hyatt Regency Cambridge, 575 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.asmboston.org
Deadline to respond by 5PM Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2017
featuring Prof. Malay Mazumder, Research Professor, ECE Department, Boston University
In 2012, the US Department of Energy, working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, predicted the growth of photovoltaic (PV) and Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technologies for meeting 14% of the US electricity demand by 2030 and 27% by 2050, and thereby reducing green house gas (mainly CO2) emission by 760 million metric tons per year by 2050. Our current PV and CSP based renewable energy production is less than 5%. The prediction was based upon the 75% drop in cost of PV module production in China in 2011 that resulted in more that 40% annual growth of PV industries in the US. This talk will focus on the techno-economical challenges, including our efforts in sustainable growth of solar industries, involving primarily (1) enhancing efficiency of PV and CSP plants, (2) cost reduction of the auxiliary equipment and hardware involved in installations (3) grid integration, streamlining soft-costs in permits and inspections, (4) energy storage technologies (mainly Li-ion batteries) and (5) environmental impacts. The DOE goals are also aimed at reducing the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) to $0.04/kWh, lower than the current LCOE. Availability of solar electricity at a lower price would accelerate market penetration of the solar technologies. One significant environmental impact of large-scale growth of solar industries and increase in operational cost is the consumption of water needed for cleaning PV modules and CSP mirrors installed in semi-arid and desert areas, where solar resources are high, water supply is scarce, and the modules and the mirrors are subjected to a high dust deposition rate and occasional dust storms. At Boston University, we have been working on developing transparent electrodynamic screen (EDS) films that can be used to laminate the front surface of the modules and the mirrors for water-free removal of dust. A brief description and a short video would show how the EDS film charges the deposited dust layer electrostatically and removes it in a sweeping action restoring power output better than 90%, as frequently as needed at a low cost.
About the speaker: Malay K. Mazumder is working as a Research Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University. Since 2012, he has been serving as the principal investigator of a research projects, supported by DOE and MassCEC, on the development of transparent electrodynamic screen (EDS) films to serve as self-cleaning solar collectors without requiring any water or mechanical process. Before joining BU, he served MIT as a visiting professor and the University of Arkansas as a University Professor where his research included NASA projects on the space applications of EDS films for protecting solar panels, camera lenses, and other devices for supporting robotic and human missions to the moon and Mars. He is an IEEE Life-Fellow and serves as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Particulate Science and Technology: An International Journal.
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PUBLIC PROGRAM | FILM SCREENING: CITIZENFOUR
Thursday, September 28
6:00PM - 8:00PM
MIT List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/film-screening-citizenfour-2004-dir-laura-poitras-tickets-35430944910
This Thursday evening feature documentary film screening is presented in conjunction with List Projects: Civil Disobedience. Screenings take place in Bakalar Gallery.
Additional Screenings
October 5, 6 PM
October 12, 6 PM
Citizenfour. 2014. Directed by Laura Poitras
114 min.
Laura Poitras’s 2014 documentary takes its point of departure in the filmmaker receiving encrypted emails from someone with information on the government’s massive covert-surveillance programs. Poitras and reporter Glenn Greenwald meet the informant in Hong Kong to learn the alias “CITIZENFOUR” belongs to Edward Snowden, a high-level former CIA analyst. What unfolds is the handing over of classified documents providing evidence of mass indiscriminate and illegal invasions of privacy by the National Security Agency (NSA) and eventually, Snowden’s current asylum in Russia.
All programs are free and open to the general public. RSVPs are required. RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/film-screening-citizenfour-2004-dir-laura-poitras-tickets-35430944910
For more information, contact:
Emily Garner
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Solar 101
Thursday September 28
6pm-8pm
Agassiz Baldwin Community Center 20 Sacramento Street
More information at http://sunnycambridge.org
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Studying Vision in Usual and Unusual Brain Development: A Change to Merge Science and Service
Thursday, September 28
6:30pm - 8:30pm
Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler Street, Somerville
More information at http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/science-by-the-pint/
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BostonTalks Happy Hour: Connected
Thursday, September 28
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM (EDT)
WGBH, 1 Guest Street, Boston
Cost: $11.54
Connect with WGBH, local leaders, stories, trends and each other at BostonTalks. This September, it’s all about coming together. Hear from three speakers who are doing just that with their careers.
Go behind the blue paint with Lyle Blaker of Blue Man Group, and hear how he connects with his audience without saying a word.
Matt Peterson of MIT studies how our brains make connections that allow us to know and understand others instantly through facial recognition.
Additional speakers to come.
Join Lyle, Matt and others for a smarter happy hour hosted by Edgar B. Herwick III from WGBH’s Curiosity Desk.
A Smarter Happy Hour
Connect with local experts in a variety of fields while enjoying the great company of your neighbors from Boston and beyond in this smarter happy hour. Each event combines short speaking programs, drinks and an opportunity for you to join the conversation.
Meet the host:
Edgar B. Herwick III hosts WGBH’s Curiosity Desk, where he digs a little deeper into topics in the news, explores the off-beat, and searches for answers to questions in the world around us. His radio features can be heard on 89.7 WGBH’s Morning Editionand All Things Considered, and his television features can be seen on WGBH’s Greater Boston.
You must be at least 21 with a valid ID to attend.
Limited seating will be available.
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Non-Violent Civil Disobedience (NVCD) and the Age of Antifa
Thursday, September 28
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
First Parish in Brookline, 382 Walnut Street, Brookline
Presented by Rev. Karlene Griffiths Sekou from BLM Boston and others
Please join us in a critical conversation regarding recent visibility of NVCD along with Antifa protests. From Charlottesville to Boston, peaceful protest strategies included alignment with the historical anti-fascism group known as Antifa.
We will discuss the following questions:
What is the legacy of Antifa?
What role does it play in the BLM Movement and beyond?
What role does it play in combating white supremacy?
How do we understand the spectrum of strategic resistance?
Join others in this courageous and critical conversation.
Help to debunk myths, deepen your own, and share in respectful conversation about this important topic.
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Climate Change along the Western Antarctic Peninsula
Thursday, September 28
7-9pm
Simons IMAX Theatre New England Aquarium, Aquarium Wharf, Boston
Scott Doney, Ph.D., Joe D. and Helen J. Kington Professor in Environmental Change, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia
The western Antarctic Peninsula is experiencing some of the most dramatic climate change on the planet and is a natural laboratory for studying how ocean ecosystems respond to climate. Rapid ocean-atmosphere warming, melting of coastal glaciers, and reductions in seasonal ice cover all echo throughout the marine food web from seawater chemistry, plankton, and krill to top predators, including penguins and marine mammals. Using the wealth of data from the Palmer Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) programs, the talk will highlight key lessons from field expeditions, autonomous robots, satellite remote sensing, and models regarding changing conditions in the Southern Ocean and Antarctic
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Friday, September 29
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Facets of a Bright Energy Future: A 360° Perspective
Friday, September 29
Curry Student Center, Northeastern University, Boston
3rd Annual Northeastern University Energy Conference 2017
More information at https://www.nuenergyconference.com
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BU Materials Day Workshop 2017- Integrating Metamaterials with Quantum Materials: A Design Paradigm for 21st Century Science & Technology
Friday, September 29,
8:15 am to 5:00 pm
Photonics Center, Room 906 8 St. Mary’s Street, Boston
RSVP required
More information at http://www.bu.edu/eng/departments/mse/bu-materials-day-workshop-2017/
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Impact Investing in Emerging Markets: Reaching its full potential
Date: Friday, September 29, 2017, 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Location: Harvard, 79 JFK Street, Perkins Room, Rubenstein Building 4th Floor (R-429), Cambridge
Speaker: Kusi Hornberger, Senior Project Manager, Dalberg Global Development Advisors
About the talk: The most recent GIIN Annual Impact Investor Survey reports that total assets under management (AUM) for impact investing reached US$114 billion, being roughly $36 billion dedicated exclusively to emerging markets. This represents massive growth over just two years when, in 2015, the market estimate was $60 billion. This growth, coupled with numerous reports and surveys showing millennials’ strong interest in aligning values with investments, suggests money and talent are pouring into the nascent field. Despite this rapid growth, key improvements are needed before this promising field can reach its full potential. In his talk, Kusi Hornberger will present his thoughts on eight of the most pressing issues and recommendations for improvement along the impact investment cycle for emerging markets – from goal setting to reporting results.
Kusi HornbergerAbout the Speaker: Kusi Hornberger is a Senior Project Manager in the Washington, DC office of Dalberg Global Development Advisors. Kusi has 10+ years of project management, investment and strategy experience working with a range of public, private, and non-profit clients, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, ECOM Agroindustrial Corp., World Bank Group, Starbucks, Experian and USAID.
Prior to joining Dalberg, Kusi was Vice President of Investment Research & Strategy at Global Partnerships where he oversaw the investment strategy and portfolio including analysis of investment opportunities in agriculture cooperatives, artisan retailers, cookstove and solar lamp manufacturers and distributors, private health clinics as well as integrated microfinance institutions across Central/South America and East Africa. He was also the in-house expert on agriculture finance, leading the investment appraisal and relationships for portfolio of investments in >40 rural and agriculture focused social enterprises across range of commodity value chains including coffee, cocoa, fresh vegetables and nuts. Further he was responsible for managing GP’s relationship with the Council for Smallholder Agriculture Finance (CSAF), served as an advisor to the Finance Alliance for Sustainable Trade (FAST) and Agros International and presented at numerous conferences (Cracking the Nut, FLII, SCAA, SOCAP, etc.) about GP’s approach to investing in agriculture value chains.
Kusi also has experience working as a management consultant, spending three years at Bain & Company based out of its Sao Paulo, Brazil office and serving a wide range of public, private and non-profit clients across South America including several leading agribusiness multinationals and foundations during his time there he authored a Bain Brief titled “The State of Impact Investing in Latin America” As well as working as an Investment Officer for six years with the International Finance Corporation where he spent three years based out of the Bogota, Colombia office and held lead the formation of the investment promotion agency Invest in Bogota as well as shift the strategy of Brazil’s investment and export promotion agency APEX-Brasil to a sector led approach. He also published numerous articles on private sector development and competitiveness including “Attracting FDI – How Much Does Investment Climate Matter?”. Finally, he started his career working with TechnoServe Inc. in East Africa where he was one of the early members of the coffee team working with Peets Coffee & Tea that helped transform the coffee sector in Rwanda and Tanzania. Kusi holds a Masters of Business Administration from INSEAD Business School in Singapore, a Master of Public Administration in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelors of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania. He is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and conversant in Swahili.
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Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
Friday, September 29
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, Pierce 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Discussion by David Ridley
Contact Name: Colin Pike-Thackray
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Medical Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Environment Conference
Friday, September 29
12:00PM TO 5:00PM
Harvard, Belfer Case Study Room, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
The Harvard community is invited to attend the conference “Medical Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Environment” (29-30 September 2017). Scholars will be considering ways the medical humanities can respond to the challenges of environmental change and uncertainty in order to engage more fully the ecology of health, disease, and nature. This conference is generously supported by the Ackerman Program of Medicine & Culture and Harvard University Asia Center.
Please note the different venues for each day.
Due to space restrictions, those interested in attending must register on this Google Form: https://goo.gl/forms/Inj6cDDbWxwIxVO63
Editorial Comment: This Google Form URL did not work for me.
Contact Name: Kathleen Ong
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Resilience in BU’s Climate Action Plan
Friday, September 29
12:45 pm to 1:45 pm
BU Medical School, 72 East Concord Street, (Building L), Room 210, Boston
Speaker: Anthony Janetos, Director and Frederick S. Pardee Professor, Professor of Earth and Environment, Boston University
Seminar Summary: The seminar will discuss how we have treated the concept of resilience in the recommendations of BU’s Climate Action Plan Task Force. It will link current and potential vulnerabilities to decisions that we have recommended that the University take.
Speaker Bio: Prof. Janetos has devoted his career to high-impact global change science and policy, earning international recognition for his scholarship and holding executive leadership positions at institutions including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, World Resources Institute, and the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment. He has written and spoken widely on the need to understand the scientific, environmental, economic, and policy linkages among the major global environmental issues, and he has served on several national and international study teams, including working as a co-chair of the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. In addition to his research interests in the interaction of land systems with human needs and climate change, he has been an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Lead Author and Coordinating Lead Author, and has served on multiple National Research Council Committees and Boards.
More information at http://www.bu.edu/sph/about/departments/environmental-health/ehseminars/fall-2017-seminar-schedule/
Contact Name Jean van Seventer
Phone 6176386493
Contact Email jvsevent@bu.edu
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Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century
Friday, September 29
3:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes KATHRYN SIKKINK—the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—for a discussion of her latest book, Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century.
About Evidence for Hope
Evidence for Hope makes the case that, yes, human rights work. Critics may counter that the movement is in serious jeopardy or even a questionable byproduct of Western imperialism. They point out that Guantánamo is still open, the Arab Spring protests have been crushed, and governments are cracking down on NGOs everywhere. But respected human rights expert Kathryn Sikkink draws on decades of research and fieldwork to provide a rigorous rebuttal to the pessimistic doubts about human rights laws and institutions. She demonstrates that change comes slowly and as the result of struggle, but in the long term, human rights movements have been vastly effective.
