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, October 23
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12pm PAOC Colloquium: Yohai Kaspi (Weizmann Institute)
12pm American Energy Policy: The Search for Common Ground
12:15pm Remapping Knowledge Exchange: Scientific Agriculture in Sonora, Mexico and Punjab, India
12:30pm China's Future Leadership: An Instant Analysis of China's 19th Party Congress
1pm Safety Nets: Rescue and Revival for Endangered Born-Digital Records
5:30pm What to do with biomass waste in India?
6pm Greening Existing Neighborhoods with LEED-ND & EcoDistricts
6pm MIT Water Innovation Prize: Kick-Off Dinner
6:30pm Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, & Other Threats of Toxic Tech
6:30pm Tapping into the Fountain of Youth: Does the key to reversing the aging process circulate within us?
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Tuesday, October 24
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10:30am SLS Seminar: Detectability of nonlinear historical forcings and their fingerprints on the climate system
12pm Speaker Series: Nancy Scola – Reporting on the Tech Industry
12pm Topic: Herbivory through the ages: Revealing effects of climate on insect herbivory with herbarium specimens
12pm DISCRIMINATION IN AMERICA: African American Experiences
2pm Fact and Fiction: Writing Journalism, Writing Literature
4pm Cell-based origami: Folding tissues across length scales
4:15pm Islam and Democracy
4:15pm Poland at the Crossroads between Authoritarianism and Democracy
4:30pm Another History of the Refugee Convention's Additional Protocol
6pm authors@MIT: Gretchen Steidle, Leading From Within
6pm Newton Harrison Lecture: The Time of the Force Majeure
6pm Big Data 101
6pm Writers Speak: Richard Price in Conversation with Claire Messud
6pm Sustainability Talk Series: How Transparency is Changing the World
6:30pm Activism Workshop
6:30pm Toots Zynsky: Engineering New Art Forms
6:30pm The Last Mountain Film Screening
7pm The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic
7pm BU Climate Action Plan Public Forum
7pm The Future of our Past, A Vision for Boston Archaeology
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Wednesday, October 25
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9am MAPC [Metropolitan Area Planning Council] Fall Council Meeting
11am Come Test Drive Electric Cars!
12pm Junko Habu. Jomon Food Diversity, Climate Change and Long-term Sustainability: Lessons from Prehistoric Japan
12pm Liberal Entrenchment: Reordering French Grand Strategy after the Cold War
12:15pm Vice Admiral Jan Tighe: Information Warfare and the U.S. Navy
12:30pm SEBANE Energy Storage Seminar
1pm Why You Don’t Know Your Carbon Footprint
1:30pm Webinar: "Divestment: What Can We Do To Move Our Money, Today?”
3:30pm Does Neighborhood-Scale Urban Form Influence Non-Motorized Transport in China? Toward Walkable Low-Carbon Cities
3:30pm The future of cities
4:15pm Are Co-Benefits Real? Interactions between Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Control in China
4:15pm The Future of Work and Welfare - A German Perspective
4:30pm Dissident Speaker Series: "Nemtsov" with Vladimir Kara-Murza
4:45pm MITEI Fall Colloquium: "The future of energy: Certain uncertainties”
5:30pm Migration Stories: The US Visa Lottery and Global Citizenship
5:30pm Fireside Chat with Barry Nalebuff, Co-Founder of Honest Tea
6pm Gutman Library Distinguished Author Series Event: Improving Education Together
6pm Solar 101
6pm The Words To Say It: Teaching, Writing, and Incarceration
6pm Autonomous Vehicle Research at MIT with Lex Fridman
6:30pm What Mathematicians Reveal about Gerrymandering
7pm I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street
7pm Economics for the Common Good
7pm The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World
7pm Here Comes the Sun: Harnessing the power of renewable energy
7:45pm Building Boston 2030 Series: Is Climate Change Flooding Boston's Future?
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Thursday, October 26 - Saturday, October 28
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Boston Book Festival
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Thursday, October 26
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12pm Housatonic river cleanup: 20+ years
12:15pm Power through Influence: Understanding Great Power Competition in the Contemporary World
1pm Colorado’s Low-Income Community Solar Demonstration Project
2:50pm A Brief History on the Last 20 years of Educational Data Mining: A Personal Perspective
2:59pm FOODTECH CONNECT 2017
4pm Biological Engineering Seminar: Bringing Bioelectricity to Light
4pm Economics for the Common Good
5pm Cloud Policy: Anatomy of a Regulatory Crisis
6pm Boston Energy Mixer
6:30pm Artificial Intelligence: Beyond the Hype & Headlines
7pm A Brief History of Environmental Successes
7pm Raising Resilience: The Wisdom and Science of Happy Families and Thriving Children
7pm Data Provenance: From Theory to Practice
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Friday, October 27, 7:00 PM – Saturday, October 28, 5:00 PM
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Disrupting the Human Trafficking-Migration Nexus Workshop
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Friday, October 27
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8am 2017 AAPI Civil Rights Forum
8:30am From Ecology of Marine Microbes to a Biotech Startup Combating Antibiotic Resistance
9am Contagion: Exploring Modern Epidemics
12pm Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
12:15pm An Alternate View of the North Korea-U.S. Relationship
5pm Now for a Look at the Weather Where You Are
5pm Pixar's Dean Kelley on Coco
5:30pm What literature can do: Literature, shame and politics
7pm X-Position with Vadim Bolshakov: The Panic Lab
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Saturday, October 28
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The Student Media Innovation Conference
9:30am Peoples' History Walking Tour of Boston
12pm The Green Arts Expo ‘17
7pm The Glorious Future, Reception and Free outdoors screening
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Sunday, October 29
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3pm Be the Change Community Action: Economic Justice
4pm What I Found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musician’s Guide to Rebuilding America’s Communities—One Coffee Shop, Dog Run, and Open-Mike Night at a Time
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Monday, October 30 – Tuesday, October 31
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8:30am MIT Legal Forum on AI & Blockchain
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Monday, October 30
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12pm PAOC Colloquium: Nathan Steiger (LDEO)
12pm HouseZero: A First-of-its-kind, Ultra-efficient Retrofit
12:15pm How Much Poison is Too Much? Calculating Hazard in International Nutrition Programs and Commodity Trade
4pm Responsive Science: A Path towards faster, safer, community-guided research
4pm Colonization Road - Film Screening
4:15pm The Decline of International and European Rule of Law
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Tuesday, October 31
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9:30am Short stories in genomics and environmental health: Bernardo Lemos, PhD, Assistant Professor of Environmental Epigenetics, MIPS, HSPH
1pm SolarWakeup Live! Boston
3pm Waste Alliance Lecture Series: Sanergy
6pm "Said Negro has been guilty of theft and many misdemeanors”: Fugitive Slave Advertisements as Imperial Infrastructure in late Eighteenth- and early Nineteenth-Century Canada and Jamaica”
7pm Terry Virts - View From Above: An Astronaut Photographs the World
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
Embodied Peacemaking: Body Awareness, Self-Regulation and Conflict Resolution
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Monday, October 23
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PAOC Colloquium: Juno at Jupiter: The First Year
Monday, October 23
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Yohai Kaspi (Weizmann Institute)
The Juno spacecraft has been in orbit around Jupiter since July 2016. In this talk we will review the mission and the preliminary results from it's first year. Particularly, we will focus on the Juno gravity experiment which has revealed the depth and vertical structure of Jupiter's atmospheric dynamics.
About the Speaker
Interests: Geophysical fluid dynamics; The general circulation of the atmosphere; Storm track dynamics; Formation of zonal jets; Dynamics on giant planet atmospheres and interiors; Exoplanet atmospheric dynamics; Geostrophic turbulence; Convection in rotating systems; Climate dynamics
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American Energy Policy: The Search for Common Ground
Monday, October 23
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
The Consortium for Energy Policy Research presents Dan Poneman, President and CEO, Centrus Energy Corp; Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Lunch is provided.
Energy Policy Seminar
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
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Remapping Knowledge Exchange: Scientific Agriculture in Sonora, Mexico and Punjab, India
Monday, October 23
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, Room 100F, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Gabriela Soto Laveaga, Harvard, History of Science
STS Circle at Harvard
Sandwich lunch is provided. RSVP required.
The Harvard STS Circle is co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Contact Name: sts@hks.harvard.edu
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China's Future Leadership: An Instant Analysis of China's 19th Party Congress
WHEN Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, 12:30 – 2:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium (S010), 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
SPEAKER(S) Moderator:
Mark Elliott, Vice Provost of International Affairs at Harvard University
Panelists:
Antony Saich, Harvard University
Joseph Fewsmith, Boston University
Elizabeth Perry, Harvard University
Edward Wong, New York Times/Nieman Foundation for Journalism
Huang Yasheng, MIT Sloan School of Management
Introduced By: Michael Szonyi, Harvard University
COST Free
CONTACT INFO fairbankcenter@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS
Moderator: Mark Elliott, Vice Provost of International Affairs at Harvard University and Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and in the Department of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Panelists: Anthony Saich, Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and Daewoo Professor of International Affairs. He teaches courses on comparative political institutions, democratic governance, and transitional economies with a focus on China. In his capacity as Ash Center Director, Saich also serves as the director of the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia and the faculty chair of the China Programs, the Asia Energy Leaders Program, and the Leadership Transformation in Indonesia Program, which provide training programs for national and local Chinese and Indonesian officials.
Joseph Fewsmith, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the BU Pardee School. He is the author or editor of eight books, including, most recently, The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China (January 2013). Fewsmith travels to China regularly and is active in the Association for Asian Studies and the American Political Science Association.
Elizabeth Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. She is a comparativist with special expertise in the politics of China. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and sits on the editorial boards of nearly a dozen major scholarly journals and has served as the President of the Association for Asian Studies. Professor Perry’s research focuses on popular protest and grassroots politics in modern and contemporary China.
Edward Wong, journalist and a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. Wong reports on China’s politics, economy, environment, military, foreign policy and culture. Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism.
Huang Yasheng, International Program Professor in Chinese Economy and Business and a Professor of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
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Safety Nets: Rescue and Revival for Endangered Born-Digital Records
Monday, October 23
1:00pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building E53-212, 30 Wadsworth Street, Cambridge
Join us for a brown bag talk with Jefferson Bailey.
The web is now firmly established as the primary communication and publication platform for sharing and accessing social and cultural materials. This networked world has created both opportunities and pitfalls for libraries and archives in their mission to preserve and provide ongoing access to knowledge. How can the affordances of the web be leveraged to drastically extend the plurality of representation in the archive? What challenges are imposed by the intrinsic ephemerality and mutability of online information? What methodological reorientations are demanded by the scale and dynamism of machine-generated cultural artifacts? This talk will explore the interplay of the web, contemporary historical records, and the programs, technologies, and approaches by which libraries and archives are working to extend their mission to preserve and provide access to the evidence of human activity in a world distinguished by the ubiquity of born-digital materials.
Jefferson Bailey is director of Web Archiving at Internet Archive. Jefferson joined Internet Archive in Summer 2014 and manages Internet Archive’s web archiving services including Archive-It, used by over 500 institutions to preserve the web. He also oversees contract and domain-scale web archiving services for national libraries and archives around the world. Read more
We will provide lunch, please bring your own drink and your questions.
Join the session on WebEx at https://libraries.mit.edu/news/safety-nets-rescue/26127/
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What to do with biomass waste in India?
Monday, October 23
5:30 p.m.
MIT Building 3-270, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
Sonal Thengane is a visiting postdoctoral researcher from the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, where he studies the treatment and upgrading of biomass waste for fuel consumption through pelletization and gasification. He will share his perspective on biomass waste utilization in India.
Questions? Contact trashiscash@mit.ed
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Greening Existing Neighborhoods with LEED-ND & EcoDistricts
Monday, October 23
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Room Dali, 14th floor, 50 Milk Street, Boston
The Talbot Norfolk Triangle (TNT) is a 46-acre neighborhood redevelopment in the economically disadvantaged Codman Square section of Dorchester, Massachusetts. For the last four years, efforts have begun to turn this neighborhood into a sustainable community, called the TNT Eco-Innovation District (TNT EID). In 2009, the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation (CSNDC) began an extensive planning process that engaged TNT residents. During this planning process residents expressed environmental, economic, and social equity goals and the TNT EID was formed, with sustainability as a driver of quality of life improvements. One EID outcome was establishing Block Stewards; neighborhood residents who work to surface and help advance neighborhood goals, while improving health and safety. Throughout 2015-2016 the Block Stewards surveyed over 150 TNT EID residents regarding mobility and health issues, and offered a workshop on health benefits of increased walking and biking.
CSNDC decided to use the LEED for Neighborhood Development v4 rating system to set sustainable design guidelines for future development in the neighborhood. Several LEED and planning professionals in the Boston area volunteered to help complete the required LEED documentation for the TNT project. Over 65 affordable housing units will be developed over the next four years as a part of the LEED-ND project.
Combining the EcoDistricts and LEED-ND rating systems is a new model for green and equitable community development in low-income urban neighborhoods. While many LEED-ND efforts focus on new development, the EID incorporates current housing stock, as well as planned development in a low-income neighborhood. The TNT EID will result in a built project that equitably and collaboratively engages residents in the process of creating a greener community.
Participants will be introduced to EcoDistricts and LEED-ND followed by ways in which both rating systems are being utilized in the TNT project to create a community that is both equitable and healthy. The presenters will give examples of community-focused initiatives that have resulted from this process, including a Slow Streets pilot, the Fairmount Greenway Plan, and the greenroof bus shelter project. Presenters will provide a replicable model for other communities to leverage existing assets that improve quality of life, while developing cutting-edge and sustainable development projects.
Presenters:
Neil Angus
David T. Queeley
Tiffany B. Cogell
Irena Stojkov
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MIT Water Innovation Prize: Kick-Off Dinner
Monday, October 23
6:00pm to 9:00pm
MIT Media Lab, E14 - 6th Floor 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Save the date for the Kickoff Dinner of this year's MIT Water Innovation Prize! Come learn more about water innovation, pitch your own idea, or network to find teammates. We will hear from speakers across sectors about the world’s water challenges and new innovations to address them. Join the competition for innovation grants of up to $30,000, awarded next April 2018. More info can be found at http://mitwaterinnovation.org
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Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, & Other Threats of Toxic Tech
Monday, October 23
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
HubSpot, 2 Canal Park, Cambridge
Author, content strategist, and UX consultant Sara Wachter-Boettcher will give a talk based on her new book, Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, & Other Threats of Toxic Tech—a revealing look at how tech industry biases and blind spots get baked into the digital products we use every day. She’ll discuss where tech has gone wrong, why public backlash is coming (and that’s a good thing), and how designers, UXers and content strategists can be part of the solution.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher is a Philly-based content strategy and user experience expert who has worked on the web since 2005. As the principal of Rare Union, she’s led projects and facilitated workshops for Fortune 100 corporations, education and research institutions, and startups. She is the co-author, with Eric Meyer, of Design for Real Life from A Book Apart, and the author of Content Everywhere from Rosenfeld Media. Technically Wrong (W.W. Norton) is her first mainstream book.