Attacks on the human rights movement’s credibility are based on the faulty premise that human rights ideas emerged in North America and Europe and were imposed on developing southern nations. Starting in the 1940s, Latin American leaders and activists were actually early advocates for the international protection of human rights. Sikkink shows that activists and scholars disagree about the efficacy of human rights because they use different yardsticks to measure progress. Comparing the present to the past, she shows that genocide and violence against civilians have declined over time, while access to healthcare and education has increased dramatically. Cognitive and news biases contribute to pervasive cynicism, but Sikkink’s investigation into past and current trends indicates that human rights is not in its twilight. Instead, this is a period of vibrant activism that has made impressive improvements in human well-being.
Exploring the strategies that have led to real humanitarian gains since the middle of the twentieth century, Evidence for Hope looks at how these essential advances can be supported and sustained for decades to come.
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The Long Now Evening - The future of Food (+optional dinner)
Friday, September 29
6:30 PM – 9:30 PM EDT
Le Laboratoire Cambridge, 650 East Kendall Street, Cambridge
Cost: $0 – $125
Come to Le Laboratoire (650 East Kendall Street) on Friday September 29 for a fascinating Long Now Evening! We will celebrate it with a conversation about the "Long Now" future of food, joined by members of the local Long Now Boston.
The evening begins with a conversation hosted by Nicola Twilley, co-host of Gastropod, and contributing writer at The New Yorker. Nicola will be joined by Pascal Rigo, founder of La Boulange and the micro-boulangerie movement in France, Geoffrey Von Maltzahn, Flagship partner and founder of Indigo, and John Lamppa of Incredible Foods. Danny Hillis and David Michalek will be with us to discuss The Long Now exhibition before and after the talk -- and for those interested in a Long Now Meal we have a special treat.
After the talk, we have 40 places ($125 per person) and a meal around fabulous Long Now wine and cocktails -- and the world's first veggie based hotdog wrapped in edible packaging of mustard and relish, The ArtScience Dog, served in a special teeny bun by ArtScience Award Winning Pastry Chef, Giselle Miller and a tasting menu created by ArtScience Chef de Cuisine, Carolina Curtin. Indulge in Long Now infused cocktails by world leading mixologist, Tenzin Samdo, and much more!Come experience the FUTURE OF FOOD!
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Saturday, September 30
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Medical Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Environment Conference
Saturday, September 30
9:00AM TO 2:30PM
Harvard, Yenching Common Room, 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
The Harvard community is invited to attend the conference “Medical Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Environment” (29-30 September 2017). Scholars will be considering ways the medical humanities can respond to the challenges of environmental change and uncertainty in order to engage more fully the ecology of health, disease, and nature. This conference is generously supported by the Ackerman Program of Medicine & Culture and Harvard University Asia Center.
Please note the different venues for each day.
Due to space restrictions, those interested in attending must register on this Google Form: https://goo.gl/forms/Inj6cDDbWxwIxVO63
Editorial Comment: This Google Form URL did not work for me.
Contact Name: Kathleen Ong
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Looking Back and Looking Forward: Writing to Defend Democracy
Saturday, September 30
9:30 AM – 3:30 PM EDT
Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building, 2300 Washington Street, Boston
WriteBoston and Teens in Print are eager to announce our fall youth conference: Looking Back & Looking Forward: Writing to Defend Democracy.
We are bringing topical experts together with curious and passionate teenagers to participate in student-led workshops, constructive open discussions and writing as a tool of empowerment. The day will consist of:
Student-led workshops on issues of immigration, hate crimes & journalism
Collaborative art projects to share your voice
Free food & prizes from community partners at our resource fair
The event will culminate in a powerful newspaper publication featuring the voices of Boston youth. We invite high school students across the city, as well as teachers, youth-focused organizations, and parents to come together to #writeyourtruth!
Find more details when you watch this video at https://youtu.be/Eu7lDagquwE and at our Facebook event page at https://www.facebook.com/events/104543676825701/
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Dismantling Racism Hackathon
Saturday, September 30, 2017
11:00 AM – 1:00 PM EDT
MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, East Campus, Cambridge
Come join us at MIT to hack a way at racism! Never been part of a hackathon, no worries you wont be breaking the law but you will be part of an amazing group curating resources to dismantle racism and white supremacy! We will gather in the East Campus in build E25 room 117 and pizza will be provided. Please bring your computer, a friend and the intrigue to search the corners of the internet. At the end of our time together, we are hoping to have a large collection of the best resources to help individuals and communities to do the work of dismantling racism all in one place!
Dismantling Racism Hackathon is collaboration between the Mission Institute, The Crossing, and MIT.
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Making Something From Nothing: Appropriate Technology as Intentionally Disruptive Responsibility
Saturday, September 30
12:00pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Samuel Tak Lee Building, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) and the Department of Urban Studies (DUSP) welcomes Visiting Artist and Penn State Professor B. Stephen Carpenter for 3 visits during this fall semester. Professor Carpenter teaches and researches art education, visual culture and curriculum theory. Combining art science and social practice, Professor Carpenter will demonstrate how to enhance sustainability through socially-engaged art. Each of his visits will culminate in a public workshop for the greater Boston community, with a special focus on K-12 education.
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Beantown Jazz Festival
Saturday, September 24
12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Columbus Avenue, west of Massachusetts Avenue, for six blocks to Burke Street, Boston
More information at https://www.berklee.edu/beantownjazz
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Monday, October 2
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PAOC Colloquium: Bess Ward (Princeton)
Monday, October 2
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923 , 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
Research in the Ward laboratory concerns the marine and global nitrogen cycle, using molecular biological investigations of marine bacteria and bacterial processes (especially nitrification and denitrification), and measuring the rates of N transformation processes using various isotope approaches. We have ongoing research in the following areas:
Nitrogen cycling (nitrification, denitrification, anammox, etc.) in several suboxic zones of the world ocean (Arabian Sea, Eastern Tropical North and South Pacific) and in Chesapeake Bay, Great Sippewissett Salt Marsh, etc.
Nitrogen assimilation by phytoplankton and functional diversity of eukaryotic phytoplankton in the world ocean
Diversity of functional guilds of bacteria involved in the nitrogen cycle of aquatic systems
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Archaeology Meets Earth-Science in Modern Human Origins Research in Africa
Monday, October 2
12:00PM
Harvard, Haller Hall (102), Geo Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
with Christian A. Tryon, Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University.
Abstract: Modern humans (Homo sapiens) first appeared in Africa, subsequently spreading across Africa and later to Eurasia, Australasia, and elsewhere during the Late Pleistocene. Understanding the evolutionary processes that led to the origins and dispersal of modern humans in Africa requires a multi-disciplinary approach, particularly to understand the complex relationships caused by a dynamic record of environmental and behavioral changes. I outline a series of long-term collaborative projects in East Africa at archaeological sites that focus on reconstructing ancient biomes and constructing high-resolution data archives to explore spatial and temporal changes in ancient landscapes, drawing on data from paleolimnology, geochronology, tephrostratigraphy, biogeochemistry, ecology, geography, and allied fields. The Late Pleistocene dispersal of modern humans from an East African source may have been largely facilitated by a series of environmental changes that altered connections between regions across the continent. [Background paper at https://eps.harvard.edu/files/eps/files/tryon_etal_2016_qi.pdf]
EPS Colloquium
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ImpactFest Food For Thought: Advancing Change Through Public Narrative
Monday, October 2
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EDT
Impact Hub Boston, 15th Floor, 50 Milk Street, Boston
Start off Impact Hub's week of social impact events at ImpactFest with an engaging "Food For Thought on Advancing Change through Public Narrative" with Abel Cano. We will discuss how to tell our own stories and better understand others to advance change through action while also exploring how to create unity from diversity. Food For Thoughts are casual brown bag lunch discussions around a particular social impact topic.
About Public Narrative
Public narrative is a leadership practice designed to empower individuals to accept the responsibility and uncertainty that accompanies positions of leadership, and for enabling others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty. Through narrative, we learn how to make choices in response to challenges of an uncertain world – as individuals, as communities and as nations. Responding to urgent challenges adaptively requires drawing on sources of hope, empathy and confidence.
Public narrative is the art of translating values into action. It is a discursive process through which individuals, communities, and nations learn to make choices, construct identity, and inspire action. Because it engages the 'head' and the 'heart,' narrative can instruct and inspire - teaching us not only why we should act, but moving us to act. Together, we will sharpen our capacity to engage with others of diverse views and perspectives in potentially transformative ways.
About the Speaker:
Abel Cano is Founder and CEO of The Arc of Change, a Boston-based organization dedicated to creating brave learning spaces that deepen transformational leadership for social change at non-profits and universities. With a background in community organizing, Abel teaches to empower a rising generation of social movement leaders.
Abel Cano served as the Boston Field Organizer and Statewide Constituency Lead for Massachusetts in President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Abel led the grassroots campaign to elect Boston’s first Asian-American woman to City Council At-Large as Field Director in 2013.
Abel is Co-Founder of the thriving non-profit arts and technology organization, EMW: Art | Technology | Community in Cambridge. Abel taught leadership courses with Professor Marshall Ganz at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government focused on Community Organizing and Public Narrative.
Abel Cano has trained leaders at the Harvard Kennedy School, Open Society Foundation, Harvard School of Public Health, National Health Service UK, Oxfam International, United Teen Empowerment Center, Brown University and 350.org among others.
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Vehicle Electrification in China: Preferences, Policy, and Technology Trajectories
Monday, October 2
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
John Helveston, Associate at the Institute for Sustainable Energy at Boston University. Lunch is provided.
Energy Policy Seminar
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
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Remotely Sensing Biodiversity and Ecosystem Processes
Monday, October 2
12:10PM
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Lecture Hall, 1300 Centre Street, Boston
Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Professor, University of Minnesota, will discuss her research on using remote sensing tools to link aboveground functional attributes of plants and their diversity to belowground processes as part of a large-scale effort to remotely sense biodiversity and ecosystem processes.
Arnold Arboretum Research Talk
Contact Name:
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Social Intelligence, Not Artificial Intelligence
Monday, October 2
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Please RSVP to sts@hks.harvard.edu by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
with Alex Pentland, MIT Media Lab
Sandwich lunch is provided. RSVP required.
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Urban Design: How Well Do Ideas Travel?
Monday, October 2
12:30pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 9-255, City Arena,9-255 105 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
The SPURS/Humphrey program is delighted to invite you to our fall seminar series: North American Planning Experience: Is It Relevant for the Developing World?
Our goal is to explore to what extent, and under what conditions, planning ideas generated from practice in the U.S. can travel to cities in the developing world and be implemented effectively. We’ll also consider whether planning ideas, practices and programs are traveling from the rest of the world back to the United States.
The third seminar is Monday, Oct 2, in City Arena, 12:30 to 2 pm, with lunch available at 12:15 pm: Urban Design: How Well Do Ideas Travel?, with Gary Hack and Brent Ryan, respondent.
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How Governments Mobilize Domestic Finance for Innovation - The Case of the Domestic Clean Energy Sector
Monday, October 2
12:30 – 2PM
Tufts, Cabot Intercultural Center,Cabot 703, The Fletcher School, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford
Government often plays a crucial and active role for funding innovative activity. Almost every major technical change in recent years on the world can trace most of its funding back to state funding. Financing is often a well-recognized barrier to the development of clean energy technologies. This research will explore how governments mobilize domestic finance for clean energy innovation based on four country cases, namely the United States, Germany, China, and India.
Event Contact Elayne Stecher
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Understanding Nature Holistically and Without Equations
Monday, October 2
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 1-190, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Professor George Sugihara
Since before the time of Aristotle and the natural philosophers, reductionism has played a foundational role in western scientific thought. The premise of reductionism is that systems can be broken down into constituent pieces and studied independently, then reassembled to understand the behavior of the system as a whole. It embodies the classical linear perspective.
This approach has been successful in developing basic physical laws and especially in engineering where linear analysis dominates and systems are purposefully designed that way. However, reductionism is not universally applicable for natural complex systems found in biology and elsewhere where behavior is driven, not by a few factors acting independently, but by complex interactions between many components acting together in time nonlinear dynamic systems.
Here we examine a minimalist paradigm, empirical dynamics, for studying non-linear systems and a method that can distinguish causality from correlation. It is a data-driven approach that uses time series information to study a system holistically by reconstructing its attractor-a geometric object that embodies the rules of a full set of equations for the system. Here the ideas are intuitive and will be illustrative of Aristotle and the natural philosophers and with examples from ecology, epidemiology and genetics.
CEE C.C. Mei Distinguished Speaker Series
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A Fireside Chat with Vincent Roche
Monday, October 2
5:00pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Join us for a fireside chat with Analog Devices, Inc. CEO Vincent Roche. Reception to follow immediately. This talk is open to the general public and is free of cost.
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Social Media: Individual and Societal Impacts
Monday, October 2
5:15pm – 6:45pm
Harvard, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge
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Conversation 1 of Symposium, “Made in Cambridge: What’s Happening in Kendall Square?"
Monday, October 2
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
Conversation 1: “Why Here?” Monday, October 2nd, 6-8pm; at the Cambridge Public Library Main Branch Auditorium
We'll be talking about the key elements to establishing the biotech industry in Cambridge. Our speakers will be answering questions like- Why here and not somewhere else? What does innovation mean to us? In hindsight could things have happened differently here?
Our moderator is Henrietta Davis, former Mayor of Cambridge.
Our speakers are Sam Lipson, Director of Environmental Health at Cambridge Public Health; Robin Wolfe Scheffler, Historian; and Dr. Phillip Sharp, Institute Professor, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.
Biographies:
Henrietta Davis is the former Mayor of Cambridge.
Sam Lipson is the Director of Environmental Health at Cambridge Public Health.
Robin Wolfe Scheffler is the Leo Marx Career Development Professor in the History and Culture of Science and Technology at the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. He studies the history of the biological and biomedical sciences in American society, and he currently focuses on the history of the biotechnology industry.
Dr. Phillip A. Sharp is an Institute Professor at MIT, and member of the Department of Biology and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. His research interests center on the molecular biology of gene expression relevant to cancer and the mechanisms of RNA splicing. Dr. Sharp is a co-founder of Biogen and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
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One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported
Monday, October 2
7:00 PM (Doors at 6:30 )
First Parish Church, 1446 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Cost: $5.00 - $27.25 (online only, book-included)
Harvard Book Store and the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School welcome Georgetown University professor and Washington Post contributor E. J. DIONNE, JR. for a discussion of his latest book, One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported—coauthored by Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann. Dionne will be joined in conversation by Harvard's MICHAEL SANDEL, author of Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? and What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.
in conversation with MICHAEL SANDEL
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Tuesday, October 3
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Common Goals, Uncommon Partners: Seeking Solutions to Reduce Methane Emissions with The Gas Leak Allies
Tuesday, October 3
9:00AM TO 12:00PM
MIT, Wong Auditorium, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
The Gas Leaks Allies unconventional, interdisciplinary coalition of activists, researchers, utility executives, municipal leaders, natural gas experts, inventors, and mothers is finding solutions for the gas-leaking pipelines buried in our neighborhoods. Join them on October 3rd to hear results and recommendations, see new technologies, and learn about their unique collaboration.
There is no cost to attend, but venue seating is limited.
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Gary Liu
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard.Malkin Penthouse, Littauer Building, 4th Floor, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Gary Liu is CEO of the South China Morning Post, an English-language media company covering China and Asia. Prior to joining SCMP, Liu was CEO of Digg, where he led the startup’s transformation from aggregator to news platform. Previously, he was head of Spotify Labs, where he managed emerging technologies and business strategies for Spotify’s global markets. Liu has also worked at AOL and Google, and has a B.A. in economics from Harvard College.
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Turbulence in the atmospheric and oceanic boundary layers
Tuesday, October 3
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915/923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
Stephen Belcher is the Met Office Chief Scientist and provides leadership of our scientific research and development.
Professor Belcher obtained his PhD in fluid dynamics from the University of Cambridge in 1990 and has subsequently published over 100 peer-reviewed papers on the fluid dynamics of atmospheric and oceanic turbulence. Having completed his PhD he became a research fellow at Stanford and Cambridge Universities. In 1994 he moved to the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading, where he served as Head of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences between 2007 and 2010. In 2010 he became the Joint Met Office Chair in Weather Systems. This role gave him a taster of working closely with the Met Office, and in 2012 he joined the Met Office as Director of the Met Office Hadley Centre.
Stephen led the evolution of the Met Office Hadley Centre to focus on climate science and services: motivated by the need to provide governments, industry and society with actionable advice, i.e. ‘climate services’. He was a driving force behind the initiation of the Newton Fund Climate Science for Service Partnership China (CSSP China), in which scientists from both China and the UK are now working together to develop fundamental climate science and climate services.
Stephen is a member of the Government Chief Scientific Advisor’s network.
Stephen is a member of the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme.
In 2002, Stephen received the Rosenstiel Award for Oceanography for outstanding research in oceanographic science.
In 2011 he presented the Scruton Lecture at the Institution of Civil Engineers.
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Design Discussion on Urbanization: Clare Lyster and Mason White
Tuesday, October 3
12:00PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, Gund 112, Gund Hall, GSD, 42-48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Clare Lyster and Mason White join Charles Waldheim, Daniel Ibañez, and others to discuss the recently released volume, Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan.
Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan (Ibañez, Lyster, Waldheim, and White, eds.) describes the conditions for urbanization across the Great Lakes region. It assembles a multi-layered, empirical description of urbanization processes within the drainage basins of the five Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River. This thick description encompasses a range of representational forms including maps, plans, diagrams, timelines, and photographs, as well as speculative design research projects and critical texts. Postponing diagnosis, let alone treatment of these conditions, Third Coast Atlas aspires to simply describe. It proposes a new geographic gestalt for urban analysis. Superimposed upon the North American continent, and with easily recognizable yet divergent political and geological borders, this megaregion traverses portions of eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces, as well as the world’s largest collection of surficial fresh water. Third Coast Atlas characterizes the littoral edge as a distinct field of urbanization, and constructs a reading of the region both specific and speculative.
In this event, Lyster and White will present a brief lecture, followed by a panel discussion with Pierre Bélanger, Rosetta Elkin, Daniel Ibañez, and Rania Ghosn. Charles Waldheim will host and moderate the discussion.
Free and open to the public.
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Community Choice Energy - Boston City Council Hearing
Tuesday, October 3
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT
Boston City Hall, 1 City Hall Square, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/community-choice-energy-boston-city-council-hearing-tickets-37344645841
Boston City Council is holding hearings to discuss Community Choice Energy (CCE) to increase renewable energy, add local jobs, clean up our air, and stabilize prices.
We'll be gathering in the council hearing hall to show our support CCE and let Boston city government know it's important.
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Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online
Tuesday, October 3
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Northeastern, 346 Curry Student Center, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Visiting Speaker Alice Marwick, UNC Chapel Hill
Alice E. Marwick is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she researches the social, political, and cultural implications of popular social media technologies. Her current book project examines how the networked nature of online privacy disproportionately impacts marginalized individuals in terms of gender, race, and socio-economic status. Marwick is also an Advisor and Research Affiliate on the Media Manipulation project at the Data & Society Research Institute, which studies far-right online subcultures and their use of social media to spread misinformation. Her first book, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity and Branding in the Social Media Age (Yale 2013), draws from ethnographic fieldwork in the San Francisco tech scene to examine how people seek social status through attention and visibility online. Marwick was formerly Director of the McGannon Communication Research Center and Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, and a postdoctoral researcher in the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research New England. She writes for popular publications such as The New York Times, The New York Review of Books and The Guardian in addition to academic journals including New Media and Society, Public Culture, Social Media & Society, the International Journal of Communication and Television & New Media, among others. Her most recent article on the ethics of the celebrity nude photo leaks appears in Ethics and Information Technology. Alice has a PhD from the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University.
This event is free and open to the public, but if you are not a member of the Northeastern community, please email Sarah Connell (sa.connell[at]northeastern[dot]edu) to register.
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Starr Forum: Dealing with North Korea
Tuesday, October 3
4:30pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 34-101, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
MIT experts consider the options
Speakers
Taylor Fravel, is associate professor of political science, member of the Security Studies Program at MIT, and acting director of the MIT Center for International Studies. His work focuses on international security, China, and East Asia.
Vipin Narang, is associate professor of political science at MIT and a member of the Security Studies Program at MIT. His work focuses on nuclear proliferation and South Asian security.
Jim Walsh, is senior research associate at the Security Studies Program at MIT. His work focuses on international security and nuclear weapons.
Co-sponsors: MIT Center for International Studies and MIT Security Studies Program (SSP)
Free & open to the public | Refreshments served
Can't attend in person? Watch it on Facebook live or on-demand on YouTube.
For more information or accessibility accommodations please contact starrforum@mit.edu.
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Ikebana: Flower arrangement demo with Master Akihiro Nishi
Tuesday, October 3,
5:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building 10-105 Bush Room, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Come and see the Master Akihiro Nishi demonstrate the Ohara School style of Ikebana--flower arrangement. Twenty lucky MIT students/affiliates will be selected to try their skills at Ikebana Flower Arrange after the demonstration by Professor Nishi.
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Design for Good - Boston Book Launch
Tuesday, October 3
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Humanscale, 34 Farnsworth Street, 5th Floor, Boston
Join Humanscale + Bernhardt Design for the Boston launch of Design for Good: A New Era of Architecture for Everyone—author John Cary’s new book is focused on the dignifying power of design.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Design for Good is premised on the belief that everyone deserves good design. This isn’t just another book for and about designers; it’s a book about the lives we lead, inextricably shaped by the spaces and places we inhabit.
With a foreword by Melinda Gates, the book showcases 20 diverse building projects from across the country and around the world. Brought to life with stunning photography, each project narrative is based on extensive interviews with clients, users, and designers, including Boston-based MASS Design Group.
Published by Island Press and designed by Pentagram, each attendee will receive a complimentary copy of the book, thanks to the generosity of Bernhardt Design and Humanscale.
EVENING SCHEDULE
5:30-6:30pm: Welcome and drinks
6:30-7pm: Author remarks
7-8:30pm: Book signing and reception
ABOUT THE HOSTS
Humanscale believes that the best designs are based on purpose and function. Simplicity and ease of use are at the heart of functionality; a product's form should flow from its function, resulting in products that will feel and look as current and relevant in 20 years as they do today. Humanscale believes everything the company creates—from its factories to its products—must be self-sustaining and make a positive contribution.
Bernhardt Design was founded in 1980 by the 128-year-old Bernhardt Furniture Company and continues to be a leader and innovator in furniture design and production. During the past 15 years, President Jerry Helling has assembled an extraordinary creative team that has positioned Bernhardt Design as one of the premier international design companies with a focus on supporting future generations of designers.
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The Future of Happiness: How Communication Technologies Will Change Our World—Or Not
Tuesday, October 3
6:00pm
Harvard, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Laura Kubzansky, Lee Kum Kee Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences; Co-Director, Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Jukka-Pekka Onnela, Associate Professor of Biostatistics, Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Kasisomayajula “Vish” Viswanath, Lee Kum Kee Professor of Health Communication; Co-Director, Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Jonathan L. Zittrain, George Bemis Professor of International Law, John F. Kennedy School of Government; Professor, Computer Science, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Vice Dean, Library and Information Resources, Harvard Law School; Faculty Co-Director, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University
What impact are information and communication technologies such as the Internet and social media having on our health, politics, and culture? While there is considerable controversy about this topic, informed analysis and empirical evidence to address it are lacking. In this panel discussion, an interdisciplinary group of experts and thinkers from across Harvard University will debate the impact of communication technologies on health, happiness, and well-being and discuss future implications for policy, practice, and culture.
Panel Discussion. Free and open to the public.
Co-sponsored by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology
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Empathy for Conflict Resolution
Tuesday, October 3
6:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT Museum, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join MIT professor Ceasar McDowell in a salon-style conversation on interpersonal conflicts, including how empathy can be used to overcome tribalism, and creating human connections across lines of ideological division.
Free. No pre-registration necessary.
This program is offered in conjunction with The Enemy, on view October 5, 2017.
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"The Imagination Paradox: Participation or Performance of Visioning the City”
WHEN Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South Building, 1730 Cambridge Street, Room S250, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Humanities, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Weatherhead Center for International Affairs/Graduate-Student Papers in Cultural Politics
SPEAKER(S) Katarzyna Balug, PhD Student, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University.
CONTACT INFO Professor Panagiotis Roilos
DETAILS Models of urban planning after authoritarian modernism raise the question of democratic control over the city and the possibility of imagining as a collective act. The paper examines systemic hindrances to free-thinking, and thus free-acting, embedded in urban communities. Through the case study of recent work by the art collective Department of Play, it illustrates the rationale for engaging public imagination specifically via play as world-building; and it posits the potential implications and limits of such activity as an intervention into city planning processes. Interested in liminal spaces between territory, language and social affiliation, the collective advances an agenda of productive dissent in public space through play and performance. Department of Play begins from the position that we can only plan that which we imagine, and thus exists as an effort to free the public imagination from modes of thinking dictated by the capitalist context.
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Sustainability & Careers - Boston Area Sustainability Group Meeting
Tuesday, October 3
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Hynes Convention Center, Room 202, Boston
Cost: $8 – $12
For our October 3rd event, we invite you to a very special evening with BASG as we dive head first into a topic that is consistently near and dear to many who have attended BASG events over the years – how to bring sustainability into your work, career and life.
As the backdrop for this event, we are both excited and honored to be able to collaborate with SUSTAINATOPIA during its conference here in Boston October 1-4 at the Hynes Convention Center. This is a unique opportunity to take BASG out of the CIC Venture Cafe and into a different sustainability setting. Attendees will have the chance to meet and to network with a national audience of people, who share an interest and concern for a broad spectrum of sustainability topics.
Our format for the evening will mix perspectives from the three BASG co-organizers about what they have learned in their work, careers and lives with the experiences and successes of those in the room. What motivates and inspires each of us to do the work we do, including engaging with BASG? One thing we three share in common is the desire to see others achieve their professional and personal goals be it a job promotion, career transition, or just a way to increase individual connectivity to sustainability.