AGENDA
6:30 arrival/ networking
6:45 talk
7:15 Q&A
7:30 book signing/ networking
A big thanks to Hubspot for graciously hosting this event!
Books will be available for purchase at the event.
This is a 21+ event. No one under 21 will be admitted.
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Tapping into the Fountain of Youth: Does the key to reversing the aging process circulate within us?
Monday, October 23
6:30-8:30pm
Burden, 247 Elm Street, Somerville
More information at http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/science-by-the-pint/
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Tuesday, October 24
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SLS Seminar: Detectability of nonlinear historical forcings and their fingerprints on the climate system
Tuesday, October 24
10:30am to 11:30am
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Justin Bandoro (MIT)
Evidence of a human influence on the climate system has grown stronger with each successive IPCC scientific assessment report. The formal identification of an anthropogenic climate change “fingerprint” has been achieved in observations of not only atmospheric temperatures, but many components of the earth system, including oceans, the hydrological cycle, and the cryosphere. Most detection and attribution (D&A) studies have been primarily concerned with identifying a single unique anthropogenic fingerprint that encompasses all man-made forcings, including greenhouse gases (GHG) and ozone depleting substances (ODS). But separating the detectability of individual forcings is important for understanding what is driving observed changes in the climate system. A traditional method for D&A studies estimates the climate system’s spatial response patterns (“fingerprints”), and then searches for temporal changes in the pattern similarity statistic between the identified fingerprints and observations. This method implicitly assumes that the forcing evolution is quasi-linear, which has been an adequate approximation for historical GHG forcing. But the historical evolution of stratospheric ozone forcing is highly nonlinear, because ODS emissions were curtailed by the implementation of the Montreal Protocol. This presents a nonlinear case for D&A, and I will present a new method developed to account for nonlinearities of historical forcings for spatial fingerprinting. I will first provide a proof of concept for this method, performing D&A of stratospheric ozone changes using the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model. We find markedly enhanced signal-to-noise ratios with the nonlinear method compared to the traditional linear metric, which permits confident detection of an ODS signal that is separate from the GHG signal. In the second part of the talk, I will apply the method to seasonal atmospheric geopotential height changes, to determine the detectability of both ODS and GHG fingerprints using the CMIP5 archive. Both GHG and ODS signals are found to be confidently detectable in the months of December-May.
About the Series
The Atmosphere, Ocean and Climate Sack Lunch Seminar Series is an informal seminar series within PAOC that focuses on more specialized topics than the PAOC Colloquium. Seminar topics include all research concerning the science of atmosphere, ocean and climate. The seminars usually take place on Wednesdays from 12-1pm in 54-915. The presentations are either given by an invited speaker or by a member of PAOC and can focus on new research or discussion of a paper of particular interest.
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Speaker Series: Nancy Scola – Reporting on the Tech Industry
Tuesday, October 24
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Nancy Scola is a senior technology reporter for Politico. For more than a decade, Scola has covered the intersections of technology, politics, and public policy for a variety of outlets. She has served as a tech policy reporter for The Washington Post, a tech and politics correspondent for The Atlantic, and a contributing writer at Next City. As a freelance writer, she has also contributed to Washingtonian, Reuters, and many other publications.
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Topic: Herbivory through the ages: Revealing effects of climate on insect herbivory with herbarium specimens
Tuesday, October 24
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard, 22 Divinity Avenue, Seminar Room 125, Cambridge
Emily Meineke, Postdoctoral Fellow
Harvard University
HUH Seminar Series - Emily Meineke
Abstract: Herbivory by phytophagous insects is ubiquitous and has effects that cascade from damage to individual plants to altered nutrient cycling through ecosystems. Yet, how herbivory has responded to anthropogenic environmental change remains unclear, because historical monitoring of insect herbivores and herbivory is sparse over time and space. We quantified herbivory on 591 herbarium specimens from four plant species from across the northeastern USA—an area that has experienced rapid climate warming and varying levels of urbanization—to examine the effects of environmental change over the past 110 years. Herbarium specimens collected within the past 10 years were 13% more likely to be damaged by leaf-feeding herbivores than those collected in the early 1900s. Trends across latitude and temperature provide evidence that these increases are due in large part to climate warming. Climate occupancy models implicate winter temperature as a key driver of insect herbivore presence and/or abundance. In contrast, human population densities were negatively associated with herbivory and occupancy for the majority of herbivores, indicating that urban development may disrupt the effects of climate change on insect diversity, with downstream consequences for plant-insect interactions.
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DISCRIMINATION IN AMERICA: African American Experiences
WHEN Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Leadership Studio, Harvard Chan School, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Forum at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
SPEAKER(S) EXPERT PARTICIPANTS
Robert Blendon, Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Kennedy School
Dwayne Proctor, Senior Adviser to the President and Director, Achieving Health Equity Portfolio, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
David Williams, Professor of Public Health, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Elizabeth Hinton, Assistant Professor, Departments of History and of African American Studies, Harvard University, and Author, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America
Mary Lee, Deputy Director, PolicyLink
MODERATOR Joe Neel, Deputy Senior Supervising Editor and a Correspondent on the Science Desk, NPR
CONTACT INFO To attend our studio audience, please RSVP to theforum@hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS How do African Americans experience discrimination in daily life? A soon-to-be-released poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health will illuminate reports from African Americans who share their personal experiences with discrimination. With unprecedented documentation, the poll will cover a range of areas -- from police interaction, to job applications, to health care, to racial slurs. This Forum will explore the poll results and their implications for a healthier, more equitable, and just society.
This poll will be the first among a series of reports that surveyed additional groups, including Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, men, women, and LGBTQ adults, on their experiences with discrimination.
Spread the word:
Send our panelists questions in advance to theforum@hsph.harvard.edu
We'll be conducting a live chat on The Forum's Discrimination in America website.
Tweet us @ForumHSPH #discrimination
We also will stream live on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Forumhsph/
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Fact and Fiction: Writing Journalism, Writing Literature
WHEN Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, 2 – 3 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Thompson Room, Barker Center (110), 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Ethics, Humanities, Lecture, Poetry/Prose, Research study, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Cosponsored by the Department of English and the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard
SPEAKER(S) A Writers in the Parlor conversation with Lorraine Adams, Jill Abramson, and Claire Messud
CONTACT INFO humcentr@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Free and open to the public; seating is limited.
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Cell-based origami: Folding tissues across length scales
Tuesday, October 24
4pm
MIT, Building 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Adam Martin
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Islam and Democracy
WHEN Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Allison Dining Room, Fifth Floor, Taubman Building, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program and the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
SPEAKER(S) Kristin E. Fabbe, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; Sophie Lemiere, Postdoctoral Fellow, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Andrew F. March, Berggruen Fellow, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics; Tarek Masoud, Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations, Harvard Kennedy School of Government; and Roy P. Mottahedeh, Gurney Research Professor of History, Emeritus
COST Free
CONTACT INFO Info@ash.harvard.edu
DETAILS Please join the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program and the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation for a cross-disciplinary panel discussion on the intersection of Islam and democracy across the Muslim world as part of Worldwide Week at Harvard.
Panelists: Kristin E. Fabbe, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
Sophie Lemiere, Postdoctoral Fellow, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Andrew F. March, Berggruen Fellow, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
Tarek Masoud, Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Roy P. Mottahedeh, Gurney Research Professor of History, Emeritus
Refreshments will be provided.
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Poland at the Crossroads between Authoritarianism and Democracy
WHEN Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CES, 27 Kirkland Street Adolphus Busch Hall at Cabot Way, Cambridge
Lower Level Conference Room
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Director's Seminar
SPEAKER(S) Jan Kubik, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University; Monika Nalepa,
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago; Karolina Wigura, Assistant Professor, Institute of Sociology, Warsaw University; Brian Porter-Szűcs, Professor of History, University of Michigan
CONTACT INFO Roumiana Theunissen, rtheunissen@fas.harvard.edu
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Another History of the Refugee Convention's Additional Protocol
Tuesday, October 24
4:30pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building E40-496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Itty Abraham, Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore
Free and open to the public | Refreshments will be served
Sponsored by the Inter-University Committee on International Migration
The Inter-University Committee on International Migration
Since its establishment in 1974, the Inter-University Committee on International Migration has been a focal point for migration and refugee studies at member institutions, which include Boston University, Brandeis University, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Harvard University, MIT, Tufts University, and Wellesley College. The committee is chaired by MIT as a program of the Center for International Studies (CIS).
Migration Seminar Series
During each academic year, the Committee sponsors a seminar series on international migration, The Myron Weiner Seminar Series on International Migration, held at MIT's Center for International Studies. The seminars explore factors affecting international population movements and their impact upon sending and receiving countries and relations among them.
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authors@MIT: Gretchen Steidle, Leading From Within
Tuesday, October 24
6:00pm to 7:00pm
The MIT Press Bookstore 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
The MIT Press Bookstore presents Gretchen Ki Steidle, Founder and President of Global Grassroots, discussing her book Leading From Within, on Tuesday, October 24, at 6:00 pm at the Bookstore. This event includes a book signing. Books will be on sale at the event for 20% off, or you can purchase an event ticket that includes a discounted book.
In Leading from Within, Steidle describes the ways that personal investment in self-awareness shapes leaders who are able to inspire change in others, build stronger relationships, and design innovative and more sustainable solutions. Drawing on her own experiences, including her work helping women to found their own grassroots social ventures in post-conflict Africa, Steidle offers mindfulness practices for individuals and groups, presents the neuroscientific evidence for its benefits, and argues for its relevance to social change.
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Newton Harrison Lecture: The Time of the Force Majeure
Tuesday, October 24
6:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building 32-123, Stata Center, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Visiting Artist Newton Harrison will give a public presentation tracing the eco-art movement that he and Helen Mayer Harrison pioneered and have led for more than 40 years, which uses art to address environmental problems, such as agriculture and forestry issues, watershed restoration and urban renewal, among others.
Lecture followed by a reception
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Big Data 101
Tuesday, October 24
6:00pm to 7:30pm
MIT Museum, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join Sandy Pentland, MIT Professor of Media Arts & Sciences, Director of the MIT Human Dynamics Laboratory, and Co-leader of the World Economic Forum Big Data & Personal Data Initiatives for an discussion on big data. What is it? Why do we use it? What makes it so powerful? Get the answers to these questions and learn more about the implications big data holds for the future of business, health, technology and beyond. This is BIG!
Free. No pre-registration necessary
6:00 - 7:30 p.m.
This program is offered in conjunction with Big Bang Data, on view now.
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Writers Speak: Richard Price in Conversation with Claire Messud
WHEN Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, 6 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Emerson Hall 105, Harvard Yard, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Ethics, Film, Humanities, Lecture, Poetry/Prose, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard
SPEAKER(S) Richard Price is the acclaimed author of numerous novels and screenplays. His books include Clockers (1992) Lush Life (2008) and, most recently, Whites (2015), under the pseudonym Harry Brandt. He has written many film and television scripts, including The Color of Money (1986), Clockers (1995), The Wire (2002), Freedomland (2006) and, most recently, the Emmy Award-nominated 8-part HBO series, The Night Of (2016), which tells the story of a young man accused of murder, imprisoned in New York’s Rikers Island prison while awaiting trial. Price engaged in extensive research in the writing and making of this series.
Claire Messud is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (Fiction) in the English Department at Harvard. The author of numerous novels, most recently The Burning Girl (2017), she writes regularly for The New York Review of Books and the New York Times Book Review.
CONTACT INFO humcentr@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Free and open to the public. Seating is limited.
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Sustainability Talk Series: How Transparency is Changing the World
Tuesday, October 24
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston
Jason F. McLennan, Founder of the International Living Future Institute, will share insights into the Living Product Challenge - a platform that not only sets the highest standards for commercial manufacturing practices and procedures, but also strategically strives to reconcile the relationship between humanity and the natural world.
Humanscale and Mohawk Group will also give guests a behind-the-scenes look into their experiences with the challenge of creating designs that are healthy, transparent, and give back to the earth.
Schedule:
5:30 PM | Doors Open
6:00 PM | Keynote
7:30 PM | Cocktail Reception
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Activism Workshop
Tuesday, October 24
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Cambridge, Main Library, 449 Broadway, Lecture Hall, Cambridge
Join members of Black Lives Matter Cambridge and Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition to learn about how you can become involved in grassroots political activism.
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Toots Zynsky: Engineering New Art Forms
Tuesday, October 24
6:30 PM - 8 PM
MIT, Building 10-250, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Toots Zynsky is the invited speaker for the 2017 Page Hazlegrove Lecture in Glass Art.
Hosted by MIT Glass Lab and MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE)
More information at https://www.facebook.com/events/2029599307276565/
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The Last Mountain Film Screening
Tuesday, October 24
6:30 PM – 9:30 PM EDT
The Rockwell, 255 Elm Street, Somerville
The mining and burning of coal is at the epicenter of America’s struggle to balance its energy needs with environmental concerns. Nowhere is that concern greater than in Coal River Valley, West Virginia, where a small but passionate group of ordinary citizens are trying to stop Big Coal corporations, like Massey Energy, from continuing the devastating practice of Mountain Top Removal.
A passionate and personal tale that honors the extraordinary power of ordinary Americans when they fight Big Coal’s control over our future, The Last Mountain shines a light on America’s energy needs and how those needs are being supplied. It is a fight that affects us all, including here in Cambridge and Somerville, where our decisions impact the affected communities. By choosing newly available 100% renewable electricity and efficiency programs, we stand in solidarity with them and reduce Big Coal's control.
Join us October 24th at 6:30pm, as Green Cambridge, Somerville Climate Action, Mothers Out Front, Groundwork Somerville, 350MA, and Fossil Free Somerville present the documentary film The Last Mountain at The Rockwell Theatre in Davis Square. As special guests, producer Eric Grunebaum and WV Activist Bo Webb, featured in the film, will share how the fight has evolved since the movie was released and answer your questions.
Bring your electric bill and we'll show you how to easily go 100% locally-sourced renewable!
(Or do it now by going here: http://info.massenergy.org/greencambridge)
DONATIONS ACCEPTED AT THE DOOR
Theatre is wheelchair accessible via elevator. Refreshments, including beer and wine, will be available for sale. We look forward to seeing you there!
Doors at 6:30, Movie at 6:45, Talk at 8:30.
Thanks to our collaboration with a local non-profit, Mass Energy Consumers Alliance, the electricity used at this event is being matched with clean, local wind power. Learn how to do the same for your home at www.massenergy.org.
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The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic
Tuesday, October 24
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
This event is free; no tickets are required.
Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome MIKE DUNCAN—creator of the award-winning podcast The History of Rome—for a discussion of his latest book, The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic.
About The Storm Before the Storm
The Roman Republic was one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of civilization. After its founding in 509 BCE, the Romans refused to allow a single leader to seize control of the state and grab absolute power. The Roman commitment to cooperative government and peaceful transfers of power was unmatched in the history of the ancient world.
But by the year 133 BCE, the republican system was unable to cope with the vast empire Rome now ruled. Almost as soon as they had conquered the Mediterranean, Rome became engulfed in violent political conflicts and civil wars that would destroy the Republic less than a century later.
Chronicling the years 133-80 BCE, The Storm Before the Storm is a rollicking deep-dive into the bloody battles, political machinations, and human drama that defined a dangerous new political environment—a stark warning for modern readers about what happens to a civilization driven by increasing economic inequality, political polarization, and ruthless ambition.
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BU Climate Action Plan Public Forum
Tuesday, October 24
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM EDT
BU Photonics Center - Colloquium Room, 9th Floor, 8 St Marys Street, Boston
RSVP at https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eej46a6e052703b3&oseq=&c=&ch=
Last fall, the Climate Action Plan Task Force was charged with developing a plan to address the University’s carbon emissions and prepare for the impacts of climate change on BU’s campuses. The Task Force invites you to attend its upcoming public forum to learn about and discuss its recommendations to the Board of Trustees.
Climate Action Plan Task Force Boston University
617-358-4000
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The Future of our Past, A Vision for Boston Archaeology
Tuesday, October 24
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Old State House, 206 Washington Street, Boston
Join Joe Bagley, Boston's City Archaeologist, as he presents his bold visions for the future of Boston's City Archaeology Program. Founded in 1983, the Program has experienced recent rapid growth thanks to a robust social media presence and an engaged Boston public. Joe will discuss goals in public education partnerships, lab expansion plans, digital archaeology initiatives, and many other topics. A discussion will follow with feedback encouraged.
About the City Archeology Program
The City Archaeology Program was founded to protect Boston's irreplaceable archaeological resources. Boston is the "City of Archaeology," with hundreds of known archaeological sites within the City's borders. These archaeological sites record the Native American history of Shawmut, the name of the place we now call Boston, and tell the story of the founding of our nation.
About the Speaker
Joe Bagley joined the City Archaeology Program in 2011 as the fourth City Archaeologist since 1983. Bagley curates a growing repository of archaeological collections currently housed at the City Archaeology Laboratory at 201 Rivermoor St. in West Roxbury, acts as the review and compliance agent for below-ground cultural resources in the city, educates the public in archaeology through a number of city programs, manages Rainsford Island, and manages the Archaeology Programs social media platforms.
Joe received his Bachelor's Degree in Archaeology from Boston University and a Master’s Degree in Historical Archaeology from UMass Boston. While a senior at BU he worked at the City Archaeology Lab under the previous City Archaeologist, Ellen Berkland, to analyze the Native American artifacts excavated by former City Archaeologist, Steven Pendery, on Boston Common.
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Wednesday, October 25
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MAPC [Metropolitan Area Planning Council] Fall Council Meeting
Wednesday, October 25
9:00AM - 11:30AM
Quincy Marriott, 1000 Marriott Drive, Quincy
RSVP at http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07eemnx49v512cc1e2&llr=jqfo5obab
Join us in recognizing the great work individuals have done at MAPC and don't miss out on a chance to learn more about innovative mobility.
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Come Test Drive Electric Cars!
Wednesday, October 25
11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Quincy Marriott, 1000 Marriott Drive, Quincy
Co-hosted by MAPC and the Department of Energy Resources, this event will highlight the clean-air and cost-saving benefits provided by electric cars.
You are invited to attend a free Ride and Drive event on . You'll have the opportunity to learn about, view, and test drive (or ride in) an assortment of plug-in vehicles from local automobile dealers.
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Junko Habu. Jomon Food Diversity, Climate Change and Long-term Sustainability: Lessons from Prehistoric Japan
Wednesday, October 25
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard, Tozzer 203, 21 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
Archaeologists have long been interested in the study of long-term social change. Factors that involve specialization and centralization have been proposed as prime movers for the “development” of human societies. Contrary to these interpretations, I propose a hypothesis that diversity and decentralization may be critical for maintaining long-term sustainability of human societies. Using a case study from the Early and Middle Jomon periods (ca. 4000-2400 BC) of prehistoric Japan, this presentation emphasizes the importance of framing recent and current global environmental problems in the context of the greater human experiences.
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Liberal Entrenchment: Reordering French Grand Strategy after the Cold War
Wednesday, October 25
12:00-1:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496 Pye Room.1Amherst Street, Cambridge
Thierry Balzacq, Australian National University
France pursued a unique grand strategy, "Grandeur," from the late 1950s to 1989. However, since the end of the Cold War, converging sets of pressures have compelled France to reorient its grand strategy, one that I characterize as "Liberal entrenchment." The purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the characteristics of Grandeur and Liberal entrenchment - along three axes: theoretical bases, causal logic, and policy components; to describe how liberal entrenchment is changing how France engages the world; to assess whether it serves France's interests; and to evaluate the consequences of those choices.
Thierry Balzacq is a Visiting Fellow at the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy (APCD), at the Australian National University. In 2016, he was awarded a Francqui Research Chair (Belgium's most prestigious academic title) at the University of Namur, and elected Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
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Vice Admiral Jan Tighe: Information Warfare and the U.S. Navy
Wednesday, October 25
12:15pm - 1:30pm
Harvard, 1 Brattle Square - Suite 470, Cambridge
Please join us for a conversation with Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare and Director of Naval Intelligence, Vice Admiral Jan Tighe. Lunch will be served.*
*This event is open to the public, but seating and lunch will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
More information at http://www.belfercenter.org/index.php/events
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SEBANE Energy Storage Seminar
Wednesday, October 25
12:30 PM – 5:00 PM EDT
NonProfit Center, 89 South Street, Boston
Cost: $25 – $75
12:30-1pm Registration and refreshments
1-2pm Overview of the Storage opportunity in Massachusetts – Commissioner Judith Judson, MA DOER
"State of Charge” report
Residential and Small commercial opportunities under SMART
2-5pm Presentations and Roundtable discussion (15-20 min per speaker with Q&A session)
Product offerings to address the Residential and Small Commercial markets
Go to market strategy – what value streams can be addressed?
How do you size a battery solution?
How do we gain access to the products?
How do you market battery solutions to consumers?
5-7pm Refreshments and Networking
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Why You Don’t Know Your Carbon Footprint
Wednesday, October 25
1–2 pm
HSPH, FXB Building, G-13, 651 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Ory Zik, Co-Founder & Executive Director of Greenometry will present as part of this lunch-time Sustainability Leadership Series.
Lunch provided.
About the Sustainability Leadership Series:
This fall, the Center for Health and the Global Environment in partnership with the Harvard Office for Sustainability will be hosting a 4-part Sustainability for Health Leadership Series. Beginning on October 11, and running through November 1, this speaker series will introduce attendees to pressing issues and opportunities faced by cutting-edge business leaders that navigate the intersection of industry, government, public health and sustainability. Join us to hear about the importance of making the connection between people, their health, and their surroundings.
Oct 25 - Ory Zik, Co-founder & Executive Director, Greenometry
Nov 1 - Captain Sara Newman, Director, Office of Public Health, National Park Service
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Webinar: "Divestment: What Can We Do To Move Our Money, Today?”
Wednesday, October 25
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM
There is great opportunity coming off the heels of the powerful organizing, victories and increasingly unified work among Fossil Fuel Divestment, Prison Divestment, DeFundDAPL, DeFundPipelines, BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), and BankExit groups. In coordination with Divest the Globe Week of Actions, we are hosting a nuts-and-bolts webinar on what you can do, today, to move your money out of the extractive Wall Street economy and into local community institutions financing a better economy
This webinar will cover models for divestment campaigns in cities, tools for individuals and non-profits to move their money, and resources to move capital as an individual or part of a campaign.
Webinar panelists & moderators include:
Jackie Fielder, Co-Founder, Mazaska Talks
Emma Guttman-Slater, Beneficial State Foundation
Annie McShiras, Self-Help Federal Credit Union
A representative from the DOME-Huichin divestment coalition in Oakland, CA
The speakers will share information and resources that you can use individually or in your cities or institutions to move capital. The webinar will include specific ideas participants will be able to implement immediately, discussion of long-term organizing opportunities, as well as time for Q&A.
Co-hosted by New Economy Coalition, Self-Help Federal Credit Union, and
Beneficial State Foundation.
On October 23rd, ninety-two of the world's largest banks will meet in São Paolo, Brazil to vote on a policy that upholds indigenous people's right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) to allow or disallow projects on their lands. These banks include Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) financiers such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, and more. As Energy Transfer (the company behind DAPL) made clear in their lawsuit against Greenpeace and others, DIVESTMENT WORKS.
Host Contact Info: mike@neweconomy.net
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Does Neighborhood-Scale Urban Form Influence Non-Motorized Transport in China? Toward Walkable Low-Carbon Cities
Wednesday, October 25
3:30PM TO 4:45PM
Harvard, Pierce 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
The Harvard-China Project hosts Guan Chenghe, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard-China Project; Research Fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Design
China Project Seminar
Co-sponsored by China Project, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Environment in Asia Series, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.
Contact Name: Tiffany Chan
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The future of cities
Wednesday, October 25
3:30–5:30 pm
Harvard, Askwith Lecture Room, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
Please join President Drew Faust and a panel of experts in a conversation about the future of cities.
Moderator: John Macomber, Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School
Panelists:
Diane Davis, Chair, Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design
John Fernandez, Professor, MIT; Urban Metabolism Group, African Urban Metabolism Network
Christian Irmisch, Principal, Siemens AG, Mobility Division
Stefan Knupfer, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company; Leader, Sustainability Resource Productivity Practice
Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group
Efosa Ojomo, Research Fellow, Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation
Harriet Tregoning, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Planning and Development, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
What will the city of the future look like? How will contemporary urbanization challenges establish the groundwork for the next generation of innovations? Who will spearhead the investments and institutional arrangements needed to address such issues as sprawl, climate change, socio-spatial inequality, and rapid technological change? This panel showcases a range of experts, innovators, and thought leaders in the fields of technology, infrastructure, and governance of cities. Drawing on experience from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the U.S., panelists will share their views on how best to address the fact that more than 70% of the world’s population is projected to be living in cities by the year 2050 (with close to 90% of the increase coming from Asia and Africa). Debate will revolve around the impacts of intensified urban growth on the basic political, economic, and social arrangements that have come to define cities, as well as on the role of new technologies and infrastructures in modifying urban footprints and quality of life.
Co-hosted by Harvard Business School Global Initiative and Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Free and open to the public.
More information at https://worldwide.harvard.edu/event/future-cities
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Are Co-Benefits Real? Interactions between Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Control in China
Wednesday, October 25
4:15PM TO 5:30PM
Harvard, Littauer Building, Room L-382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Jing Cao, Yangqin Weng, Tsinghua University, Valerie Karplus, Minghao Qiu, and Noelle Selin, MIT
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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The Future of Work and Welfare - A German Perspective
WHEN Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2017, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Center for European Studies, 27 Kirkland Street, Adolphus Busch Hall, Hoffmann Room, at Cabot Way, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Center for European Studies
SPEAKER(S) Max Neufeind, German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs; Discussant: Peter A. Hall, Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies, Harvard University; Respondent: Katja Möhring, Assistant Professor for Sociology of the Welfare State, University of Mannheim, Germany
CONTACT INFO Colin Brown
DETAILS Dr. Neufiend will lay out how major stakeholders in Germany are currently discussing the digital transformation, and particularly its effects on the labor market and the welfare system. He will then present the structure and key findings of a comprehensive dialogue process on the future of work and welfare, initiated by the German Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. He will elaborate on specific challenges Germany faces based on its institutional set-up, vis-Ã -vis other varieties of capitalism. He concludes by describing policy options currently being discussed within the German government and public sphere, and will offer more general suggestions on how to reform the “German model” to adapt it to the digital age.
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Dissident Speaker Series: "Nemtsov" with Vladimir Kara-Murza
Wednesday, October 25
4:30pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 6-120, 182 Memorial Drive (rear), Cambridge
Q & A session and discussion with Vladimir Kara-Murza will follow the screening.
Nemtsov chronicles a remarkable political life. It is a story told by those who knew Boris Nemtsov at different times: when he was a young scientist and took his first steps in politics; when he held high government offices and was considered Boris Yeltsin’s heir apparent; when he led Russia’s democratic opposition to Vladimir Putin. The film contains rare archival footage, including from the Nemtsov family. Nemtsov is a portrait. It is not about death. It is about the life of a man who could have been president of Russia.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Kara-Murza is a Russian opposition politician. He serves as vice chairman of Open Russia, a NGO founded by Russian businessman and former political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which promotes civil society and democracy in Russia. He was elected to the Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition in 2012, and served as deputy leader of the People's Freedom Party from 2015 to 2016. Kara-Murza holds an M.A. in history from Cambridge University.
Writer and director: Vladimir V. Kara-Murza. Executive producer: Renat Davletgildeev. 66 min. Russia, 2016.
Co-sponsors: MIT Center for International Studies, MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, and MIT Russia
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MITEI Fall Colloquium: "The future of energy: Certain uncertainties"
Wednesday, October 25
4:45 PM – 6:30 PM EDT
MIT Media Lab; Room E14-674, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
The future of energy: Certain uncertainties with Norman R. Augustine, Retired Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation
Arguably the most difficult type of planning involves major, long-term capital investments that are surrounded by great uncertainty. Such is the case in the world of energy. Opportunities for technology breakthroughs in the production and use of energy abound; major shifts in demand seem inevitable, but vulnerabilities also thrive. It is a field of countless possibilities…especially for those who enjoy taking risks.