Hosting this event within the SUSTAINATOPIA conference means some very special extras for BASG goers this month.
Option to register for the BASG event only: $8 Early Bird, $10 Student/Non-Profit, and $12 Regular
Complimentary drink ticket for post event networking with SUSTAINATOPIA and BASG attendees
Special 30% discount to all BASG members to attend the full SUSTAINATOPIA conference. Use discount code BASG30 when registering here. This discount applies to all ticket levels, but is not applicable in combination with other existing discounts.
We hope you'll join us for this unique evening. We can't wait to hear more about your sustainability aspirations! - Carol, Holly, and Tilly
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Swiss Technologies Review with CSEM
Tuesday, October 3
6:30 pm to 9:00 pm
swissnexBoston, 420 Broadway, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.swissnexboston.org/event/swiss-technologies-review-with-csem/#sthash.P3YAr3mM.dpbs
First innovation event of the season – Meet executives and discover Swiss-made technologies from the CSEM, Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology : microsystems, sensors, printed electronics, photovoltaics, vision and wearable technologies, and many more.
Bridging with Switzerland’s leading edge innovation center
Do you work in medtech, healthcare, energy, or aerospace?
CSEM (Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology) is fostering collaborations in North America, specifically in these fields. Come meet some executives, learn about recent projects, and discover possible collaborative opportunities!
For our first innovation event of the season, swissnex Boston welcomes CSEM to promote and demonstrate some of its Swiss-made technologies. CSEM has an international reputation for the development of innovative technology platforms in microsystems, systems engineering, ultra-low-power integrated systems and surface technologies.
PROGRAM
Introduction of CSEM and highlight of some of its technologies (focus on photovoltaics, MEMS, medtech)
Presentation on the reliability of “Swiss-made”
Devices demo
Networking reception
SPEAKERS
Dr. Bahaa Roustom, Business Development Senior Manager at CSEM
Michele Palmieri, Vice President and Division Head of Micro&Nano Systems at CSEM
Jens Krauss, Vice President of Systems at CSEM
Dr. Vincent Linder, CTO at OPKO Diagnostics
Brittany McDonough, Director of Global Partnerships at MassChallenge
Hallie Moran, Director of Global Operations at MassChallenge
Program starts at 6:30 ; doors open at 6:00.
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DREAM BIG: Democracy Matters with author/historian Timothy Snyder
Tuesday, October 3
7:30 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
This special event will feature guest speaker Timothy Snyder, Levin Professor of History, Yale University and author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century and Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. A leading American historian and public intellectual, Professor Snyder advocates for active citizen participation as an essential safe guard for democracy.
Maria McCauley, Director of the Cambridge Public Library, will provide opening remarks for the evening.
Callie Crossley, Host/Executive Editor of WGBH Radio’s “Under the Radar” will guide the community discussion that will follow Snyder’s talk.
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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, October 4 - Saturday, October 7
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Draper Labs’ Engineering Possibilities 2017
Wednesday, October 4 - Saturday, October 7
9 AM - 4 PM
Draper Atrium, 555 Technology Square, Cambridge
Draper’s annual technology showcase offers attendees a look at the bold solutions our diverse team of engineers and scientists has developed to take on the world’s greatest challenges, from space travel to cancer. We invite you to explore interactive demonstrations and speak with experts at the vanguard of technology. Rethink what’s possible and realize that the future is closer than you thought.
More information at http://www.draper.com/ep17
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Wednesday, October 4
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Revisiting Hiroshima in Iran: What Americans Really Think about Using Nuclear Weapons and Killing Noncombatants
WHEN Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017, 10 – 11:30 a.m.
WHERE Harvard, Littauer Building, Fainsod Room, Littauer-324, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Scott D. Sagan
DETAILS Many scholars and political figures have cited the decline in American public opinion support for the dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945 as evidence that there is a widespread "nuclear taboo" or "noncombatant immunity norm." New survey experiments, however, demonstrate that a large majority of the U.S. public approves of the use of nuclear weapons today against Iran today in conditions that resemble the strategic situation the U.S. faced in 1945. These findings highlight the limited extent to which the U.S. public has accepted the principles of just war doctrine and suggest that the public is unlikely to be a serious constraint on any president contemplating the use of nuclear weapons in the crucible of war.
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Houghton Lecture: Stephen Belcher (Met Office)
Wednesday, October 4
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915/923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
Stephen Belcher is the Met Office Chief Scientist and provides leadership of our scientific research and development.
Professor Belcher obtained his PhD in fluid dynamics from the University of Cambridge in 1990 and has subsequently published over 100 peer-reviewed papers on the fluid dynamics of atmospheric and oceanic turbulence. Having completed his PhD he became a research fellow at Stanford and Cambridge Universities. In 1994 he moved to the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading, where he served as Head of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences between 2007 and 2010. In 2010 he became the Joint Met Office Chair in Weather Systems. This role gave him a taster of working closely with the Met Office, and in 2012 he joined the Met Office as Director of the Met Office Hadley Centre.
Stephen led the evolution of the Met Office Hadley Centre to focus on climate science and services: motivated by the need to provide governments, industry and society with actionable advice, i.e. ‘climate services’. He was a driving force behind the initiation of the Newton Fund Climate Science for Service Partnership China (CSSP China), in which scientists from both China and the UK are now working together to develop fundamental climate science and climate services.
Stephen is a member of the Government Chief Scientific Advisor’s network.
Stephen is a member of the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme.
In 2002, Stephen received the Rosenstiel Award for Oceanography for outstanding research in oceanographic science.
In 2011 he presented the Scruton Lecture at the Institution of Civil Engineers.
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Leadership in Effectively Communicating for Causes or Issues
WHEN Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Online at hsph.me/HeyeFinney or in The Leadership Studio, 10th floor Kresge Building
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Voices in Leadership @ HSPH
SPEAKER(S) Karen Finney, Senior Advisor and Senior Spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and Douglas Heye, CNN Political Commentator and former Deputy Chief of Staff of Communications for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor
COST free
CONTACT INFO Alison Barron - abarron@hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS Karen Finney
Most recently Karen Finney was a Senior Advisor and Senior Spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She was also the Communications Director for Vice Presidential nominee, Senator Tim Kaine. Karen has a wide range of experience in media, politics and communications strategy, including hosting her own television show on MSNBC, “Disrupt with Karen Finney,” and serving as Communications Director at the Democratic National Committee. Finney also worked to improve public education working as Chief of Staff to the Chairman, CEO and President of Scholastic Inc. and Communications Director at the New York Board of Education.
Douglas Heye
A veteran of politics since 1990, Douglas Heye has served in leading communications positions in the House of Representatives, United States Senate, the Republican National Committee, as well as serving in the George W. Bush Administration. He is currently a CNN Political Commentator and contributor to the Wall Street Journal, where he provides analysis on domestic and international political events.
Heye has garnered on the record bi-partisan praise for his team-building, communications and strategic planning abilities. Roll Call named Heye one of their “Fabulous 50,” noting Heye’s ability to “set the tone and frame the debate” as someone “in the room when decisions are made” in the Capitol. He has been called a “pro’s pro” in POLITICO by his counterpart at the Democratic National Committee for his handling of what CNN labeled “one of the most demanding jobs in Washington.” Of his television appearances, POLITICO remarked, “when the red camera light turns on, Heye doesn’t disappoint.” In the fall of 2015, Heye served as a Resident Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics.
Please join us for this exciting talk!
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America's Next War and How to Prevent It
Wednesday, October 4,
12:00pm to 1:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496 Pye Room, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
The United States needs to do a better job at "looking and acting ahead" to shape an increasingly turbulent world and lessen the risk of it being drawn into new and potentially costly military commitments that over time drain its power and weaken its resolve to play global leadership role. In contrast to most prescriptoions that typically call on the United States to do either more or less militarily to defend its interests around the world -- what can be broadly termed supply-side approaches -- a comprehensive preventive strategy is proposed to reduce the demand for U.S. power over the long, medium, and short term.
Breif Bio
Paul B. Stares is the General John W. Vessey senior fellow for conflict prevention and director of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Prior to joining CFR, Dr. Stares was the vice president and director of the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the United States Institute of Peace. He worked as an associate director and senior research scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation from 2000 to 2002 and was a senior research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs and then director of studies at the Japan Center for International Exchange from 1996 to 2000. From 1984 to 1996, he was a research associate and later a senior fellow in the foreign policy studies program at the Brookings Institution. He has also been a NATO fellow and a scholar-in-residence at the MacArthur Foundation's Moscow office. He has a BA from North Staffordshire Polytechnic and received both his MA and PhD from Lancaster University.
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An Unfinished Conversation with Lee Mun Wah
Wednesday, October 4
12:00-1:30 PM
MIT, Building W20: Stratton Student Center, La Sala de Puerto Rico (W20-202), 84 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
What Stands Between Us (Open to public). Lunch will be served.
Someone once said that westerners are very good at honoring diversity, but not very good at practicing it. If we are ever going to learn about someone who is different from ourselves, we are going to have to leave the comfort of our familiar world and begin a relationship, not just by talking about ourselves, but by truly wanting to make a connection through honesty, curiosity and our willingness to be open to new ideas and relationships. That kind of relationship will require sharing stories, listening with a desire to learn, being moved, and wanting to establish a friendship of mutual understanding and respect. The world is not a plane flight away. It has always been close at hand. We can never become a community until we have first learned about those who are next to us, our next door neighbors, and those we have been taught to be afraid of. What we are talking about is breaking down the walls we have created out of fear and truly desiring to confront what stands between us.
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Planning with Robots: How Will Artificial Intelligence Impact Cities and Urban Labor Markets?
Wednesday, October 4
12:30pm to 2:30am
MIT, Building 9-255, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Part of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning's Planning Ideas that Matter: Urban Science: Regression to Technocracy or Pathway to Progressive Planning?
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Electronics for All
Wednesday, October 4
2:00pm — 3:00pm
MIT Media Lab, E15 - Bartos (lower level E15), 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
We explore new electronic applications to augment the quality of life. To do so, we are redesigning the state-of-the-art electronics to redefine their purpose to reconfigure life. By performing heterogeneous integration of traditional thin film and emerging materials, advanced CMOS technology and low-cost additive manufacturing processes, we explore, develop, study and optimize physically flexible, stretchable and reconfigurable high performance, multi-functional, energy efficient interactive miniaturized CMOS based electronic systems. Three specific kind of electronics we are interested in:
Biologically Aggravated Smart Electronics (BASE): Using CMOS technology, we are addressing basic human needs including clean air, quality food and water, and energy. Recently we have shown compliant sensory system for aqua environment and marine species; compliant transient sensory system for large area plant monitoring; CMOS technology enabled and 3D printed microbial fuel cells with enhanced performance for water purification and power generation; sustainable energy harvesters and bio safe energy storage.
Accessible Personalized Advanced CMOS Healthcare Electronics (APACHE): We are exploring wide range of affordable wearable and implantable CMOS electronic technologies which are multi-functional, low-power, seamlessly communicable, reliable, and physically compliant for more intimate contact with asymmetric soft surfaces of skins of many biological living beings.
Compliant Ocular Responsive Electronics (CORE): Here we explore integration strategies to interface with brain to enhance our understanding of brain activities and then to use the learning for developing compliant responsive electronics to enable enhanced artificial intelligence.
In my talk, I will be sharing my vision about future of electronics using some technologies which have been translated based on our lab’s work.
Speaker bio
Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Hussain (PhD, ECE, UT Austin, Dec 2005), before joining KAUST was Program Manager in SEMATECH, Austin. His program was funded by DARPA NEMS, CERA and STEEP programs. A regular panelist of US NSF grants reviewing committees, Dr. Hussain is the Fellow of American Physical Society (APS), Institute of Physics, UK and Institute of Nanotechnology, UK, IEEE Electron Devices Society Distinguished Lecturer, Editor-in-Chief of Applied Nanoscience (Springer-Nature), Editor of IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, and an IEEE Senior Member. He has authored 250+ research papers, 50+ issued and pending US patents. His students are serving as faculty and researchers in MIT Media Lab, UC Berkeley, Harvard, UCLA, Yale, Purdue, TSMC, KACST, KFUPM, KAU, and DOW Chemicals. Scientific American has listed his research as one of the Top 10 World Changing Ideas of 2014. Applied Physics Letters selected his paper as one of the Top Feature Articles of 2015. He and his students have received 40 research awards including IEEE Outstanding Individual Achievement Award 2016, Outstanding Young Texas Exes Award 2015 DOW Chemical Sustainability Challenge Award 2012, etc. His research has been highlighted extensively in international media like in Washington Post, Wall Street Journal (WSJ), IEEE Spectrum, etc.
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China’s Anthropogenic Methane Emissions: A Review of Current Bottom-Up Inventories
Wednesday, October 4
3:30PM
Harvard, Pierce 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Zhang Bo, Visiting Scholar, Harvard-China Project; Associate Professor, State Key Laboratory of Coal Resources and Safe Mining, China University of Mining & Technology (Beijing)
Sponsored by China Project, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
China Project Research Seminar
Contact Name: Tiffany Chan
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Geometric Deep Learning
Wednesday, October 4
4:00 pm
Radcliffe, Sheerr Room, Fay House, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
Lecture by Michael Bronstein RI '18
Free and open to the public.