Speaker bio: Norman R. Augustine attended Princeton University where he graduated with a BSE and MSE in aeronautical engineering. He has served as Under Secretary of the Army and later as Acting Secretary of the Army, chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation, and lecturer with the rank of professor on the faculty of Princeton University.
Augustine was chairman and principal officer of the American Red Cross for nine years, chairman of the National Academy of Engineering, chairman of the Aerospace Industries Association, and chairman of the Congressionally-mandated NIH Scientific Management Review Board. He served on the advisory board of the Department of Energy, as a founder of the American Energy Innovation Council, and for 16 years as a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, as well as in numerous committee and board positions.
Please note this is a public event and we will open our doors to unregistered participants 15 minutes before the event start time. To guarantee your seat, we recommend you register and arrive at least 15 minutes early.
If you are not able to attend, note there will be a high-quality recording of this seminar made available on our YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/MITEnergyInitiative about a week following the event.
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Migration Stories: The US Visa Lottery and Global Citizenship
Wednesday, October 25
5:30pm
MIT, Building 2-105, 182 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Charles Piot: Chair and Professor of Cultural Anthropology and African and African American Studies at Duke University
More Togolese per capita apply for the US Diversity (Green Card) lottery than those from any other African country, with winners attempting to game the system by adding “spouses” and dependents to their dossiers. The US consulate in Lomé knows this gaming is going on and constructs ever-more elaborate tests to attempt to decipher the authenticity of winners’ marriages and job profiles – and of their moral worth as citizens – tests that immediately circulate to those on the street. This presentation explores the cat-and-mouse game between street and embassy, situating it within the post-Cold War conjuncture – of ongoing crisis, of an eviscerated though-still-dictatorial state, of social death and the emptiness of citizenship under such conditions, of a sprawling transnational diaspora and the desires and longings it creates, of informationalism and its new technologies, of surveillance regimes and their travails, and of the way in which mobility/immobility and sovereignty are newly entangled and co-constitutive in the contemporary moment.
The MIT Global France Seminar aims to bring together MIT faculty, instructors, and graduate students from across disciplines interested in the study of French and francophone cultures around the world. The seminar series is free and open to the public.
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Fireside Chat with Barry Nalebuff, Co-Founder of Honest Tea
Wednesday, October 25
5:30 - 7:30 pm
Nutter, 155 Seaport Boulevard, Boston
Food & beverage entrepreneurs are invited to join us for a fireside chat with Barry Nalebuff, Yale professor and co-founder of Honest Tea, Kombrewcha, and most recently, Maker Oats, to hear his perspectives. This is a unique opportunity to interact with an unusually thoughtful industry expert who will be sharing his lessons learned and answering audience questions on how to build (and sell) an amazing brand!
Barry Nalebuff, Co-Founder, Honest Tea
Barry Nalebuff is Milton Steinbach Professor at Yale SOM where he teaches negotiation, innovation, and game theory. He is the coauthor of six books, including the business best sellers Thinking Strategically, Co-opetition, and Mission in a Bottle. In 1998, Barry together with his former student Seth Goldman cofounded Honest Tea, a company that sells ready-to-drink iced tea that tastes like tea. It has recently sold its billionth bottle. In 2011, Coca-Cola purchased the company. Alongside Honest Tea, Barry is the cofounder of Kombrewcha and Maker Oats (where his position is “Chief Trouble Maker”). He serves on the board of several startups including Calicraft, Q Drinks, and One Title. He advised the NBA in their negotiations with the National Basketball Players Association and serves on the board of Nationwide Insurance. A graduate of MIT, Rhodes Scholar, and Junior Fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows, Nalebuff earned his doctorate at Oxford University.
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Gutman Library Distinguished Author Series Event: Improving Education Together
WHEN Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2017, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Gutman Conference Center - Area 3, 6 Appian Way, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Gutman Library
SPEAKER(S) Geoff Marietta, MBA’07, Ed.M.’12, Ed.D.’15
Chad d’Entremont
Emily Murphy Kaur
DETAILS
Improving Education Together offers a step-by-step guide to Labor-Management-Community collaboration, an intervention that has successfully improved student outcomes in a wide variety of school districts across the country. The authors illustrate how a culture of collaboration between labor, management, and community stakeholders can be built using readily available tools for needs assessment, root-cause analysis, team norms, brainstorming, consensus-building, and long-term planning. Improving Education offers detailed examples of how districts across the country have successfully implemented the LMC approach, along with resources and strategies employed and lessons learned from obstacles and setbacks encountered along the way.
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Solar 101
Wednesday, October 25
6pm-8pm
First Church in Cambridge, 11 Garden Street, Cambridge
More information at http://sunnycambridge.org
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The Words To Say It: Teaching, Writing, and Incarceration
WHEN Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2017, 6 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Emerson Hall 210, Harvard Yard, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Ethics, Health Sciences, Humanities, Lecture, Poetry/Prose, Research study, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard
SPEAKER(S) Speakers
Richard Price is the acclaimed author of numerous novels and screenplays. His books include "Clockers" (1992) "Lush Life" (2008) and, most recently, "Whites" (2015), under the pseudonym Harry Brandt. He has written many film and television scripts, including "The Color of Money" (1986), "Clockers" (1995), "The Wire" (2002), "Freedomland" (2006) and, most recently, the Emmy Award-nominated 8-part HBO series, "The Night Of" (2016), which tells the story of a young man accused of murder, imprisoned in New York’s Rikers Island prison while awaiting trial. Price engaged in extensive research in the writing and making of this series.
Edyson Julio, a writer and prison-reform educator, is currently an Urban Scholar in the Harvard School of Education Master's Program. He is a Creative Writing instructor at Rikers Island Correctional Facility, and a long-time teacher in the CASES’ high school equivalency program, teaching inmates and former inmates of Rikers Island prison. (CASES is the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services.) He also holds an MFA in Fiction from Hunter College (CUNY).
Michelle Kuo is the author of "Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship." She currently teaches in the History, Law, and Society program at the American University of Paris on issues related to race, punishment, immigration, and the law, and has taught at San Quentin through the Prison University Project, the only college-degree granting program at a state prison in California.
Moderator
Claire Messud is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (Fiction) in the English Department at Harvard. The author of numerous novels, most recently "The Burning Girl" (2017), she writes regularly for The New York Review of Books and the New York Times Book Review.
CONTACT INFO humcentr@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS A discussion with novelist and Emmy-nominated screenwriter Richard Price, Harvard School of Education Urban Scholar and teacher in CASES’ HSE program Edyson Julio, and author and legal scholar Michelle Kuo, moderated by novelist Claire Messud.
Free and open to the public. Seating is limited.
LINK http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/words-say-it-teaching-writing-and-incarceration
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Autonomous Vehicle Research at MIT with Lex Fridman
Wednesday, October 25
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Thales, 125 High Street, 3rd Floor, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/autonomous-vehicle-research-at-mit-with-lex-fridman-tickets-38510294327
Join us to learn about the latest research on autonomous vehicles at MIT by esteemed researcher and lecturer, Lex Fridman. A more specific topic may be provided as we get closer to the event. Event organized by the Boston Self Driving Cars Meetup group.
AGENDA:
6:00p - 6:30p: Food, soft drinks, and networking
6:30p - 6:35p: Announcements and updates
6:35p - 6:45p: Brief presentation from our sponsor, Thales
6:45p - 7:45p: Autonomous Vehicle Research at MIT by Lex Fridman
7:45p - 8:00p: Networking
SPEAKER BIO:
Lex Fridman is a researcher at MIT, developing and applying new computer vision and deep learning approaches in the context of self-driving cars with a human-in-the-loop. He works with large-scale, real-world data, with the goal of building intelligent systems that have real-world impact.
Lex received his BS, MS, and PhD from Drexel University where he worked on applications of machine learning, computer vision, and decision fusion techniques in a number of fields including robotics, active authentication, activity recognition, and optimal resource allocation on multi-commodity networks.
Before joining MIT, he was at Google working on machine learning and decision fusion methods for large-scale behavior-based authentication.
Earlier this year, he taught the MIT 6.S094: Deep Learning for Self-Driving Cars course, which can be accessed at http://selfdrivingcars.mit.edu/.
His team also received the Best Paper Award (<1 2017="" at="" be="" can="" chi="" driver="" for="" from="" glances:="" glances="" of="" on="" predicted="" seconds="" six="" span="" their="" what="" work="">
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What Mathematicians Reveal about Gerrymandering
Wednesday, October 25
6:30 PM
Belmont Media Center, 9 Lexington Street, Belmont
Justin Solomon, Ph.D., X-Consortium Career Development Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science; Principal investigator, Geometric Data Processing Group; Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group.
Dr. Solomon's broad mathematical expertise includes the investigation of mathematical processes in major civic concerns --specifically, gerrymandering. He is the Principal Investigator for the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group (MGGG), a Boston-based team of mathematicians headed by Moon Duchin of Tufts University. The mission of MGGG is to study applications of geometry and computing to U.S. redistricting --i.e., gerrymandering. The MGGG views this restructuring of voting districts as a fundamental threat to our democracy. This is welcome attention from the scientific academic community to a major issue in America today. Dr. Solomon discusses how the gerrymander distorts the voting population to favor one group of voters over others. Today, mathematicians have the tools to analyze the gerrymander and recommend more equitable structuring of voting districts. This effort is an outstanding demonstration of mathematicians representing the public interest. Dr. Solomon's discussion is of great importance at this time and we will likely hear much more about this group (MGGG) in the future.
More information at http://www.scienceforthepublic.org/coming-events/oct-25-what-mathematicians-reveal-about-gerrymandering
The Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group is at https://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/
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I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street
Wednesday, October 25
7:00 PM (Doors at 6:30 )
First Parish Church, 1446 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Cost: $5 - $28.75 (online only, book included) - On Sale Now
Harvard Book Store welcomes bestselling author and journalist MATT TAIBBI for a discussion of his latest book, I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street. He will be joined in conversation by ROBIN YOUNG, the Peabody Award–winning host of NPR's Here & Now.
About I Can't Breathe
On July 17, 2014, a forty-three-year-old black man named Eric Garner died on a Staten Island sidewalk after a police officer put him in what has been described as an illegal chokehold during an arrest for selling bootleg cigarettes. The final moments of Garner’s life were captured on video and seen by millions. His agonized last words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for the nascent Black Lives Matter protest movement. A grand jury ultimately declined to indict the officer who wrestled Garner to the pavement.
Matt Taibbi’s deeply reported retelling of these events liberates Eric Garner from the abstractions of newspaper accounts and lets us see the man in full—with all his flaws and contradictions intact. A husband and father with a complicated personal history, Garner was neither villain nor victim, but a fiercely proud individual determined to do the best he could for his family, bedeviled by bad luck, and ultimately subdued by forces beyond his control.
In America, no miscarriage of justice exists in isolation, of course, and in I Can’t Breathe Taibbi also examines the conditions that made this tragedy possible. Featuring vivid vignettes of life on the street and inside our Kafkaesque court system, Taibbi’s kaleidoscopic account illuminates issues around policing, mass incarceration, the underground economy, and racial disparity in law enforcement. No one emerges unsullied, from the conservative district attorney who half-heartedly prosecutes the case to the progressive mayor caught between the demands of outraged activists and the foot-dragging of recalcitrant police officials.
A masterly narrative of urban America and a scathing indictment of the perverse incentives built into our penal system, I Can’t Breathe drills down into the particulars of one case to confront us with the human cost of our broken approach to dispensing criminal justice.
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Economics for the Common Good
Wednesday, October 25
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes Nobel Prize–winning economist JEAN TIROLE for a discussion of his latest book, Economics for the Common Good.
About Economics for the Common Good
When Jean Tirole won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics, he suddenly found himself being stopped in the street by complete strangers and asked to comment on issues of the day, no matter how distant from his own areas of research. His transformation from academic economist to public intellectual prompted him to reflect further on the role economists and their discipline play in society. The result is Economics for the Common Good, a passionate manifesto for a world in which economics, far from being a "dismal science," is a positive force for the common good.
Economists are rewarded for writing technical papers in scholarly journals, not joining in public debates. But Tirole says we urgently need economists to engage with the many challenges facing society, helping to identify our key objectives and the tools needed to meet them.
To show how economics can help us realize the common good, Tirole shares his insights on a broad array of questions affecting our everyday lives and the future of our society, including global warming, unemployment, the post-2008 global financial order, the euro crisis, the digital revolution, innovation, and the proper balance between the free market and regulation.
Providing a rich account of how economics can benefit everyone, Economics for the Common Good sets a new agenda for the role of economics in society.
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The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World
Wednesday October 2
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
New York Times bestselling author and neuroscientist David Eagleman teams up with composer Anthony Brandt in this powerful, wide-ranging exploration of human creativity. Together, they incisively explore how individuals, organizations, and educational institutions can benefit from fostering creativity, while celebrating humanity’s unique ability to remake the world.
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Here Comes the Sun: Harnessing the power of renewable energy
Wednesday, October 25
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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Building Boston 2030 Series: Is Climate Change Flooding Boston's Future?
Wednesday, October 25
7:45 AM – 9:45 AM EDT
Modern Theatre at Suffolk University, 525 Washington Street, Boston
According to the Climate Ready Boston Report, Boston has experienced 21 weather-related events that have triggered federal or state disaster declarations since 1991. How does climate change affect Boston’s future? Come and explore with experts the future impact of extreme heat, stormwater flooding, as well as coastal and riverine flooding for greater Boston.
Co-sponsored by the Greater Boston Real Estate Board and the Center for Real Estate at Suffolk University.
Panelists:
Bill Golden, National Institute for Coastal & Harbor Infrastructure
Kathy Abbott, President & CEO, Boston Harbor Now
Additional Panelists to be announced shortly!
Moderated by: Peter Howe, Denterlein
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Thursday, October 26 - Saturday, October 28
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Boston Book Festival
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Thursday, October 26
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Housatonic river cleanup: 20+ years
Thursday, October 26
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Jim Murphy, Leader of the Intergovernmental Relations and Community Involvement Team, Environmental Protection Agency
From 1932 through 1977, General Electric manufactured and serviced electrical transformers containing toxic, now banned, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Industrial chemical use and improper disposal led to extensive contamination around Pittsfield, MA as well as down the entire length of the Housatonic River, which runs from Massachussets to the Long Island Sound. After decades of cleaning efforts, EPA issued a $613 million Proposed Cleanup Plan in 2014 requiring GE to excavate most of the contaminated soil and transport it to an approved out of state location. This has resulting in an ongoing dispute between EPA and GE.
Jim Murphy is currently the Leader of the Intergovernmental Relations and Community
Involvement Team at EPA’s New England regional office in Boston. Over the past 20 years, Jim has worked on more than 70 Superfund and Emergency Response sites across New England including the GE-Pittsfield Housatonic River Site in western Massachusetts. Prior to coming to EPA in 1997, Jim directed the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program at a Boston area non-profit for eight years and served as Chair of the Massachusetts Energy Directors’ Association. He worked as a civil rights and community organizer in North Carolina for five years during the 1970s, as director of the Connecticut Council of Senior Citizens, and as a congressional staff member for U.S. Congressman Bruce Morrison in New Haven, CT during the 1980s.
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Power through Influence: Understanding Great Power Competition in the Contemporary World
WHEN Thursday, Oct. 26, 2017, 12:15 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, One Brattle Square, Room 350, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR International Security Program
SPEAKER(S) Mathias Ormestad Frendem, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, International Security Program
CONTACT INFO susan_lynch@harvard.edu
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Colorado’s Low-Income Community Solar Demonstration Project
Thursday, October 26
1-2:15pm ET
Webinar
In 2015, the Colorado Energy Office launched the Low-Income Community Solar Demonstration Project to develop community solar projects for low-income residents. The project provides over 1 MW of electricity and serves over 300 low-income Coloradans. On this webinar, representatives from the Colorado Energy Office, Lotus Engineering and Sustainability, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Solar Technical Assistance Team (STAT) will describe and evaluate the Low-Income Community Solar Demonstration Project.
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
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A Brief History on the Last 20 years of Educational Data Mining: A Personal Perspective
Thursday, October 26
2:50pm - 4:00pm
Tufts, Halligan 102, 161 College Avenue, Medford
Speaker: Neil Heffernan, WPI
Abstract
Personalizing education has emerged as a popular topic in recent years. Mark Zuckerberg's foundation, for instance, is devoting large sums of money toward incorporating personalized instruction and pacing into the educational experience. Intuitively, if a human or computer instructor thinks that a student knows a particular topic, then the student should be allowed to progress to learn new topics. The question here then becomes how this estimation of knowledge is made. How can researchers, developers, and administrators operationalize student knowledge (i.e. the ‘if a student knows a particular topic' aspect of the problem)? The field of educational data mining, including a large society of over 200 scientists, has focused on this problem for the last 20+ years. The field now has a thriving journal and an annual conference that has just met for its 10th consecutive year. In 2010, the KDD Cup Competition raised a great deal of interest in predicting student knowledge as individuals and teams competed to win prizes over whose algorithms could best predict what is now termed “Next Problem Correctness” (NPC); given a student history of problem correctness over time, the task is to predict whether the student will answer the next problem correctly. In the past decade, a large number of papers have explored how best to do this prediction using a variety of techniques including Random Forests, Bayesian Networks, Logistic Regression-based techniques, and several others. Some of these approaches have even attempted to personalize the predictions, investigating the use of techniques such as clustering or through learning individualized latent attributes such as prior knowledge and learning rates. Most recently, Deep Learning techniques have been applied to the task as well. In this talk I will give a personal history of this research area with which I have remained actively involved. I will talk about what we have learned as a field, and I will also discuss what I believe the new agenda needs to be, as predicting NPC has serious limitations and has waned in its usefulness to the field. In particular, I suggest that the EDM community needs to focus on how to act to benefit students in a personalized manner; if ‘personalization’ means anything, a system should be able to decide what to give each student (i.e. what assistance to provide) to most benefit that student. Toward achieving this goal, we, as a field, need to run Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) that compare different instructional messages and analyze them with the latest state-of-the-art techniques to determine which types of instruction work best for each individual student. I will talk about a recent attempt my graduate student and I have made to apply Deep Learning to predict the results of 22 experiments conducted inside of ASSISTments, a web-based tutoring system used by 50,000 kids to do their homework. Lastly, I will end with shared conversation about how we are further using reinforcement learning (i.e. bandit algorithms) to attack these problems. While accurate predictions are presumably an important step toward doing so, I will posit that if our field is going to achieve our lofty goals we will need to not just PREDICT but to take ACTION.
Bio
Since 2002 Neil Heffernan has been a Professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the Computer Science Department. He taught middle school math and science in the Teach for America program in Baltimore where he met his soon to be be spouse, Cristina. When he got into CMU's PhD program in computer science he knew he would be building educational technology to help school teachers. Cristina and Neil created the ASSISTments, a platform used by 50,000 across the United States for daily classwork and nightly homework. In 1997 he had a seizure and was told he had brain cancer and only had 2-3 years to live; this helped motivate giving away this platform as a free public service. In October of 2016 an objective independent research organization, SRI International, published a peer-review journal article reporting that ASSISTments caused students to learn 75% more on a standardized test of math achievement, compared to what they would have learned in a typical school year. In December of 2016 Cristina and Neil were invited to present at the White House on ASSISTments. Neil has written 60+ papers on learner analytics (using data to predict some outcome in education) and over two dozens papers reporting the results on randomized controlled trials. Neil served as Program Chair for AIED 2015. For the AIED society Neil wants to make sure we have an inclusive society open to all forms of research on smarter educational software. Despite AIED's name, "Where is the AI?" is not a useful criterion in reviewing papers. Alternatively he asks "Can this research help make smarter, more effective experiences for teachers and children?"
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FOODTECH CONNECT 2017
Thursday, October 26
2:59 PM - 8:30 PM
Venture Cafe at Cambridge Innovation Center, 5th floor, 1 Broadway, Cambridge
Save the date for Venture Cafe’s FoodTech Connect mini-conference, “Boston’s Recipe for Food Innovation”, taking place on October 26, 2017. Come prepared to not only hear the best ideas and see the latest technologies but also to participate in building Boston’s food & beverage innovation.
Please visit http://vencaf.org/foodtechconnect/ for opportunities to participate and additional details about this event.
About Venture Café Kendall
Venture Café opens its doors to the entrepreneurial, innovation, and creative communities around Greater Boston every Thursday. Mix and mingle with fellow entrepreneurs, find serendipitous connections, get advice and feedback during office hours, and attend entrepreneurship- and innovation-focused events.
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Biological Engineering Seminar: Bringing Bioelectricity to Light
Thursday, October 26
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 32-141, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Adam E. Cohen, Harvard University
For more information about this event, please contact:
617-253-1712 or be-acad@mit.edu
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Economics for the Common Good
Thursday, October 26
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, 4-270, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Professor Tirole will discuss selected topics in his new book, Economics for the Common Good, which explores how economics can be applied to enrich civil discourse and to guide public policies that bear on some of society's most challenging questions, including climate change, the emerging digital economy, and promoting long-term economic growth.
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Cloud Policy: Anatomy of a Regulatory Crisis
Thursday, October 26
5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
MIT, Building 56-114, Access via 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Jennifer Holt, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jennifer Holt examines the legal and cultural crises surrounding the regulation of data in “the cloud.” The complex landscape of laws and policies governing digital data are currently rife with unresolvable conflicts. The challenges of distributing and protecting digital data in a policy landscape that is simultaneously local, national, and global have created problems that often defy legal paradigms, national boundaries, and traditional geographies of control. She examines these challenges with an eye towards their shared histories with obscene phone calls, wiretapping organized crime figures, the PATRIOT Act, Facebook, and the battles over net neutrality. Ultimately, these intertwined histories of policies related to privacy, data security, and digital freedoms become most instructive when they are brought to bear on the current regulatory crisis, revealing the growing stakes for the digital futures of culture, information, and citizenship.
Jennifer Holt is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Empires of Entertainment and co-editor of Distribution Revolution; Connected Viewing; and Media Industries: History, Theory, Method. She is currently writing a monograph about the history of US digital media policies. She is also a co-founder of the Media Industries journal.
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Boston Energy Mixer
Thursday, October 26
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
MIT, Forbes Family Café, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
RSVP athttps://www.eventbrite.com/e/boston-energy-mixer-tickets-38477596527
The Boston Energy Mixer is a great chance to meet fellow undergraduates in energy clubs at other schools across the Boston area. Come to network and discuss the status of energy in the US and in the world.
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Artificial Intelligence: Beyond the Hype & Headlines
Thursday, October 26
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
District Hall, 75 Northern Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/artificial-intelligence-beyond-the-hype-headlines-tickets-38308859831
LEWIS invites you to…
Artificial Intelligence: Beyond the Hype & Headlines
Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) overhyped? That’s a question a panel of media and AI experts will tackle as they take on one of the most talked about topics in the tech industry today.
This informative conversation will touch on a wide-range of themes including:
AI’s impact on the future of work
The challenges with government regulation
The societal impact of robots – our emotional feelings for them and how that might impact future relationships, how culture affects our views of robots
Where AI is poised to make the most impact – from self-driving cars to advancements in medicine
As AI continues to emerge from science fiction to everyday life, this panel will try to make sense of a world that is rapidly becoming more automated, and a market projected to reach $70 billion by 2020.
Moderator:
Sam Whitmore – Editor, Sam Whitmore's Media Survey
Panelists:
Joelle Renstrom – Freelance science/tech writer, robot columnist at the Daily Beast and professor at Boston University
Mike Farrell – Senior Managing Editor at Northeastern University and Re:vision Magazine; former Boston Globe tech reporter
Mike Gualtieri – VP & Principal Analyst covering artificial intelligence and advanced analytics at Forrester Research
Paul Hsiao – General partner and co-founder at Canvas Ventures
Schedule:
6:30 p.m. - 7 p.m. – Drinks & hors d'oeuvres
7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. – Panel discussion followed by audience Q&A
Admission is free. Space is limited. For more information, contact usmarketing@teamlewis.com.
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A Brief History of Environmental Successes
Thursday, October 26
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Simons IMAX Theatre New England Aquarium, One Aquarium Wharf, Boston
Susan Solomon, Ph.D., Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This is the seventh annual John H. Carlson Lecture, presented by Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lorenz Center and the New England Aquarium.
Humans have faced a series of national and global environmental challenges in the past half-century, including smog, the use of lead in gasoline, ozone depletion, and many others. Dr. Susan Solomon reveals how combinations of science, public policy, industry participation, and the engagement of citizens succeeded in addressing past environmental challenges. Solomon also probes how the lessons learned help us understand how to better manage today’s environmental problems, including climate change.
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Raising Resilience: The Wisdom and Science of Happy Families and Thriving Children
Thursday, October 26
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
In every spiritual tradition, we find teachings on the virtues and qualities that we most want to pass on to our kids--such as generosity, kindness, honesty, determination, and patience. Today, a growing body of research from neuroscience and social psychology supports these teachings, offering insights into cultivating these virtues in ourselves and in our families. Raising Resilience is a practical guide for parents and educators of children from preschool through adolescence, detailing ten universal principles for happy families and thriving children.
Bridging the latest science with Eastern wisdom to explore ourselves and share with our children, Dr. Christopher Willard offers a wealth of teachings on:
Getting through Giving--the many types of generosity we can model for kids, and the fascinating new findings on the power of giving:
Why Doing the Right Thing Is the Right Thing to Do--living in harmony with oneself, one's family, and one's community
Less is More Parenting--how letting go of what's no longer necessary creates space, freedom, and the possibility for something new
Building a Wiser Brain--three types of wisdom and how to steer kids' "under-construction" minds toward wise action
Even the Buddha Had Helicopter Parents--releasing anxiety about over- or under-parenting and the desire for the "perfect" family
The Buddha and the Marshmallow--patience in spirituality and science, including practices to strengthen patience in yourself and your children
What Sets Us Free--how truthfulness and honest behavior create safety and freedom for everyone
Growing Up with a Grit and Growth Mindset--the best ways to encourage resilience and determination through reinforcing and rewarding the "growth mindset"
The Kindness Contagion--cultivating lovingkindness, compassion, and empathy
Finding Balance in a Broken World and Staying Steady through the Stress--how to abide life's inevitable ups and downs through the attitude of equanimity
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Data Provenance: From Theory to Practice
Thursday, October 26
7:00pm to 9:00pm
MIT, Building 32-G449: Kiva conference room, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
There seems to be wide spread agreement that data provenance, the history of how a digital artifact came to be in its present state, is important. There also seems to be a great deal of activity in the research community about data provenance: how to collect it, how to represent it, how to store it, and how to query it. Given this apparent meeting of he minds, why then do we not have seamlessly integrated provenance systems? I'll present a brief, and undoubtedly biased, history of what the research community has been up to in this domain and then talk about the obstacles to wide spread adoption. Finally, I'll wrap up with some suggestions about how we might
bring theory and practice closer together in this important domain.
Margo I. Seltzer is Herchel Smith Professor of Computer Science and the Faculty Director for the Center for Research on Computation and Society in Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Her research interests are in systems, construed quite broadly: systems for capturing and accessing provenance, file systems, databases, transaction processing systems, storage and analysis of graph-structured data, new architectures for parallelizing execution, and systems that apply technology to problems in healthcare.
She is the author of several widely-used software packages including
database and transaction libraries and the 4.4BSD log-structured file
system. Dr. Seltzer was a founder and CTO of Sleepycat Software, the makers of Berkeley DB, and is now an Architect at Oracle Corporation. She was the USENIX representative to the Computing Research Association Board of Directors and a past President of the USENIX Association. She is a Sloan Foundation Fellow in Computer Science, an ACM Fellow, a Bunting Fellow, and was the recipient of the 1996 Radcliffe Junior Faculty Fellowship. She is recognized as an outstanding teacher and mentor, having received the Phi Beta Kappa teaching award in 1996, the Abrahmson Teaching Award in 1999,
and the Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising in 2010.
Dr. Seltzer received an A.B. degree in Applied Mathematics from
Harvard/Radcliffe College in 1983 and a Ph. D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1992.
This joint meeting of the Boston Chapter of the IEEE Computer Society and GBC/ACM will be held in MIT Room 32-G449 (the Kiva conference room on the 4th floor of the Stata Center, buildng 32 on MIT maps) . You can see it on this map of the MIT campus.
Up-to-date information about this and other talks is available online at http://ewh.ieee.org/r1/boston/computer/. You can sign up to receive updated status information about this talk and informational emails about future talks at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/ieee-cs, our self-administered mailing list.