At Radcliffe, Michael Bronstein is working on developing formulations of deep learning for non-Euclidean structured data such as graphs and manifolds, which are becoming increasingly important in a variety of fields including computer vision, sensor networks, biomedicine, genomics, and computational social sciences. He hopes that new geometric deep learning paradigms will help achieve quantitatively and qualitatively better results in these fields.
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Navigating Market-Based Environmental Regulation: Lessons from the U.S. Acid Rain Program
Wednesday, October 4
4:15PM TO 5:30PM
Harvard, Littauer Building, Room L-382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Cuicui Chen, Harvard University
Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy
Co-hosted by HKS professors Robert Stavins and Martin Weitzman. Support from Enel Endowment for Environmental Economics and the Department of Economics is gratefully acknowledged.
Contact Name: Bryan Galcik
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Forecasting and Modeling in the Energy Arena (Oil, Gas, Wind, Solar)
Wednesday, October 4
5:30 PM to 7:00 PM
Quantrix/IDBS Office, 285 Summer Street, 5th Floor, Boston
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Spiritual Blackout, Imperial Meltdown, Prophetic Fightback
Wednesday, October 4
5:30 – 7 P.M. EDT
Speaker: Cornel R. West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy, Harvard Divinity School
Introduction: Gretchen Brion-Meisels, Ed.M.'11, Ed.D.'13, lecturer on education, HGSE
Don't miss dynamic speaker Cornel West, a professor at the Harvard Divinity School and in the Harvard Department of African and African American Studies.
More information at https://www.gse.harvard.edu/calendar?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D124589690
PLEASE NOTE: Seating for this forum will be available on a first come, first seated basis. Askwith Hall is expected to fill up quickly and we encourage participants to arrive early in order to obtain a seat. Seats may not be saved for those pending arrival.
The queue for Askwith Hall seating will start at 4 p.m. Out of respect for the academic and classroom environment, we request that you do not arrive prior to 4 p.m. Doors will open at 4:30 p.m. Additional seating will be available in satellite spaces on campus once Askwith Hall fills to capacity.
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The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
Wednesday, October 4
6:00 PM (Doors at 5:30)
Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
Cost: $5.00 - $28.75 (online only, book-included)
Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome award-winning journalist MASHA GESSEN—author of The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin and The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy—for a discussion of her latest book, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.
in conversation with ALEXANDRA VACROUX
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Scaling the Universe
Wednesday, October 4
6:00pm to 7:30pm
Harvard, Science Center Lecture Hall C, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Free Public Lecture and Book Signing
Dava Sobel, Writer; Former Science Reporter, The New York Times
In the 1880s, physicist and astronomer Edward Pickering invented a new system to photograph the sky that revolutionized our understanding of stars. His achievements in science relied on the work of more than 80 women–known as the Harvard Observatory “computers”–who analyzed and catalogued data from thousands of photographs. Dava Sobel will discuss the women’s significant contributions to astronomy as well as Pickering’s visionary initiative to establish an observatory in Peru that expanded scientists’ notions of scale and space.
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Movies That Matter: "Soundtrack of a Revolution"
Wednesday, October 4
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Impact Hub Boston, 50 Milk Street, 20th Floor, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/movies-that-matter-soundtrack-of-a-revolution-tickets-37668175527
Please join us for the first in a series of Movies That Matter at Impact Hub Boston. We'll be screening our first film in this series as part of our week of events at ImpactFest; come to watch Soundtrack of a Revolution, a documentary featuring the powerful music from the American Civil Rights movement. This film testifies to the indispensable role that songs of rebellion and hope played in helping activists fight against brutality and injustice.
Film will start promptly at 6:10pm. We will start receiving people at 5:45pm.
Discussion will follow the film viewing. Popcorn provided. Other movie snacks welcomed.
This event is a part of ImpactFest, our first week-long celebration of our community’s impact, of the strength of our social impact ecosystem in Boston, and of our fourth birthday at Impact Hub Boston. Learn from current members, Impact Hub alum, and other local social entrepreneurs about their work on pressing social and environmental issues and lessons from their entrepreneurial journeys. Contribute your skills to projects making a better Boston at Open Project Night. Discuss pivotal cultural issues of our times and the roles we have in resolving them. Celebrate our fourth birthday as a community and home for social impact in Boston, and help imagine the local issues we might work together to tackle into the future. Build your network into a community.
Join us: October 1-6, 2017. See the full calendar of ImpactFest events at https://impacthubboston.net/impactfest/
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Natural Defense: Enlisting Bugs and Germs to Protect Our Food and Health
WHEN Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017, 7 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Arnold Arboretum
SPEAKER(S) Emily Monosson, Ph.D., Environmental Toxicologist, Writer, and Adjunct Professor, Department of Environmental Conservation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
COST $5, free for students and Arnold Arboretum members
TICKET WEB LINK https://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/Info.aspx?EventID=1
CONTACT INFO adulted@arnarb.harvard.edu or 617-384-5277
DETAILS For more than a century, we have relied on chemical cures to keep our bodies free from disease and our farms free from bugs and weeds. We rarely consider human and agricultural health together, but both are based on the same ecology, and both are being threatened by organisms that have evolved to resist our antibiotics and pesticides. Fortunately, scientists are finding new solutions that work with, rather than against, nature. Emily Monosson will speak about some of science’s most innovative strategies and the growing understanding of how to employ ecology for our own protection. Natural Defense, Monosson’s newest book, will be available for purchase and signing.
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Tamed and Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal Kind
Wednesday, October 4
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
Harvard Book Store welcomes animal experts and renowned authors SY MONTGOMERY and ELIZABETH MARSHALL THOMAS for a discussion of their book, Tamed and Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal Kind. The authors will be joined in conversation by WBUR's VICKI CONSTANTINE CROKE, author of the book's foreward.
About Tamed and Untamed
A collection of essays penned by two of the world's most celebrated animal writers, Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, Tamed and Untamed explores the minds, lives, and mysteries of animals as diverse as snails, house cats, hawks, sharks, dogs, lions, and even octopuses.
Drawing on stories of animals both wild and domestic, the two authors, also best friends, created this book to put humans back into the animal world. The more we learn about what other animals think and do, they explain, the more we understand ourselves as animals, too. Writes Montgomery, “The list of attributes once thought to be unique to our species―from using tools to waging war―is not only rapidly shrinking, but starting to sound less and less impressive when we compare them with other animals’ powers.”
With humor, empathy, and introspection, Montgomery and Thomas look into the lives of all kinds of creatures―from man’s best friend to the great white shark―and examine the ways we connect with our fellow species. Both authors have devoted their lives to sharing the animal kingdom’s magic with others, and their combined wisdom is an indispensable contribution to the field of animal literature.
The book contains a foreword by Vicki Constantine Croke, author of the bestseller Elephant Company.
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Facilitating Productive Dialogue about Climate Change
Wednesday, October 4
7-9pm
Simons IMAX Theatre New England Aquarium, Aquarium Wharf, Boston
William Spitzer, Ph.D., Vice President, Programs, Exhibits, and Planning, New England Aquarium
We can all learn to start positive conversations about climate change. Educators and professional scientists affiliated with aquariums, zoos, and other museums from across the country are learning and helping to model the way with public audiences. We’ll share some key insights that you can use from social and cognitive sciences that are proving to be useful in shaping engaging, solutions-focused conversations.
Dr. William Spitzer, Ph.D., Vice President, Programs, Exhibits, and Planning at the New England Aquarium, will briefly review the history and evaluation that illustrates the positive impacts of the National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation (NNOCCI), a project led by New England Aquarium along with an interdisciplinary team of colleagues from several partner organizations. Dr. Spitzer will moderate a panel discussion with three educators from across the U.S. who participated in NNOCCI training programs. Panelists will share reflections from their experiences to illustrate how lessons about Strategic Framing have influenced their climate change communications. The program will offer some specific ideas as well as inspiration for people interested in talking about climate change in productive ways.
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Politics and Prejudice: How diversity shapes scientific progress
Wednesday, October 4
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Harvard Medical School, Armenise Auditorium, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston
More information at http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/seminar-series/
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Thursday, October 5
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Boston TechBreakfast: Robilis, DiabetIQ, JigTime, Plan Fate
Thursday, October 5
8:00 AM
Red Thread, 101 Seaport Boulevard, Boston
Interact with your peers in a monthly morning breakfast meetup. At this monthly breakfast get-together techies, developers, designers, and entrepreneurs share learn from their peers through show and tell / show-case style presentations.
And yes, this is free! Thank our sponsors when you see them :)
Agenda for Boston TechBreakfast:
8:00 - 8:15 - Get yer Food & Coffee and chit-chat
8:15 - 8:20 - Introductions, Sponsors, Announcements
8:20 - ~9:30 - Showcases and Shout-Outs!
Robilis: StandX - Simon Hong
DiabetIQ - Patrick Richardson
JigTime: - Cayley Bell
Plan Fate - Neha Singh
~9:30 - end - Final "Shout Outs" & Last Words Boston
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2017 MIT Startup Workshop - Robotics, Drones and Sensor Tech
Thursday, October 5
8:30am - 11:30am
MIT/ILP, Building E90-1200, 1 Main Street, Cambridge
What are the killers app for robotics, drones and sensors? Which industries are ripe for transformation, for disruption? How will robots and humans work together to create the most value? What role will AI play in creating autonomous robots? What about government regulation of drones and robotics? What are the unexplored areas/territories when it comes to robotics, drones and sensors? Where might we have the biggest positive impact for the world?
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Ten points of hope for progress on climate change
Thursday, October 5
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Kate Troll, author and activist
Author and activist Kate Troll will share her stories, insights, and experience in dealing with the political difficulties of advancing conservation initiatives in a state dominated by extractive resource industries. In her new book “The Great Unconformity: Reflections on Hope in an Imperiled World,” Ms. Troll uses the power of adventure storytelling to convey key policy insights and ‘hope spots’ in dealing with the challenges of sustainability and climate change. To inspire and empower others, her talk highlights ten points of hope for progress on climate change; leading to a robust discussion of the most practical ways to make a difference both personally and professionally.
Kate Troll, a long-time Alaskan, has more than 22 years'experience in climate and energy policy, coastal management and fisheries. She's been elected to local office twice and currently serves as an op-ed columnist for Alaska's only statewide paper, the Alaska Dispatch News. As Executive Director of the Alaska Conservation Voters, Kate helped draft the creation of the Alaska Renewable Energy Fund and lobbied for the Sustainable Energy Act, a comprehensive roadmap to generate 50% of Alaska’s electrical energy from renewable sources by 2025. She served as Executive Director for United Fishermen of Alaska (nation’s largest fishing organization). She also worked as a fisheries development specialist and policy analyst for the State of Alaska. Internationally, Kate was Regional Fisheries Director (North and South America) for the Marine Stewardship Council, a global eco-label program. She was also appointed by Governor Palin to serve on the Alaska Climate Mitigation Advisory Board, and was the only Alaskan invited to participate in Governor Schwarzenegger’s 2008 Global Climate Summit.
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This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution and Evolving the Future
Thursday, October 5
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, Haller Hall
(102), Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
(102), Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
David Sloan Wilson, Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology, Binghamton University.
Abstract: The study of evolution in relation to human affairs lags behind the study of evolution in relation to biology by about a century. The statement "Nothing about X makes sense except in the light of evolution" is already commonplace for X=biology, is becoming acceptable for X=the academic study of humans, and remains mystifying and/or threatening for X=public policy. I will provide an overview of these trends with a focus on public policy as the wise management of evolutionary processes.
Reception in MCZ 5th floor lounge from 5:00 – 6:00
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology's Julia Booms Memorial Lecture
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Data-Driven Urban Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities
Thursday, October 5
Noon - 1:30pm
Harvard, CGIS South Building, Room S354, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Presentation by Dr. Shan Jiang, MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Abstract: Cities are growing at an unprecedented speed: by 2050 the urban population will grow to 6.4 billion, and over 60% of new urban areas will be built (United Nations, 2014). As a result, human beings are facing enormous challenges such as traffic congestion, environmental degradation, increased energy consumption, decreased quality of life, and climate change. Meanwhile, the explosion of urban sensors, mobile phone traces, social media and other windows into urban systems has generated much hype about the advent of a new urban science. However, translating big data into understandings of human activities and their interactions with the complex urban systems presents great obstacles and requires creative and robust interdisciplinary approaches. In this talk, Dr. Shan Jiang will present her research that bridges data science with urban sustainability issues, moving from data to information, knowledge, and action. By applying data-driven approaches (incorporating methods and tools from big data analytics, statistical learning and data mining, network science, spatial analysis, etc.), Dr. Jiang focuses on the interactions among human activities and mobility, the natural and built environment, and the society, with examples from global cities of Beijing, Bogota, Boston, Chicago, and Singapore. She will also discuss challenges and opportunities in the Information Age for responsive policies to plan, design and manage sustainable, equitable, smart and healthy cities.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Shan Jiang is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. Her research interests lie in the fields of Big Data Analytics, Spatial Analysis, Computational Social Science, and the use of Information and Communication Technology in Land Use, Transportation, and Urban Planning. Her research addresses social, economic, and environmental issues and their connections with public policy. She has worked for projects funded by the National Academies of Sciences, the Singapore National Research Foundation, the Portugal Foundation for Science and Technology, the Center for Complex Engineering Systems at KACST and MIT, and consulted for the Chicago Transit Authority, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge Systematics, among others. She received her Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning, Master in City Planning, and Master of Science in Transportation from MIT, and B.E. in Urban Planning and B.A. in Economics from Peking University.