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Friday, October 27, 7:00 PM – Saturday, October 28, 5:00 PM
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Disrupting the Human Trafficking-Migration Nexus Workshop
Friday, October 27,7:00 PM – Saturday, October 28, 5:00 PM EDT
Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, 121 Bay State Road, Boston
On October 27-28, FMHT will host a EU Jean Monnet Erasmus + funded interactive innovative workshop, titled Disrupting the Human Trafficking-Migration Nexus.
This workshop seeks to investigate human trafficking within a broader migration framework and propose innovative solutions to disrupt trafficking and prevent humanitarian and labour right violations. We will address this from multiple perspectives, including policy, activism, and research.
By bringing together academics, practitioners, local, national, and regional policymakers, NGOs, advocates, students, first person observers, and survivors, we are interested in convening to discuss the convergence of trafficking and migration, with a particular focus on innovation that disrupts exploitation markets of vulnerable and displaced refugees.
Prospective attendees include notable representatives from: UNHCR, UNICEF, Council of Europe (GRETA), Microsoft, MSF, ICMPD, and the IOM - in addition to academics, human rights lawyers, students, and local practitioners from the Boston area.
Broadly, the structure of the conference will be centered upon three themes:
Legal Challenges – Prevention, Prosecution, and Protection
Private Sector Solutions – Combatting Human Trafficking with Data Analytics and Disruptive Technologies
Exploring the Intersectionality of Human Trafficking and Migration – Recommendations for Future Policy & Research
In addition to the core roundtable discussions, there will be breakout panels featuring a variety of presentations, papers, technological solutions, and innovative approaches. The FMHT Initiative will publish the contributions in two formats: a conference policy report and an academic symposium publication.
For more information please go to http://mailchi.mp/86f30c047faf/disrupting-the-human-trafficking-migration-nexus-workshop-1008909
In addition to the European Commission, our co-sponsors include: The Center for the Study of Europe, African Studies Center, Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations, Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs at Boston University (CURA), Initiative on Cities (IOC), BUzz Lab, Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, Global Programs, and the Boston Consortium for Arab Regional Studies (BCARS).
Please save the date and join us on October 27-28, 2017.
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Friday, October 27
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2017 AAPI Civil Rights Forum
Friday, October 27
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM EDT
Federal Reserve Plaza, 600 Atlantic Avenue, Boston
The annual Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Civil Rights Forum aims to advance the presence of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the Northeastern region, both in numbers and in prominence. To achieve this mission, this forum will provide the community with a broad range of learning experiences towards advancing AAPI civil rights and liberties, which are often overlooked within the national narrative. Additionally, this forum aims to foster a network of advocates who will work together to raise awareness and further the interests of the AAPI community.
We welcome you to join us in an open discussion of Asian American and Pacific Islanders’ civil rights with resource speakers.
Registration ends on 10/13 @ 11:59pm.
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From Ecology of Marine Microbes to a Biotech Startup Combating Antibiotic Resistance
Friday, October 27
8:30AM TO 9:30AM
Harvard, Museum building classroom 375 (formerly Room 310), 24 Oxford Street, 3rd floor, Cambridge
with Kwangmin Son, Co-founder and CEO of PhAST. Coffee, tea, and pastries will be served.
MSI Chalk Talk
Contact Name: Scott Chimileski
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Contagion: Exploring Modern Epidemics
WHEN Friday, Oct. 27, 2017, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Conferences, Health Sciences, Lecture, Science, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS Epidemic disease spreads quickly in our interconnected, globalized world. This symposium looks at new ways of tracking epidemics using big data and social networks to predict and stem the rise of emergent diseases.
From Ebola to SARS to the more recently recognized social epidemics of the opioid crisis and gun violence, this event assembles epidemiologists, journalists, physicians, public officials, scientists, and sociologists to discuss their cutting-edge research, prediction mechanisms, and possible solutions to the range of epidemics that face our world today. Please register online and join us.
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Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
Friday, October 27
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Yan Feng, Argonne National Laboratory, will discuss her research on global and regional modeling of aerosols, clouds, and interactions with climate change, air pollution, and biogeochemical cycles.
Contact Name: Susan Forrest
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An Alternate View of the North Korea-U.S. Relationship
WHEN Friday, Oct. 27, 2017, 12:15 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, S010, Tsai Auditorium, Japan Friends of Harvard Concourse, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center; co-sponsored by the Korea Institute, Harvard University
SPEAKER(S) The Honorable Donald P. Gregg, Former Ambassador to the Republic of Korea; former National Security Advisor, former CIA officer; Chairman; Pacific Century Institute, Los Angeles; Chairman Emeritus, The Korea Society, New York City
Discussants: Professor Katharine Moon, Professor of Political Science and the Wasserman Chair of Asian Studies, Wellesley College; nonresident Senior Fellow, Center for East Asia Policy, The Brookings Institution
Dr. John Park, Director, Korea Working Group and Adjunct Lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School (HKS); Faculty Affiliate, Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, HKS
Chair: Professor Karen Thornber, Victor and William Fung Director, Harvard University Asia Center; Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and of Comparative Literature, Harvard University
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Now for a Look at the Weather Where You Are
Friday, October 27
5:00pm to 6:30pm
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Dana Tomlin
We live in a world where much of what we know about things is affected by the manner in which those things are represented in digital form. In fact, our interaction with that world itself in increasingly influenced by the manner in which it is seen through through the eyes of geospatial technology. Most of this technology still casts the world in terms of maps, and much of it does so by mapping “where” for each of a set of “whats.” The less common alternative to this feature-oriented view is a field-oriented perspective that maps “what” for each of a set of “wheres.” From this perspective, the presence of discrete objects is regarded as a quality of the space(s) they occupy, a quality not unlike distance, direction, density, intensity, likelihood, magnitude, or anything else that might vary continuously from one location to another. While that degree of generality can make it possible to address a broader range of spatial phenomena than might otherwise be possible, it can also demand a broader conceptual attitude toward those phenomena. The purpose of this presentation will be to describe and encourage that attitude.
Dana Tomlin has managed to avoid real work for several decades now by instead pursuing a hobby that was first acquired as a graduate student here in Cambridge and which has since been sustained by professorships at Harvard, Yale, Penn, and Ohio State. As designer of one of the earliest geographic information systems and originator of the Map Algebra language that is embodied in much of today’s image-processing software, Tomlin has long been an active player in this field.
MIT Department of Architecture / Fall 2017 Lecture Series
Organized by Moa Carlsson, PhD Candidate, Design & Computation Group at MIT, MIT Department of Architecture
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Pixar's Dean Kelley on Coco
Friday, October 27
5:00pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 32-123, Stata Center, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Join us for a special 1 hour behind the scenes animation presentation and Q&A with Pixar artist Dean Kelley!
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What literature can do: Literature, shame and politics
Friday, October 27
5:30pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building 2-105, 182 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Édouard Louis, author
Is literature a tool to expand our awareness and challenge society?
Or does it reinforce the existing social order and its violence?
Édouard Louis was born and raised in the town of Hallencourt in the North of France, which is the setting of his first novel En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule(published in English as The End of Eddy). His work deals with class, sexuality and violence. His two first novels were translated into more than 25 languages. He is also the editor of a scholarly work on the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and the coauthor, with the philosopher Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, of “Manifesto for an Intellectual and Political Counteroffensive”, published in English by the Los Angeles Review of Books.
The MIT Global France Seminar aims to bring together MIT faculty, instructors, and graduate students from across disciplines interested in the study of French and francophone cultures around the world. The seminar series is free and open to the public.k
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X-Position with Vadim Bolshakov: The Panic Lab
Friday, October 27
7:00 PM to 8:00 PM (EDT)
Harvard Science Center Hall E, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/x-position-with-vadim-bolshakov-the-panic-lab-tickets-38541436474
Do you love a good fright? Or, do you hide under the covers at night? What makes us love scary movies and haunted houses, and on the other hand, get a “sinking feeling” or a “skin-crawling sensation” that makes you want to turn tail and run?
Neuroscientist Dr. Vadim Bolshakov has dedicated his career to studying the mechanisms of fear. Join us as he guides us through the science behind his work and the exhilarating and horrifying feeling of FEAR.
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Saturday, October 28
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The Student Media Innovation Conference
Saturday, October 28
Where is student media headed in the digital age? How are campus publications and broadcast engaging new audiences? How are student media telling stories that lack coverage from mainstream press?
More information at http://www.storybench.org/studentmi/
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Peoples' History Walking Tour of Boston
Saturday, October 28
9:30 am
Suffolk University, Amenities Room, 73 Tremont Street, Boston
Please join the Labor Resource Center at UMASS Boston for the first James Green Memorial Lecture, featuring Patricia Reeve, to be followed by the kick-off of the walking tour.
Using James Green's "A Working People's Heritage Trail" (2001) as a point of departure, historian Cristina Groeger (Harvard, PhD) created "The People's History Walking Tour of Boston" by identifying and researching important sites, writing their histories, and putting her tour on-line so friends of labor can now follow along using their smartphones.
The event will begin with the first James Green Memorial Lecture. Patricia Reeve, a professor of history at Suffolk University, will talk about the relationship between history and the labor movement, what it means to be an activist-public historian, and reflect on various paths forward for history and the labor movement. Professor Cristina Groeger will then discuss the making of the "Peoples' History Walking Tour of Boston."
People's History Walking Tour https://peopleshistoryboston.wordpress.com/
If you have any questions, please contact Wally Soper at Wally.Soper@umb.edu
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The Green Arts Expo '17
Saturday, October 28
12pm - 4pm
Pozen Center of the Arts, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Join the Green Arts Network for their third annual Green Arts Expo! The Pozen Center will come alive with artists, social justice interest groups, free samples of eco-friendly art supply products, music, and food from sustainable sources.
This event is FREE and open to the public!
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The Glorious Future, Reception and Free outdoors screening
Saturday, October 28
7 PM - 10 PM
14 William Street, Somerville
Over the last 30+ years, about 3,000 people have learned how to ride bicycles at the Bicycle Riding School. This short documentary shows how it’s done and what it means to people who learn to ride, as well as touching on other aspects of the owner, Susan McLucas’ life.
If you’ve seen a lot of people on the bike path near Davis Sq with elbow and knee pads on, you’ve probably seen some of the students from the Bicycle Riding School.
The director, Laura Longsworth and the subject, Susan McLucas, will be at the screening and available to discuss the film or the projects described in it, after the screening.
Call Susan with questions at (617) 776-6524 or see http://GloriousFutureFilm.com
Editorial Comment: Susan is an old friend who not only teaches people to ride bicycles but has worked against female genital mutilation in Mali and around the world for many years, among other issues.
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Sunday, October 29
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Be the Change Community Action: Economic Justice
Sunday, October 29
3:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
Join Cambridge-Somerville for Change for a presentation and discussion on economic justice and Raise Up.
Learn more about Be the Change at http://www.portersquarebooks.com/announcing-be-change
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What I Found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musician’s Guide to Rebuilding America’s Communities—One Coffee Shop, Dog Run, and Open-Mike Night at a Time
Sunday, October 29
4:00 PM
Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
Cost: $5 - $28.00 (online only, book included)
Harvard Book Store welcomes folk musician, composer, and social justice advocate DAR WILLIAMS for a discussion of her latest book, What I Found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musician’s Guide to Rebuilding America’s Communities—One Coffee Shop, Dog Run, and Open-Mike Night at a Time. This event, taking place at the Brattle Theatre, is co-sponsored by Harvard Square's Club Passim.
About What I Found in a Thousand Towns
A beloved folk singer presents an impassioned account of the fall and rise of the small American towns she cherishes.
Dubbed by the New Yorker as "one of America's very best singer-songwriters," Dar Williams has made her career not in stadiums, but touring America's small towns. She has played their venues, composed in their coffee shops, and drunk in their bars. She has seen these communities struggle, but also seen them thrive in the face of postindustrial identity crises.
Here, Williams muses on why some towns flourish while others fail, examining elements from the significance of history and nature to the uniting power of public spaces and food. Drawing on her own travels and the work of urban theorists, Williams offers real solutions to rebuild declining communities.
What I Found in a Thousand Towns is more than a love letter to America's small towns, it's a deeply personal and hopeful message about the potential of America's lively and resilient communities.
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Monday, October 30 – Tuesday, October 31
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MIT Legal Forum on AI & Blockchain
Monday, October 30, 8:30 AM – Tuesday, October 31, 4:00 PM EDT
MIT Media Lab, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
About the Event: The inaugural MIT Legal Forum on AI & Blockchain mission is to provide a forum for legal scholars, practitioners, technologists and business professionals to (A) discuss the current and likely future impact of AI and blockchain technologies on the law, and (B) develop an initial framework for the evaluation, prioritization and practical application of AI and blockchain technologies to the law.
Register through this EventBrite page to receive email invitations with links to live streams and Twitter hashtags for plenary sessions and panel discussions of the MIT Legal Forum. To be a full online or in-person conference contributor in MIT Legal Forum breakout groups, workshops, learning sessions and other activities request an invitation through this Google Form: https://goo.gl/forms/unO3Do94Mi04bItH2
For more information on Legal Forum speakers, topics and activities check out: http://MITLegalForum.org
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Monday, October 30
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PAOC Colloquium: Nathan Steiger (LDEO)
Monday, October 30
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923,21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
Nathan John Steiger is a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. His work engages the fundamental problem of understanding the historical variability of the climate system and its relevance to human societies. In particular, he conducts research on the physical mechanisms of severe droughts as well as Arctic and Antarctic climate variability.
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HouseZero: A First-of-its-kind, Ultra-efficient Retrofit
Monday, October 30
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Ali Malkawi, Professor of Architectural Technology and Founding Director of the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities.
Energy Policy Seminar
Lunch is provided.
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
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How Much Poison is Too Much? Calculating Hazard in International Nutrition Programs and Commodity Trade
Monday, October 30
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, Room 100F, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
with Lucas Mueller (MIT HASTS).
The STS Circle at Harvard is a group of doctoral students and recent PhDs who are interested in creating a space for interdisciplinary conversations about contemporary issues in science and technology that are relevant to people in fields such as anthropology, history of science, sociology, STS, law, government, public policy, and the natural sciences. We want to engage not only those who are working on intersections of science, politics, and public policy, but also those in the natural sciences, engineering, and architecture who have serious interest in exploring these areas together with social scientists and humanists.