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Just Energy Auctions: Creating Equitable Pathways for the Global Energy Transition
Thursday, October 5
3:30pm to 4:30pm
Northeastern, 909 Renaissance Park, 1135 Tremont Street, Boston
Shalanda Baker, Professor, School of Law, Public Policy and Urban Affairs
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Harvard Climate Seminar
Thursday, October 5
4:00 pm
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room 440, MCZ, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
David Hodell, University of Cambridge
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Public Forum, Recording Lives: Libraries, Books and the Digital Future
Thursday, October 5
5:30 pm to 7:00 pm
Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street, Rabb Hall, Boston
Public Forum, Recording Lives: Libraries and Archive in the Digital Age. Opening Lecture by Robert Darnton.BU Center for the Humanities cordially invites the entire community to join us at the Boston Public Library for the opening public lecture in our inaugural fall forum. Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, Emeritus and Harvard University Librarian, Emeritus, will speak on Libraries, Books, and the Digital Future. David Leonard, President, Boston Public Library, will introduce the lecture and Christopher Ricks, Professor of the Humanities, Boston University, will provide commentary. The lecture is followed by a public reception. Both are free and open to the public. Reservations are requested. Please go to the website to register.
More information at http://sites.bu.edu/humanitiesforums/
Contact Name Tamzen Flanders
Phone (617) 353-6250
Contact Email buch@bu.edu
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Print is not dead. The Beauty of Analogue Media in the Digital World
Thursday, October 5
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Tufts, Cohen Auditorium, Aidekman Arts Center, 40 Talbot Avenue, Somerville
Gerhard Steidl shares his thoughts on the potential and limitations of the analogue and digital worlds. He explores the differences between printed and e-books; discusses his role model, Johannes Gutenberg; and, last but not least, reveals how Steidl books come to life.
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RPP Colloquium Event: The Restorative Justice Approach: Wisdom and Spiritual Resources for Sustainable Peace in Our Communities
WHEN Thursday, Oct. 5, 2017, 6 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sperry Room, Andover Hall, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Religion, Special Events
SPONSOR Religions and the Practice of Peace
CONTACT Andreea Florescu D'Abramo
DETAILS Religions and the Practice of Peace Colloquium Dinner Series
Space is limited. RSVP is required: https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eM88tuMM8YLlW3H
The first session of the fourth annual RPP Colloquium dinner series will explore restorative justice, its spiritual dimensions, and the potential contributions of its approach to advancing sustainable peace in our communities and our world. The session will feature presentations by:
Fania Davis, J.D., PhD, Co-Executive Director, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY), will address “The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice: Resources for Cultivating Peace in Our Communities”
sujatha baliga, J.D., Director, Restorative Justice Project; Vice President, Impact Justice; Just Beginnings Fellow, will deliver a talk entitled “Have You Been Angry Long Enough? Faith, Forgiveness, and Restorative Justice”
Fania E. Davis, J.D., PhD, is the Co-founder and Director of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY). A national thought leader in the field, Dr. Davis is a long-time social justice activist, a restorative justice scholar and professor, and a civil rights attorney with a Ph.D. in indigenous knowledge. She speaks and writes on the subjects of School-Based Restorative Justice, Race and Restorative Justice, the Indigenous Roots of Restorative Justice, Social Justice and Restorative Justice, Truth and Reconciliation, Youth-based Restorative Justice, the School-to-Prison Pipeline, Mass Incarceration, and other topics. Numerous honors include the Ubuntu Service to Humanity award, the Maloney award recognizing exceptional contributions in youth-based restorative justice, World Trust's Healing Justice award, the Tikkun (Repair the World) Award, the Bioneer's Changemaker Award, and the LaFarge Social Justice Award. She is also a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. The Los Angeles Times named Dr. Davis a “New Civil Rights Leader of the 21st Century.” She is a mother, grandmother, dancer, and yoga and qigong practitioner.
sujatha baliga’s work is characterized by an equal dedication to victims and persons accused of crimes. She speaks publicly and inside prisons about her own experiences as a survivor of child sexual abuse and her path to forgiveness. A former victim advocate and public defender in New York and New Mexico, baliga was awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship in 2008 which she used to launch a pre-charge restorative juvenile diversion program in Alameda County. Through the Restorative Justice Project baliga helps communities implement restorative justice alternatives to juvenile detention and zero-tolerance school discipline policies. She is also dedicated to using this approach to end child sexual abuse and intimate partner violence. sujatha is a frequent guest lecturer at universities and conferences; she’s been a guest on NPR and the Today Show; and The New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic have profiled her work. She earned her A.B. from Harvard College, her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and has held two federal clerkships. A long-time Buddhist practitioner, she is a lay member of the Gyuto Foundation, a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in Richmond, CA, where she teaches meditation on Monday nights.
The RPP Colloquium series is presented with generous support from The Reverend Karen Vickers Budney, MDiv '91 and Mr. Albert J. Budney, Jr., MBA '74, as well as Farley Urmston and Karl Bandtel.
Recommended Readings
Short List
Pranis, Kay. 2012. The Restorative Impulse. Tikkun 27 (1): 33-34.
baliga, sujatha. 2012. “The Day the Jail Walls Cracked: A Restorative Plea Deal.” Tikkun 27 (1): 22-64.
Zehr, Howard. 2015. The Little Book of Restorative Justice: Revised and Updated (Justice and Peacebuilding). Intercourse, PA: Good Books.
Further Reading
Wiesenthal, Simon. 1998. The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. New York, NY: Schocken Books.
Zehr, Howard. 2015. Changing Lenses: Restorative Justice for Our Times. 25th Anniversary Edition. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press.
Gyatso, Tenzin, the 14th Dalai Lama. 1999. Ethics for the New Millennium. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.
This monthly public series, convened by HDS Dean David N. Hempton, brings together a cross-disciplinary RPP Working Group of faculty, experts, graduate students, and alumni from across Harvard University and the local area to explore topics and cases in religions and the practice of peace. A diverse array of scholars, leaders, and religious peacebuilders are invited to present and engage with the RPP Working Group and general audience. A light dinner is served and a brief reception follows the program.
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Sustainability Collaborative
Thursday, October 5
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Venture Cafe at Cambridge Innovation Center, 5th floor, 1 Broadway, Cambridge
The Sustainability Collaborative was spurred as an outgrowth of the Sustainability unConference and aims to provide an ongoing platform for collaboration, connections, and solutions generation. Rotating sustainability advocates are given the chance to facilitate group discussion around central sustainability themes ranging from hunger alleviation to impact investing. The goal is to raise awareness within the innovation community while strengthening the social impact ecosystem.
Hosted monthly as part of The Venture Café Foundation’s Café Night at Kendall gathering.
Please reach out to Sierra Flanigan at sierra@coalesce.earth
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MIT IDEAS Fall Generator Dinner
Thursday, October 5
7:00pm to 9:00pm
MIT, Building 50: Walker Memorial, Morss Hall, 142 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Are you interested in innovation and social entrepreneurship opportunities at MIT?
Working on a project to help underserved communities? Want to recruit new team members? Looking for funding?
Want to get involved, but don't yet have an idea?
Join us for dinner. Pitch an idea. Find a team.
The IDEAS Generator Dinner is one of the best venues to find a team to join or pitch your idea to recruit teammates.
Learn more about the IDEAS Global Challenge at http://studentlife.mit.edu/ideas
Event Program
6:45 Doors Open - Dinner
7:05 IDEAS Program Updates & Overview
7:30 Sixty-second Pitches
8:00 Networking
9:00 Event Ends
-> PITCH YOUR IDEA / SKILL
During the event, we will have openings for 20-30 sixty-second pitches from attendees.You must sign up in advance to request a slot.
Sign up to pitch an idea or your skills when you register on Eventbrite. Those selected to pitch will be contacted before the event with instructions on the process.
Note: Pitching is optional! If you don’t want to pitch, just attend to mix and mingle, meet potential teammates, or hear about some of the exciting projects already underway.
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Friday, October 6 - Saturday, October 7
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Public Forum, Recording Lives: Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age
Friday, October 6 - Saturday, October 7
BU Law School Auditorium, 765 Commonwealth Avenue, Cambridge
BU Center for the Humanities cordially invites the entire community to join us for the first full day of panels in our inaugural fall forum. 9:00-1:00 Panel I: Setting Directions for Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age. Introduced by Robert Hudson, University Librarian, Boston University and moderated by Jack Ammerman, Associate University Librarian for Digital Initiatives and Open Access, Boston University. Featured panelists: Jeannette Bastian, Simmons School of Library and Information Sciences; Dan Cohen, Northeastern University; David Ferriero, National Archives of the United States; Alberto Manguel, National Library of Argentina; Vita Paladino, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.2:00-5:30 Panel II: Digital Scholarship and Practice Introduced by Peter Schwartz, World Languages & Literatures, Boston University and moderated by Vika Zafrin, Digital Scholarship Librarian, Boston University. Featured panelists: Ellen Cushman, Northeastern University; Harriett Green, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Tom Mullaney, Stanford University; Fallou Ngom, Boston University.5:30-7:30 The panels are followed by a public reception at Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. Panels and reception are free and open to the public; reservations are requested. Please go to the website to read more and register.
More informationat http://sites.bu.edu/humanitiesforums/
Contact Name Tamzen Flanders
Phone (617) 353-6250
Contact Email buch@bu.edu
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ALS Assistive Technology Hackathon
October 6-7, 2017
Microsoft New England Research and Development Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Do you want to be one of the students that have left hackathons with a new motivation to learn and create? Will it excite you to engage with people who are building things that blow your mind, and get access to technology you would never interact with in day-to-day life?
The hackathon will bring students and makers, together with ALS patients, clinicians and technology experts to work towards designing novel, effective and accessible technological solutions that could have a transformative effect on the day-to-day lives of ALS patients, their families and care givers.
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Friday, October 6
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New England Electricity Restructuring Roundtable (#155)
Large Transmission-Based (MA 83D) RFP Project Proposals & New England's Clean Energy Strategies in the Shadow of Federal U-Turns
Friday, October 6
Foley Hoag LLP, 155 Seaport Boulevard, 13th Floor, Boston
Cost: $0 - $80
Lifestream at https://signup.clickstreamtv.net/event/raab/events/neer/
Large Transmission-Based (MA 83D) RFP Project Proposals
Our first panel focuses on the large transmission-based proposals submitted to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on July 27th in response to its RFP for 1,200 MW of hydro and Class 1 renewables as required by the state Legislature. This Roundtable will feature an array of the large transmission-based projects that propose to bring hydro, wind, and/or solar to serve Massachusetts ratepayers from the north and west. These diverse proposals include both overland and underground, as well as under-sea and under-Lake Champlain transmission routes. Each would bring renewables from Canada, New York, or Maine to Massachusetts and the New England Power Grid, passing through different states (New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, New York, respectively) or under the Atlantic Ocean.
Come and hear about these innovative and diverse proposals directly from the high-level executives proposing them. [Note: The names of the actual proposals follow the names of the project developers.]
Bill Quinlan, President, Eversource NH (PSNH): Northern Pass
Don Jessome, CEO, Transmission Developers Inc: NE Clean Power Link
Sara Burns, CEO, Central Maine Power/Avangrid: New England Clean
Energy Link Connect & Maine Clean Power Connect
Chris Huskilson, CEO, Emera: Atlantic Link
John Flynn, Head/Global Strategy & US Development, National Grid
Granite State Power Link & Northeast Renewable Link
Our second panel focuses on New England's Clean Energy Strategies in the Shadow of Federal U-Turns. Since taking office, President Trump, through his actions, policies, appointments, and proposed budgets, is reversing many of the clean energy and climate-related initiatives of the Obama and other prior Administrations. Most visible has been his tabling of the Clean Power Plan and withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. Other "U-turns" include proposals to turn back appliance standards and lower future standards for vehicle miles per gallon, as well as to dramatically reduce budgets for clean energy and climate-related activities and appoint individuals not very supportive of clean energy goals, policies, and programs. And that's just in the first six-months!
We have assembled a panel of experts - all close observers and/or participants in federal clean energy-related activities, who are also deeply rooted in New England's clean energy strategies. They will discuss current and potential future federal energy and climate policy changes and how New England states, cities, and stakeholders can carry on in pursuit of our clean energy and climate objectives in the shadow of an administration largely unsupportive of these efforts.