There has been growing interest among graduate students and postdocs at Harvard in more systematic discussions related to STS. More and more dissertation writers and recent graduates find themselves working on exciting topics that intersect with STS at the edges of their respective home disciplines, and they are asking questions that often require new analytic tools that the conventional disciplines don’t necessarily offer. They would also like wider exposure to emerging STS scholarship that is not well-represented or organized at most universities, including Harvard. Our aim is to try to serve those interests through a series of activities throughout the academic year.
Sandwich lunch is provided. RSVP required.
STS Circle at Harvard
The Harvard STS Circle is co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
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Responsive Science: A Path towards faster, safer, community-guided research
Monday, October 30
4pm
MIT, Building E51, Wong Auditorium, Tang Center, 2 Amherst Street, (70 Memorial Drive), Cambridge
Kevin Esvelt, Leading Sculpting Evolution Group, Assistant Professor, MIT Media Lab
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Colonization Road - Film Screening
WHEN Monday, Oct. 30, 2017, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Doris and Ted Lee Gathering Room (SO30, concourse level), CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Film, Humanities, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Canada Program, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Harvard University Native American Program
SPEAKER(S) Ryan McMahon, Anishinaabe comedian, filmmaker, community activator
COST free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO canada@wcfia.harvard.edu
DETAILS
FILM SCREENING
COLONIZATION ROAD
In conversation with RYAN McMAHON, Anishinaabe comedian, writer, media make, and community activist
Brief reception to follow.
Cosponsored by the Graduate School of Design and in collaboration with the Harvard University Native American Program
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The Decline of International and European Rule of Law
WHEN Monday, Oct. 30, 2017, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Center for European Studies, 27 Kirkland Street, Hoffmann Room, Adolphus Busch Hall at Cabot Way, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Center for European Studies
SPEAKER(S) Georg Nolte
Chairman UN's International Law Commission; Chair: José Manuel Martinez Sierra
Jean Monnet ad Personam Professor in EU Law and Government;
CONTACT INFO José Manuel Martinez Sierra
LINK https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/events/2017/10/the-decline-of-the-international-and-european-rule-of-law
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Tuesday, October 31
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Short stories in genomics and environmental health: Bernardo Lemos, PhD, Assistant Professor of Environmental Epigenetics, MIPS, HSPH
WHEN Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017, 9:30 – 10:30 a.m.
WHERE HSPH Bldg I, Rm 1302, 665 Huntington Avenue, Boston
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SolarWakeup Live! Boston
Tuesday, October 31
1:00 PM – 6:00 PM EDT
CIC Cambridge - Havana Room, 1 Broadway, Cambridge
Cost: $75
SolarWakeup Live! Boston will feature four (4) in-depth conversations about the local solar startup eco-system, venture capital and the new SMART solar program. We will also be speaking about the pending 201 petition issue as the news come out of the ITC hearing in Washington DC. Bringing together the market participants and leaders to engage in a discussion about growing solar in Massachusetts. All interviews are hosted by Yann Brandt, the editor of the daily SolarWakeup newsletter.
Speakers and Topics Include
Senator Joseph Boncore, representing First Suffolk and Middlesex, is the sponsor of S. 1824 which raises the net metering caps and expands the solar market in MA.
Michael Judge, Director of RE at MA DOER, about the departments work on the upcoming SMART program, how it was designed and will be implemented.
Daniel Hullah, Managing Director at GE Ventures, about corporate venture capital, technology and the best way for startups to attract capital.
Jon Abe, CEO at SunWealth, about how to finance small C&I solar projects and raising money through their social impact funds.
Limited number of sponsorships are available and tickets will sell out very quickly.
The event is co-hosted by CIC Cambridge, for which we are very grateful.
Speaker Bios:
Michael Judge, Director of Renewable Energy at DOER
Michael Judge has served as the Director of the Renewable and Alternative Energy Division at the Department of Energy Resources (DOER) since 2015. As Director, Michael manages the Division as it designs and implements renewable and alternative energy policy and programs for the Commonwealth. Before his appointment as Director, he served in various other roles at DOER, primarily related to the management of the state’s RPS and solar programs. Prior to his time at DOER, he worked at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center on the implementation and administration of its solar rebate programs. He is a graduate of UMass Amherst.
Daniel Hullah, Managing Director at GE Ventures
Daniel joined GE Ventures’ Boston office as a Managing Director in 2016, and is focused on in investing in the energy and industrial IoT sectors. He has spent the past 11 years as a venture capital investor as a Partner at RockPort Capital and most recently as Director, Ventures at National Grid in Waltham, MA. He also worked for RePower, a RockPort portfolio company in the residential solar space. He has led investments across the sector including solar, energy efficiency, power electronics, agricultural biotechnology, and energy storage. Daniel grew up in the UK and has a BA in Chemistry and a D.Phil in Physical Chemistry from the University of Oxford and an MBA from INSEAD. He lives in Somerville, MA with his wife and three boys.
Jon Abe, CEO of SunWealth
Jon is CEO and Founder of Sunwealth, which specializes in financing and managing commercial solar projects across the U.S. Jon is a clean energy executive, project developer, financier, and asset manager with deep commercial scale transaction experience. Previously, Jon was a Senior Vice President at Nexamp, where he served as the head of business development, asset management, and policy. At Nexamp, Jon supported the development and financing of more than 40 MW of commercial-scale solar projects. He was also General Manager of Nexamp Capital, which controlled a diverse portfolio of solar assets. Additionally, Jon worked for the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust where he developed and managed the $68 million Commonwealth Solar program. Jon holds a BA from Cornell University.
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Waste Alliance Lecture Series: Sanergy
Tuesday, October 31
3:00pm
MIT, E40-163, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, One Amherst Street, Cambridge
David Auerbach is a co-founder of Sanergy, a social enterprise incubated at MIT and then launched in Nairobi, Kenya in 2011. Sanergy provides safe sanitation services for residents of urban slums and quality agricultural inputs for farmers. David will be visiting from Nairobi, and so come hear Sanergy's founding story, updates on its growth, future plans, and their opportunities for students!
Want to learn more? Check them out at saner.gy
This event is brought to you by the MIT Waste Alliance and the Sloan Entrepreneurs for International Development (SEID), with support from the GSC Funding Board.
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"Said Negro has been guilty of theft and many misdemeanors”: Fugitive Slave Advertisements as Imperial Infrastructure in late Eighteenth- and early Nineteenth-Century Canada and Jamaica”
WHEN Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017, 6 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street, Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Seminar on Cultural Politics, Chair: Professor Panagiotis Roilos
SPEAKER(S) Charmaine A. Nelson, William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies, Canada Program. Professor of Art History, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
CONTACT INFO Ilana Freedman (ifreedman@g.harvard.edu)
DETAILS Found throughout the Transatlantic World, fugitive slave advertisements demonstrate the ubiquity of African resistance to slavery. Produced by white slave owners seeking to recapture their runaways, standardized icons of enslaved males and females became a staple of such print advertisements. However, the more complex textual descriptions were also fundamentally visual and arguably comprise an archive of unauthorized “portraits” that have sadly come to stand as “the most detailed descriptions of the bodies of enslaved African Americans available.” (Graham White and Shane White, 1995, p. 49). Besides noting things like names, speech, accents, language, and skills, fugitive notices frequently recounted the dress (hairstyles, adornment, clothing etc.), branding, scarification, mannerisms, physical habits, and even the gestures and expressions of runaways. Recalling fugitive slave advertisements as a form of visual culture, this paper positions them as one part of the colonial infrastructure and network (including slave owners, printers, and jailers) that sustained the racialized distinction between free and unfree populations. This paper shall also highlight the ways in which the advertisements inadvertently disclosed the ingenuity, persistence, bravery, and intelligence of the enslaved and the brutality and callousness of the enslavers; an unintended consequence which in time would be taken up by abolitionists and used against the slave owning classes.
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Terry Virts - View From Above: An Astronaut Photographs the World
Tuesday, October 31
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
A NASA astronaut and distinguished space photographer who spent more than seven months off the planet presents his astonishing aerial images of Earth, along with captivating tales of life at the edge of the atmosphere.
Astounding photographs of our world from outer space and edge-of-your-seat stories of survival in orbit--including close collegiality with Russian cosmonauts--make this a dazzling, personal account of living on the space shuttle. Few people get the experience of seeing the world from outer space--and no one has taken as many pictures of Earth from above as Terry Virts. Celebrated NASA astronaut, pilot of the space shuttle, crew member on Soyuz, and commander of the International Space Station, Virts has spent more than 200 days in space--and very few of those days went by without his reaching for his camera.
About the Author
Astronaut TERRY VIRTS grew up in Columbia, Maryland, outside of Baltimore. He wanted to be an astronaut ever since he read his first book about the Apollo missions when he was in kindergarten. He earned a bachelor of science degree in mathematics from the United States Air Force Academy in 1989, and a master of aeronautical science degree in aeronautics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Selected by NASA in 2000, he was the pilot of STS-130 mission aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. In March 2015, Virts assumed command of the International Space Station, and spent over 200 days on it. Virts is one of the stars of the new IMAX film, A Beautiful Planet, released in April 2016.
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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, November 1
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The United States and Eurasia in the Post-Post-Cold War World
Wednesday, November 1
12:00-1:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496, Pye Room, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
John Van Oudenaren
This paper will discuss ways in which the United States will or may be forced to relate to Eurasia under conditions of post-post-cold war multipolarity and the passing of illusions about liberal hegemony and an American-dominated liberal international order. The paper will reflect on past historical experience, ranging from classic American continentalism to the redefinition by Mahan, Spykman, and others of the United States as an "island" in relation to Eurasia, to U.S. interventions in the two world wars and debates during the cold war about the level of U.S. engagement required to maintain a balance of power in Eurasia. The paper will conclude with speculations about the future of the "illiberal liberal international order" and what it means for U.S. interests.
John Van Oudenaren is director of Scholarly and Educational Programs at the Library of Congress and acting director of the World Digital Library (www.wdl.org). Prior to joining the Library in 1996, he was a senior researcher at RAND in Santa Monica, California and director of RAND's European office in Delft, the Netherlands. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his A.B. in Germanic Languages and Literature from Princeton University.
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Promoting Parks as a Resource for Health
Wednesday, November 1
1–2 pm
HSPH, FXB Building, G-13, 651 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Captain Sara Newman, Director, Office of Public Health for the National Park Service will present as part of our lunch-time Sustainability Leadership Series.
Lunch provided.
About the Sustainability Leadership Series:
This fall, the Center for Health and the Global Environment in partnership with the Harvard Office for Sustainability will be hosting a 4-part Sustainability for Health Leadership Series. Beginning on October 11, and running through November 1, this speaker series will introduce attendees to pressing issues and opportunities faced by cutting-edge business leaders that navigate the intersection of industry, government, public health and sustainability. Join us to hear about the importance of making the connection between people, their health, and their surroundings.
Oct 18 - Liz York, Associate Director of Quality and Sustainability at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Oct 25 - Ory Zik, Co-founder & Executive Director, Greenometry
Nov 1 - Captain Sara Newman, Director, Office of Public Health, National Park Service
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Does Neighborhood-Scale Urban Form Influence Non-Motorized Transport in China? Toward Walkable Low-Carbon Cities
Wednesday, November 1
3:30PM TO 4:45PM
Harvard, Pierce 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
The Harvard-China Project hosts Guan Chenghe, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard-China Project; Research Fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Design
China Project Seminar
Contact Name: Tiffany Chan
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Fives Scarves: Doing the Impossible—If We Can Reverse Cell Fate, Why Can’t We Redefine Success for Women?
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017, 4 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Rana Dajani, 2017-2018 Rita E. Hauser Fellow, Radcliffe Institute; Associate Professor of Biology and Biotechnology; Hashemite University (Jordan)
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS At Radcliffe, Rana Dajani is writing a book that documents—from the perspective of a female, Muslim, Arab scientist who has worked in various cultures—the challenges that women face in academia; how that varies across cultures, religions, and disciplines; and how women have dealt with these challenges in different ways. She will highlight how women’s experiences have shaped their meanings of success.
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Willingness to Pay for Clean Air in China
Wednesday, November 1
4:15PM TO 5:30PM
Harvard, Room L-382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Richard Freeman, Ran Song, Harvard University; Wenquan Liang, Jinan University; and Christopher Timmins, Duke 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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Starr Forum: Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes
Wednesday, November 1
4:30pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 10-250, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Richard Clarke, former national coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism for the United States
Discussant
Joel Brenner, former head of counterintelligence under the Director of National Intelligence for the United States
Co-sponsors: MIT Center for International Studies
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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How Could Machines Learn as Efficiently as Animals and Humans?
Wednesday, November 1
5:00pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 32-123, Kirsch Auditorium, Stata Center, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Dertouzos Distinguished Lecture by Yann LeCun:
Deep learning has caused revolutions in computer perception and natural language understanding. But almost all these successes largely use supervised learning, which requires human-annotated data. For game AI, most systems use reinforcement learning, which requires too many trials to be practical in the real world. But animals and humans seem to learn vast amounts of knowledge about how the world works through mere observation and occasional actions. Good predictive world models are an essential component of intelligent behavior: With them, one can predict outcomes and plan courses of actions. One could argue that good predictive models are the basis of "common sense", allowing us to fill in missing information: predict the future from the past and present, the past from the present, or the state of the world from noisy percepts. I will review some principles and methods for predictive learning, and discuss how they can learn hierarchical representations of the world and deal with uncertainty.
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Erik Gehring presents Trees of Boston
Wednesday, November 1
6:00pm
The MIT Press Bookstore, Building N50, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Please join us as we welcome Erik Gehring to discuss Trees of Boston: Photographing the Arnold Arboretum.
Erik Gehring is a freelance photographer who specializes in trees and natural landscapes. He lives in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston with his wife Julie and sons Carl and William. Although Erik enjoys photographing natural environments all over New England, his favorite destination is Boston’s Arnold Arboretum, and for the last ten years he has published a calendar of images taken in the Arboretum landscape entitled Trees of Boston.
Erik’s work has appeared in Yankee Magazine, AMC’s Outdoors, Northern Woodlands, the Boston Globe, the Boston Metro, the Cape Cod Times, E the Environmental Magazine, and other publications. He has shown his fine art prints at galleries throughout Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.
Erik also has lectured and taught classes at the Arboretum, the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, the Eliot School in Jamaica Plain, the Concord Art Association, the Hyde Park Art Association, and many different camera clubs throughout New England. You can visit him online at http://www.erikgehring.com
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Cass R. Sunstein - impeachment
Wednesday, November 1
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
As Benjamin Franklin famously put it, Americans have a republic, if we can keep it. Preserving the Constitution and the democratic system it supports is the public’s responsibility. One route the Constitution provides for discharging that duty—a route rarely traveled—is impeachment.