Steven Nadel, Exec. Dir., American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy
Ken Kimmell, President, Union of Concerned Scientists
Peter Rothstein, President, Northeast Clean Energy Council
Susan Reid, Vice President Climate & Energy, Ceres
Slides & Archival Video from the June 16th NE Roundtable
PowerPoint presentations from our 6/16 Roundtable, Preserving/Expanding Nuclear Power? & Bringing Off-Shore Wind to New England's Shores, are posted on our website and available for download - free of charge.
We've also posted RTO Insider's 6/20 edition, which includes two articles (with photos) about the 6/16 Roundtable (Nuclear panel pp. 1, 7 & 8; Wind panel pp. 6 & 7)
The webcast of the 6/16 Roundtable (and other past Roundtable webcasts) is now available here for on-demand viewing. On-demand Roundtable videos are free for sponsors and $40 per video for non-sponsors.
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Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win
Friday, October 6
3:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes Boston College assistant professor and MIT Security Studies Program research affiliate PETER KRAUSE for a discussion of his latest book, Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win.
About Rebel Power
Many of the world's states―from Algeria to Ireland to the United States―are the result of robust national movements that achieved independence. Many other national movements have failed in their attempts to achieve statehood, including the Basques, the Kurds, and the Palestinians. In Rebel Power, Peter Krause offers a powerful new theory to explain this variation focusing on the internal balance of power among nationalist groups, who cooperate with each other to establish a new state while simultaneously competing to lead it. The most powerful groups push to achieve states while they are in position to rule them, whereas weaker groups unlikely to gain the spoils of office are likely to become spoilers, employing risky, escalatory violence to forestall victory while they improve their position in the movement hierarchy. Hegemonic movements with one dominant group are therefore more likely to achieve statehood than internally competitive, fragmented movements due to their greater pursuit of victory and lesser use of counterproductive violence.
Krause conducted years of fieldwork in government and nationalist group archives in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, as well as more than 150 interviews with participants in the Palestinian, Zionist, Algerian, and Irish national movements. This research generated comparative longitudinal analyses of these four national movements involving 40 groups in 44 campaigns over a combined 140 years of struggle. Krause identifies new turning points in the history of these movements and provides fresh explanations for their use of violent and nonviolent strategies, as well as their numerous successes and failures. Rebel Power is essential reading for understanding not only the history of national movements but also the causes and consequences of contentious collective action today, from the Arab Spring to the civil wars and insurgencies in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond.
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Friday, October 6 - Sunday, October 8
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HONK! FESTIVAL
12TH ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF ACTIVIST STREET BANDS
October 6 through 8
a wide variety of events planned in Somerville, Cambridge, & Boston
FREE AND OPEN TO ALL
Time to mark the calendar for the twelfth annual HONK! Festival (www.honkfest.org), based in Davis Sq. Somerville, with events happening from October 6-8 throughout the neighborhoods of Somerville, as well as in Cambridge and Boston. HONK! is a rousing socio-political music spectacle which features social activist street bands from all over the world, who come together to share their different approaches in merrily instigating positive changes in their communities.
The full list of participating bands, along with an overview of all activities taking place, will be available soon after Labor Day weekend.
Basic listings information:
HONK! Festival
Festival of activist street bands.
October 6-8, 2017
Various neighborhoods throughout Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston.
Rain or shine; free and open to all.
For further information: www.honkfest.org, 617-383-HONK (4665).
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Friday, October 6
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CID Speaker Series: Paying for Success: Innovative Designs for Social Impact
Date: Friday, October 6, 2017, 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Location: Harvard, 79 JFK Street, Perkins Room, Rubenstein Building 4th Floor (R-429), Cambridge
Speaker: Max Bode, Junior Partner at Instiglio
About the talk: In the last decade, Results-Based Financing (RBF) has gained tremendous momentum in the international development space. Now, about $30 billion in funding have been disbursed through RBF mechanisms in 78 low and middle-income countries. The promise of RBF is simple: by tying the funding of social services to results, RBF drives results. It does so through aligning incentives, introducing accountability, encouraging prioritization, and allowing for learning and flexible adaptation in implementation. Anchored in Instiglio’s experience in designing impact bonds, outcomes markets, and national-to-local government transfers, Instiglio’s Junior Partner and HKS alumni Max Bode will discuss RBF’s track-record and potential to deliver on its promise of making social services more impactful. The talk will draw on a systematic review of trends in RBF, and case studies of education, workforce development, and poverty alleviation projects in India, Colombia, Morocco, and Kenya.
Max BodeAbout the speaker: Max Bode, Junior Partner at Instiglio, leads the Washington DC office’s client engagement and RBF Practice work, and provides strategic direction and technical support for Instiglio’s Africa portfolio. Prior to joining, Max was a civil servant and ODI Fellow in Zanzibar’s Ministry of Health, worked with Rwanda’s Ministry of Finance, and investigated the effectiveness and design of social interventions as a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Development (CID). Max holds a MPA in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School, a Masters from Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, and a Bachelors from Maastricht University.
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Saturday, October 7
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Fixit Clinic CCXXVII (227) Cambridge Public Library
Saturday, October 7
11AM-2PM
Cambridge Public Library, Main Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
RSVP at http://goo.gl/qTzh9J
Bring your broken item with all parts necessary to recreate the symptoms (carry-in only: no oversize items)
Bring any parts and tools you already own that might be helpful (e.g. hand tools, sewing supplies)
Come ready to describe what’s wrong and what you’ve tried (research the web for others with the same problem)
Come ready to learn and to share your knowledge with others
WHO: An all-ages family-friendly event: accompanied children are heartily invited!
COST: Free!
WHY: To make friends, learn and teach how to fix things, and have fun!
Want to learn how to repair broken stuff for your friends and neighbors? First-time Fixit Coaches are always welcome; sign up here: http://goo.gl/kwVNlv
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Popular "National Popular Vote March for 2020" in Washington DC + all big Cities
Saturday, October 7
11:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Boston Common (outside the Park Street T Station at Park and Tremont streets)
More information at http://www.nationalpopularvotemarch.com
MARCH GOAL: To help make the 2020 presidential election the first in which the majority of citizens elect the U.S. President and every vote in every state is equal.
DETAILS: The National Popular Vote March for 2020 celebrates the commitment of grassroots movements and people from all walks of life to work toward the common good and supports the successful passing of the Constitutionally legal National Popular Vote bill in enough states for citizens to directly elect the U.S. President by way of an Interstate Compact in time for the next presidential election in 2020.
The National Popular Vote is possible. As of spring 2017, it's been enacted into law in 10 states plus the District of Columbia for a combined total of 165 out a needed 270 electoral votes, so we are more than halfway there!
The National Popular Vote is fundamental; it’s about the structure—the bones—of our democracy and impacts a vast array of common-good goals and priorities because they likely will find a much more conducive federal environment under a President elected by the majority of citizens.
NONPARTISAN: The current National Popular Vote effort began in 2005 and is not about the 2016 presidential election or partisan politics in general. Instead, the National Popular Vote bill simply commits the Electoral College to cast its votes in accordance with the popular votes from throughout the country rather than by state.
In doing so, the National Popular Vote bill automatically eliminates the outdated and problematic "winner-take-all" election scheme, which divides the country into "battleground" and "spectator" states and makes the spectator states’ votes (along with their concerns and financial interests) politically irrelevant.
As a result, the bill achieves three democracy-enhancing feats all at once:
1. Creating a direct and undistorted correlation between popular vote outcome and election result.
2. Making every vote equal nationwide.
3. Increasing the probability of higher voter turnouts because all votes count.
WHY NOW: If enough of us support the bill during the remaining states' 2017, 2018, and 2019 legislative sessions, it has a very real chance of being in place by 2020.
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Sunday, October 8
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Somerville Community Growing Center Annual Harvest Fair
Sunday, October 8
2:30 to 4:30
The Growing Center, 22 Vinal Avenue, Somerville
The season finale for the 23-year-old center! Harvest games, cider demonstration, pumpkin decorating, contests, family friendly music, and more.
More information at http://thegrowingcenter.org
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Tuesday, October 10 - Sunday, October 15
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Hubweek
More information at https://hubweek.org/events/
and RSVP for individual events at https://hubweek.swoogo.com/tickets/begin?session_ids=31100
Editorial Comment: I’ve tried to make contact with people at Hubweek since before their first event as I think they might be interested in Energy (and Other) Events. Somehow, I can’t get a reply. If anyone knows anyone at Hubweek, please tell them about Energy (and Other) Events and that I’d like to talk to them about how to extend Hubweek throughout the year through a similar listings service to Energy (and Other) Events.
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Tuesday, October 10
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MADMEC Finals
Tuesday, October 10
1:00pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 6-120, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
Materials science can provide solutions for energy storage, building efficiency, transportation, and many other critical needs in today's society. MADMEC invites student teams to develop and build prototypes that address these and more challenges.
Come to 6-120 at 1:00pm to see the inventions and innovations concocted by DMSE students to improve sustainability! Join us afterward for the Awards Ceremony in 6-104, the Chipman Room.
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Early American Environmental Histories
Tuesday, October 10
5:15PM
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston
The Massachusetts Historical Society hosts James Rice, Tufts University with comment by Chris Parsons, Northeastern University. Free and open to the public. A light sandwich supper will follow.
Boston Environmental History Seminar
Contact Name:
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At the Strangers' Gate: Arrivals in New York
Tuesday, October 10
6:00 PM (Doors at 5:30)
Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
Cost: $5 - $28.00 (online only, book-included)
Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome award-winning author and New Yorker staff writer ADAM GOPNIK presenting a one-man show of stories from his thirty years as a husband, father, and writer in New York City. Many of these stories are featured in his new book, At the Strangers’ Gate: Arrivals in New York. He first performed this one-man show at last year’s New Yorker Festival. A book signing will follow.
About At the Strangers' Gate
From The New York Times bestselling author of Paris to the Moon and beloved New Yorker writer, At the Strangers' Gate is a memoir that captures the romance of New York City in the 1980s.
When Adam Gopnik and his soon-to-be-wife, Martha, left the comforts of home in Montreal for New York, the city then, much like today, was a pilgrimage site for the young, the arty, and the ambitious. But it was also becoming a city of greed, where both life's consolations and its necessities were increasingly going to the highest bidder. At the Strangers' Gate builds a portrait of this particular moment in New York through the story of this couple's journey—from their excited arrival as aspiring artists to their eventual growth into a New York family. Gopnik transports us to his tiny basement room on the Upper East Side, and later to SoHo, where he captures a unicorn: an affordable New York loft. He takes us through his professional meanderings, from graduate student-cum-library-clerk to the corridors of Condé Nast and the galleries of MoMA. Between tender and humorous reminiscences, including affectionate portraits of Richard Avedon, Robert Hughes, and Jeff Koons, among many others, Gopnik discusses the ethics of ambition, the economy of creative capital, and the peculiar anthropology of art and aspiration in New York, then and now.
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Open House at The Engine; a HUBweek Event
Tuesday, October 10
6:00pm
The Engine, 501 Massachusetts Avenue, Floor 2 Cambridge
The Engine, built by MIT, is the newest venture set out to support founders innovating in the toughest areas of science and technology. By empowering disruptive technologies with long-term capital, knowledge, and specialized equipment, The Engine is bridging a gap in traditional venture capital that exists between two phases, proof of concept and commercialization.
Don’t miss the first public showing since our doors officially opened! Hear from the team, tour the space, and learn how they’re fueling the next generation of world-changing impact through scientific and technological breakthroughs in Boston.
Open House / Cost is FREE, please register:
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Using Digital Tools to Explore American Political Divides
Tuesday, October 10
6:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building N51, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join MIT Professor Deb Roy, Director of the Laboratory for Social Machines, and Chief Media Scientist at Twitter for an exploration of ways to see past our differences and understand the humanity of the opposing side in an effort to bridge ideological gaps.
Free. No pre-registration necessary.
This program is offered in conjunction with The Enemy, on view October 5, 2017.
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In the Name of Peace: John Hume in America
Tuesday, October 10
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Columbia Point, Boston
A screening of In the Name of Peace: John Hume in America, a new documentary on the work of John Hume, who shared a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the peace building in Northern Ireland. A discussion follows with filmmaker Maurice Fitzpatrickand Senator George Mitchell, who served as the chairman of the peace talks. The Boston Globe’s Kevin Cullen moderates. Senator Paul G. Kirk, Jr. introduces the program.
Please note: Registration guarantees a seat in the building, but not in the main hall.
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Guest Speaker: Scott Foster, Director, Sustainable Energy Division at UN Economic Commission for Europe
Tuesday, October 10
6:15 pm to 6:45 pm
BU, 685-725 Commonwealth Avenue (Room 315), Boston
Scott Foster, Director, Sustainable Energy Division at United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (one of 5 regional commissions in the UN; NECE includes 56 member States in Europe, North America, and Asia) will be guest lecturing in UA 510: Sustainable Energy Planning. Mr. Foster will be covering the topic Achieving Energy for Sustainable Development -- a Global Perspective.
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Are Students Learning the Right Things for a Just, Sustainable, and Healthy World?
Tuesday, October 10
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Tufts, Barnum Hall 104, Packard Avenue, Medford
Are Students Learning the Right Things for a Just, Sustainable, and Healthy World?
Our world faces unprecedented threats, including climate change, mass species extinctions, economic and racial inequality, resource depletion, and overpopulation. These will lead to vast changes in virtually every aspect of the modern world—including manufacturing, transport, agriculture, politics, and finance.
Are colleges and universities preparing young people for this brave new world? And, if not, what are some innovative ways that higher educational and community institutions can support young people to become more successful active change agents, helping society adapt and evolve within a rapidly shifting environment?
Please join us for an engaging dialogue to explore these and related questions.
Tony Cortese, Principal of International Endowments Coalition and former Dean of Environmental Studies, Tufts University
Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute and former instructor, New College
Amirah Mitchell, Agroecology consultant and educator
William Throop,Former Provost and VP of Academic Affairs, Green Mountain College
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National Bird
Tuesday, October 10
7-9 pm
Robbins Library Community Room, 700 Massachusetts Avenue, Arlington Center ( on the 77 and 79 bus lines)
A new documentary film about the secret United States Drone Assassination Program
Why is our government killing thousands of people around the globe they can?t even identify?
People interviewed in this film include drone operators turned whistleblowers suffering PTSD, and people on the ground in Afghanistan whose families and lives have been shattered by ongoing drone attacks.
After the film there will be a short discussion with suggestions of things we can do to stop this immoral and indefensible form of warfare.
Sponsored by Eastern Massachusetts Anti-Drones Network, a task force of United for Justice with Peace, Arlington UJP, co-sponsored by Mass Peace Action, Women?s International League for Peace and Freedom and Veterans For Peace-Smedley Butler Brigade.
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Human Harvest: China’s Illegal Organ Trade
WHEN Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017, 8:30 – 10 p.m.
WHERE Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Ethics, Film, Humanities, Research study, Special Events, Support/Social
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR People against Organ Harvesting
SPEAKER(S) Member from DAFOH (Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting)
DIRECTED BY LEON LEE (award-winning journalist, director and producer)
COST $11
TICKET WEB LINK https://www.eventbrite.com/e/exposing-crimes-against-humanity-a-screening-of-human-harvest-tickets-37572462246
CONTACT INFO diana_lu@unseen.is
DETAILS When reports first emerged from China in 2006 that state-run hospitals were killing prisoners of conscience to sell their organs, it seemed too horrible to believe. But as researchers around the world—including human rights lawyer David Matas and former Canadian Member of Parliament David Kilgour—began to uncover the mystery, the true picture became all too clear. Their evidence suggests that tens of thousands of innocent people have been killed on demand to supply an ongoing illegal organ transplant industry. The story of how these two Nobel Peace Prize nominees pieced together the evidence and continue to fight against this industrial-scale crime against humanity is a riveting tale of both personal triumphs and unimaginable horror.
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Greenfest Looking for Volunteers
10th Annual Boston GreenFest will be at Boston City Hall Plaza, August 11-13, 2017. It is the largest multicultural environmental music festival in the region featuring lots of local and international exhibits, performances, films, food, fashion and forums. Our goal is to educate and empower people to create a more sustainable, healthier world. We are actively building an interconnected, ever expanding network throughout our neighborhoods, city and region. From business to nonprofit, neighborhood association to academic institution, Boston GreenFest spans age, culture and industry. Celebrating our 10th anniversary, Boston GreenFest is excited to bring this wonderful free three-day festival to Boston City Hall Plaza as it is transformed into a fun interactive community classroom.
We are looking for volunteers to help throughout the weekend.
Please visit: http://www.bostongreenfest.org/
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New Climate CoLab Contests:
Adaptation
Buildings
Carbon Pricing
Energy Supply
Land Use Change
Shifting Attitudes & Behaviors
Transportation
More information at https://www.climatecolab.org/
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Discounted Solar for Somerville
As part of the State’s Solarize Mass program, local volunteers and the City of Somerville recently launched the Solarize Somerville campaign to make it easier and cheaper for residents and small businesses to install solar panels.
The program, which is offering information and guidance, free site consultations, and solar panel discounts through November, has set an ambitious goal to inspire at least 200 property owners to sign up for solar —and each of those private solar installations will also benefit the community directly. For every 400 kW in signed private contracts through the program, the program’s solar vendor SolarFlair will donate a system of up to 5 kW for a public or community purpose. All are invited to the program kickoff at a Meet the Installer event on Tuesday, July 26 at 6-7:30 p.m., 167 Holland St. Additional events on topics such as solar basics, financing, and solar for multifamily homes will be announced.
Unique to the program is its neighbor-to-neighbor approach: trained resident volunteers and a designated volunteer Solar Coach are available essentially as mentors. They can, for example, walk anyone through the process, provide general loan program and tax incentive information, and share their own solar experiences. The campaign’s webpage and blog offers useful information, tips, and a link to websites where you can estimate the solar potential of your home and roughly calculate how much solar could save you on your energy bills at www.somervillema.gov/sustainaville/solarize.
Somerville is one of the most urban communities ever to participate in Solarize Mass, which makes the neighbor-to-neighbor approach especially helpful due to some of the unique challenges here such as multi-family houses with more than one owner. Winter Hill resident Mary Mangan, the program’s volunteer Solar Coach, went through that process and is ready to share helpful tips.
"I'm excited to work with our eager volunteers to help our neighbors understand the benefits of solar power. As a co-owner of a two-family home with solar, I can also offer some insights about how that process went for us," said Mangan.
Also key to the program is the selection of a designated vendor, which allows the program to offer reduced cost installation through bulk purchasing. Through a competitive process, SolarFlair, based in Ashland, MA, was selected. They were also the selected installer for the communities of Arlington, Hopkinton, Mendon, Brookline, Carlisle-Chelmsford, Newton, and Quincy.
"We're excited to be the selected installer for Solarize Somerville, and look forward to speaking with any home or business owners that are interested in reducing their electric bills while also making a great investment," said Matt Arner, the owner and President of SolarFlair.
Quick facts:
Solar systems can be purchased outright (with a payback of about 4-5 years). The Mass Solar Loan program offers rates of 3.25% or less.
Or, for no money down owners can choose a power purchase agreement (PPA), where the system is owned and maintained by a third party, and residents buy back the electricity at a discounted price.
More on-site renewable energy is critical to reducing carbon emissions. It also saves money for residents.
Tax incentives for solar installations include:
Federal Tax Credit: A 30 percent federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) is available for qualified residential and commercial projects
Massachusetts Personal Income Tax Credit: The lesser of 15% of the total cost of the solar electric system or $1,000, for qualified clean energy projects
Five-year Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS): Business owners can depreciate solar electric systems over a five-year schedule
For more information or to sign up for a free site consultation:
Visit the Solarize Somerville webpage at www.somervillema.gov/sustainaville/solarize for
Helpful information and FAQs
To contact a volunteer or Solar Coach Mary Mangan to discuss solar options and incentives
To set up an appointment for a free site consultation directly with SolarFlair
To find out about events
To volunteer for Solarize Somerville
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Where is the best yogurt on the planet made? Somerville, of course!
Join the Somerville Yogurt Making Cooperative and get a weekly quart of the most thick, creamy, rich and tart yogurt in the world. Members share the responsibility for making yogurt in our kitchen located just outside of Davis Sq. in FirstChurch. No previous yogurt making experience is necessary.
For more information checkout.
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Free solar electricity analysis for MA residents
Solar map of Cambridge, MA
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Sunny Cambridge has just launched! Sunny Cambridge is the city-wide initiative that makes it easy for all types of residents to get solar power for their homes. Cambridge has lined up local solar installers through the EnergySage Solar Marketplace, which helps you request, receive, and compare solar quotes 100% online with support available every step of the way.
The City of Cambridge is working on many levels to reduce energy use and GHG emissions to make the city more sustainable. As a semifinalist in the nationwide competition for the $5 million Georgetown University Energy Prize, Cambridge Energy Alliance is encouraging residents to take actions to save energy, save money, and protect the environment. Get involved by signing up for a no-cost home energy assessment at the Cambridge Energy Alliance home page (www.cambridgeenergyalliance.org/winit)
and going solar at http://www.sunnycambridge.org
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"Greening Our Grid" Report Released April 24, 2017
MAPC is excited to announce the release of “Greening Our Grid,” a fact sheet and a case study detailing MAPC’s strategy to use municipal aggregation to help build new renewable energy in New England.
“Greening Our Grid” highlights MAPC's work with the City of Melrose as a case study for MAPC's innovative green municipal aggregation strategy. Melrose recently completed its first year of implementation. The city’s results demonstrate that economic and environmental goals can be met simultaneously, and provide a compelling example for others to follow.
The case study and fact sheet further describe the renewable energy strategy overall, why it can have a real impact on our electricity grid, and MAPC’s program to help other municipalities follow Melrose's lead. Arlington, Brookline, Gloucester, Hamilton, Millis, Somerville, Sudbury, and Winchester are poised to roll out their green aggregations within the year.
MAPC believes that municipal aggregation offers an opportunity for communities to leverage the collective buying power of their residents and businesses to transform our electric grid to cleaner sources of energy, while also providing cost savings and price stability for electricity. The fact sheet and case study will be useful tools for cities and towns that are exploring green municipal aggregation, as well as for those that already have active aggregation programs.
Check out “Greening Our Grid” today at http://www.mapc.org/greening-our-grid, and contact Patrick Roche, MAPC Clean Energy Coordinator, at proche@mapc.org for more information about MAPC's program.
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Cambridge Climate Change Game
Extending our work on face-to-face games, the MIT Science Impact Collaborative has developed a digital game on the health impacts of climate change that you can play alone on your computer or on your mobile phone. The game should take about 10-20 minutes. We would appreciate it if you could play the game at your convenience.
Play the game at http://www.doublecoconut.com/climate/
Any and all feedback on the game should be directed to Ella Kim at ella@mit.edu.
Thank you for your time and consideration!
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Sustainable Business Network Local Green Guide
SBN is excited to announce the soft launch of its new Local Green Guide, Massachusetts' premier Green Business Directory!
To view the directory please visit: http://www.localgreenguide.org
To find out how how your business can be listed on the website or for sponsorship opportunities please contact Adritha at adritha@sbnboston.org
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Boston Food System
"The Boston Food System [listserv] provides a forum to post announcements of events, employment opportunities, internships, programs, lectures, and other activities as well as related articles or other publications of a non-commercial nature covering the area's food system - food, nutrition, farming, education, etc. - that take place or focus on or around Greater Boston (broadly delineated)."
The Boston area is one of the most active nationwide in terms of food system activities - projects, services, and events connected to food, farming, nutrition - and often connected to education, public health, environment, arts, social services and other arenas. Hundreds of organizations and enterprises cover our area, but what is going on week-to-week is not always well publicized.
Hence, the new Boston Food System listserv, as the place to let everyone know about these activities. Specifically:
Use of the BFS list will begin soon, once we get a decent base of subscribers. Clarification of what is appropriate to announce and other posting guidelines will be provided as well.
It's easy to subscribe right now at https://elist.tufts.edu/wws/subscribe/bfs
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The Boston Network for International Development (BNID) maintains a website (BNID.org) that serves as a clearing-house for information on organizations, events, and jobs related to international development in the Boston area. BNID has played an important auxiliary role in fostering international development activities in the Boston area, as witnessed by the expanding content of the site and a significant growth in the number of users.
The website contains:
A calendar of Boston area events and volunteer opportunities related to International Development - http://www.bnid.org/events
A jobs board that includes both internships and full time positions related to International Development that is updated daily - http://www.bnid.org/jobs
A directory and descriptions of more than 250 Boston-area organizations - http://www.bnid.org/organizations
Also, please sign up for our weekly newsletter (we promise only one email per week) to get the most up-to-date information on new job and internship opportunities -www.bnid.org/sign-up
The website is completely free for students and our goal is to help connect students who are interested in international development with many of the worthwhile organizations in the area.
Please feel free to email our organization at info@bnid.org if you have any questions!
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Boston Maker Spaces - 41 (up from 27 in 2016) and counting: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zGHnt9r2pQx8.kfw9evrHsKjA&hl=en
Solidarity Network Economy: https://ussolidarityeconomy.wordpress.com
Bostonsmart.com's Guide to Boston: http://www.bostonsmarts.com/BostonGuide/
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Links to events at over 50 colleges and universities at Hubevents: http://hubevents.blogspot.com
Thanks to
Fred Hapgood's Selected Lectures on Science and Engineering in the Boston Area: http://www.BostonScienceLectures.com
MIT Events: http://calendar.mit.edu
MIT Energy Club: http://mitenergyclub.org/
Harvard Events: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/harvard-events/events-calendar/
Harvard Environment: http://environment.harvard.edu/events/calendar/
Sustainability at Harvard: http://green.harvard.edu/events
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/
Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/
Microsoft NERD Center: http://microsoftcambridge.com/Events/
Startup and Entrepreneurial Events: http://www.greenhornconnect.com/events/
Cambridge Civic Journal: http://www.rwinters.com
Cambridge Happenings: http://cambridgehappenings.org
Cambridge Community Calendar: https://www.cctvcambridge.org/calendar
Take Action MA: http://takeactionma.com
If you have an event you would like to see here, the submission deadline is 11 AM on Sundays, as Energy (and Other) Events is sent out Sunday afternoons.
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