Cass R. Sunstein provides a succinct citizen’s guide to an essential tool of self-government. He illuminates the constitutional design behind impeachment and emphasizes the people’s role in holding presidents accountable. Despite intense interest in the subject, impeachment is widely misunderstood. Sunstein identifies and corrects a number of misconceptions. For example, he shows that the Constitution, not the House of Representatives, establishes grounds for impeachment, and that the president can be impeached for abuses of power that do not violate the law. Even neglect of duty counts among the “high crimes and misdemeanors” delineated in the republic’s foundational document. Sunstein describes how impeachment helps make sense of our constitutional order, particularly the framers’ controversial decision to install an empowered executive in a nation deeply fearful of kings.
About the Author: Cass R. Sunstein is Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University.
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What Genes Cannot Tell: The role of epigenetics in determining who we are
Wednesday, November 1
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, November 2
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2017 Social Innovator Encore
Thursday, November 2
8:30 am-10:00 am
Brown Rudnick, 1 Financial Center, Boston
Hear from seven of greater Boston's most innovative nonprofit leaders.
Please join us at the 2017 Social Innovator Encore for one more chance to meet the 2017 Social Innovators. Learn about the approaches these exciting nonprofit organizations are using to solve our community's toughest social issues and how you can help.
Our Social Innovators will deliver their five-minute pitches from the May Showcase with additional time for networking and conversation.
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Natural gas: Turning a dead end into an off-ramp
Thursday, November 2
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Nathan Phillips, Earth and Environment at Boston University
Natural gas has been framed as a bridge fuel to a renewable energy-based economy, but the bridge has been crossed and its time to find the offramp. In cities, there are two ways to think about winding natural gas dependency down: an orderly, gradual shift in the building sector to electrification, or a death spiral of defections from the gas grid leading to a collapse in the gas utility business. I will share an economic case for shifting toward building electrification that re-allocates an already-committed $9.5B fund for gas pipeline replacement in Massachusetts.
Nathan Phillips is a professor of Earth and Environment at Boston University, where he directs the Earth House Living Learning Community. An ecologist and tree physiologist by training, Nathan led a first-of-its-kind study in 2013 mapping
over 3,000 natural gas leaks in Boston. Gas leaks kill trees, waste money, degrade air quality and climate, and are safety hazards. This work has led to Boston and Massachusetts policy to fix the leaks.
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What's New on the Science and Policy of Solar Geoengineering?
Thursday, November 2
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room 440, MCZ, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
RSVP: Lizzie Burns, lburns@g.harvard.edu
David Keith, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics and Professor of Public Policy
Lunch provided
Solar Geoengineering Research Seminar
Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Belfer Center's Science Technology and Public Policy program.
Formal seminars are interspersed with more informal weekly reading group meetings at the same time and place to deepen members' understanding of solar geoengineering research.
Contact Name: Lizzie Burns
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Transnational Terorist Networks: The Case of Boko Haram
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017, 12 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard. Andover Hall 117, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
SPONSOR Harvard Divinity School, African and African American Studies, The Alwaleed Program, Center for African Studies, The Hutchins Center, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations
DETAILS As a part of the Islam in Africa Brown Bag Lecture Series: Critical Perspectives on the Development and Dynamics of Islam in Africa, Dr. Alexander Thurston, Assistant Professor of Teaching for African Studies Program, Georgetown University, will present a lecture entitled "Transnational Terrorist Networks: The Case of Boko Haram."
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The Ecology of Collective Behavior
Thursday, November 2
4:00PM
Harvard, Biological Labs Lecture Hall, Room 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
Deborah Gordon, Stanford University
Abstract: Like many complex biological systems, an ant colony operates without central control. Each ant responds to its interactions with other ants nearby. In the aggregate, these stochastic, dynamical networks of interaction regulate colony behavior.
Ants are extremely diverse, and species differences in collective behavior reflect relations with diverse environments. A long-term study of desert seed-eating ants shows how colonies regulate foraging activity according to food availability and humidity, and how natural selection is shaping collective behavior in current drought conditions. In the tropical arboreal turtle ant, trail systems respond to the distribution and stability of resources.
The algorithms that generate collective behavior have evolved to fit the dynamics of particular environments, including operating costs and the threat of rupture. Examples from ants provide a starting point for examining more generally the fit between the particular pattern of interaction that regulates collective behavior, and the environment in which it functions
OEB Seminar
Contact Name: Wendy Heywood
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Black Maps
Thursday, November 2
4:00PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room 440, MCZ, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
David Maisel, http://davidmaisel.com/
American photographer and visual artist David Maisel will discuss Black Maps, an ongoing multi-chaptered series of aerial photographs of environmentally impacted sites exploring the aesthetics and politics of radically human-altered environments. Selections from this series are currently on display in the Center lounge.
Natural resource extraction and its consequences are themes central to Maisel’s photographic practice for nearly thirty years. Through aerial photography, the interlinked series Black Maps, The Mining Project, and American Mine explore sites across the United States that have been radically and irretrievably transformed by open pit mining. These images encompass documentary and aesthetic perspectives in equal measure, seeking to frame and interpret issues of contemporary landscape and culture. Literally and figuratively, the Earth’s consumption is revealed.
David Maisel was a Scholar in Residence at the Getty Research Institute in 2007, and an Artist in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in 2008. He has served as a Trustee of the Headlands Center for the Arts since 2011. He has been the recipient of an Individual Artist’s Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Investing in Artists Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation. Maisel has been shortlisted for the Prix Pictet Award and the Alpert Award in the Visual Arts. He received his BA from Princeton University, and his MFA from California College of the Arts, in addition to study at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. David Maisel was born in New York City in 1961.
Contact Name: Laura Hanrahan
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Functional Hybrid Nanomaterials: From Fundamentals to Applications
Thursday, November 2
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 6-104, Chipman Room, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
The Materials Science and Engineering Seminar Series presents Professor Uli Wiesner from Cornell University, who will give his talk "Functional Hybrid Nanomaterials: From Fundamentals to Applications".
Global problems including energy conversion and storage, clean water and human health require increasingly complex, multi-component and functional materials with unprecedented control over composition, structure, and order down to the nanoscale. This talk will give examples for the rational design of novel functional hybrid nanomaterials inspired by biological examples. Discussion will include formation of self-assembled hybrid nanoparticles as well as polymer-nanoparticle self-assembly derived synthetic porous materials with amorphous, polycrystalline, and epitaxially grown single-crystal structures. Experiments will be compared to theoretical predictions to provide physical insights into formation principles. The aim of the described work is to understand the underlying fundamental chemical, thermodynamic and kinetic formation principles enabling generalization of results over a wide class of materials systems. Examples will cover the formation of hierarchical structures at equilibrium as well as via processes far away from equilibrium. Targeted applications of the prepared systems will include the development of ultrasmall fluorescent hybrid probes for nanomedicine (“Cornell dots” or “C dots”), nanostructured hybrids for energy conversion and storage devices, self-assembled asymmetric ultrafiltration membranes, as well as the formation of first self-assembled superconductors.
Refreshments will be served.
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Does the Left Have a Future?
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Michael Kazin, Professor of History, Georgetown University; Author
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS Nearly everywhere in Europe and the United States, the left is mired in crisis: its intellectuals and activists strike defensive poses and debate how to revive the fortunes of a cause whose adherents once believed they could and would shape the future.
In this talk, Kazin will discuss how this crisis occurred and reflect on how the left, both radical and liberal, might move forward again. Register online.
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Just Machine Learning
Thursday, November 2
5:00-6:30pm
Tina Eliassi-Rad, Associate Professor, Network Science Institute & College of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University
Abstract: Professor Eliassi-Rad will address the following questions: What is machine learning? Is there such a thing as just machine learning? If so, is just machine learning possible in our unjust world?
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Tooning in to Conservation
Thursday, November 2
7:00PM TO 8:30PM
Arnold Arboretum, Hunnewell Building, 125 Arborway, Boston
Tooning in to Conservation
RSVP at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277
Cost: $0 members and students, $10 nonmember
The Arnold Arboretum welcomes Rosemary Mosco, Science Communicator and Naturalist
Science and conservation are serious endeavors. But sometimes you just need a laugh. Rosemary Mosco, a nature cartoonist and science communicator with a keen wit, will share some of her science-based comics, sure to make you guffaw. She’ll talk about how you can use art and writing to support conservation and speak about her process of developing a cartoon, from concept through research, wordsmithing, to sketch-up and final design.
Rosemary has created acclaimed cartoons, served in communications roles for groups such as NPS and Mass Audubon, written for nature publications, and led unique nature walks. Her graphic novel, Solar Systems, comes out via First Second Books in 2018.
Contact Name: Pam Thompson
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Faculty Speaker Series: Invisible Chefs, Roberto Kolter
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017, 7 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Ed Portal, 224 Western Avenue, Allston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Lecture, Special Events
COST Free and open to the public
TICKET WEB LINK https://www.eventbrite.com/e/harvard-faculty-speaker-series-roberto-kolter-invisible-chefs-registration-36750609061
DETAILS How Microbes Make Our Food
Join the Harvard Ed Portal for a virtual dinner with Roberto Kolter, Professor of Microbiology at Harvard Medical School. During this dinner, Professor Kolter will guide the audience through the invisible roles that microbes play in the food and drink we consume. Learn how microbes produce the raw materials, prepare the food, and enhance our ability to be nourished as we delight in eating. The event will include food tastings.
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Conservation of Scalloped Hammerhead Sharks in Costa Rica
Thursday, November 2
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Simons IMAX Theatre New England Aquarium, Aquarium Wharf, Boston
Andres Lopez; Cofounder of Misión Tiburón and New England Aquarium Marine Conservation Action Fund Fellow
The scalloped hammerhead shark is an endangered species threatened by overfishing, bycatch, and the shark fin trade. Scientist Andres Lopez and his partner, Ilena Zanella, founded Misión Tiburón (Shark Mission) in Costa Rica to study and protect these charismatic animals. Through their years of research and tagging studies they have identified the sharks’ critical nursery habitats and helped to enact national and international conservation measures, including CITES listings, to better protect these animals. This work was supported in part by the New England Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF). Lopez and Zanella have also engaged fishermen, communities, government officials, and schoolchildren in their conservation efforts, growing a vital and broad base of support for the sharks. Join us to hear MCAF Fellow Andres Lopez speak about his comprehensive approach to shark conservation in Costa Rica and his efforts to promote a shark sanctuary in Golfo Dulce, a critical nursery habitat on the country’s Pacific coast.
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Friday, November 3 – Sunday, November 5
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MIT Energy Hackathon 2017
Friday, November 3, 2017, 6:00 PM – Sunday, November 5,6:00 PM EDT
MIT, Building 10-250 (Huntington Hall) 77 Massachusetts Avenue & Lobby 13, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Information for attendees from out of state:
If you require travel reimbursement, please apply at this link: https://goo.gl/forms/ziUvfqlVKHzFbJhh2
Now in its 3rd year, the MIT Energy Hackathon brings opportunities for learning, problem solving, and networking to the forefront as teams develop rapid, innovative solutions to the problems in energy that our society faces today.
For students, the MIT Energy Hackathon is a helpful platform to learn and understand real-world challenges, generate ideas, find startup partners, and win cash awards. For companies, the Hackathon acts as a powerful crowd-sourcing platform that generates a breadth of potential solutions to the environmental and energy challenges that these companies face.
After two days of teams competing to develop novel solutions for specific, energy and environmentally-minded challenges, an awards reception will be held, and the winning teams will receive prizes and recognition from the Hackathon's sponsors.
The Hackathon invites companies in the energy industry to present challenges that they themselves face or they believe the industry at large is facing On the first evening of the Hackathon, a representative from each company will present their challenges to Hackathon participants, a mix of students from MIT, the greater Boston area and beyond. After making teams and selecting prizes, teams have ~36 hours to develop solutions to their chosen challenges. The weekend culminates with an poster presentation sessions where judges select around 10 finalists. A final presentation sessions allows the selection of 3 winners based on innovation, impact and potential for success. It's a great way for companies to interface with students about important energy challenges, and for students to lead a team, design an innovative project, and present their ideas to these companies.
We are looking for:
Participants to join the hacking
Judges to help select winners on the Sunday morning (9:30 AM - 1 PM)
Editorial Comment: I wonder if one of the focuses of the Energy Hackathon will be on rebuilding the energy systems in the Caribbean after the recent hurricanes: http://solarray.blogspot.com/2017/10/renewables-in-wake-of-caribbean.html
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Friday, November 3
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TEDxBeaconStreet 2017 Escape Velocity Party Nov 3rd
Friday, November 3
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Brookline Teen Center, 40 Aspinwall Avenue, Brookline
NOTE: This registration page is for the Nov 3rd Escape Velocity Party at the Brookline Teen Center Only. Follow the links below to the other registration pages for the Lincoln School, JFK Library, and Edward M Kennedy Institute.
Want to get some facetime with our Speakers and meet our awesome community? Join us at the Escape Velocity Party at the Brookline Teen Center before our event on Friday, November 3rd! Speakers, volunteers, and our awesome community will gather to celebrate Year 6 of putting ideas in action.
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Saturday, November 4 - Sunday, November 5
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TEDxBeaconStreet
Lincoln School, Brookline, MA
Saturday, November 4 2-9pm
Sunday, November 5 9am-7:45pm
Teen activists, young artists, student survivors, and wise advisors share ideas for every generation in this family-friendly event. Meet the speakers:
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Saturday, November 4
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Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons: Is it Legal? Is it Constitutional? Is it Just?
WHEN Saturday, Nov. 4, 2017, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Science Center Hall C, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Conferences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Mahindra Humanities Center (Harvard);
Office of the Dean of Arts and Humanities (Harvard)
SPEAKER(S) Former missile launch officer Bruce Blair. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry.
Yale Constitutional Law professor Bruce Ackerman; Philosopher Sissela Bok; Senior advisor to Bulletin of Atomic Scientist Kennette Benedict. Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern. Georgetown Law Professor Rosa Brooks. Anthropologist Hugh Gusterson. Director of UN Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms John Burroughs; Co-director of Princeton's Program on Science and Global Security Zia Mian.
DIRECTED BY Conference Co-Chairs: Elaine Scarry (Harvard) and Jonathan King (MIT)
COST Free for Students. $20 for general audience.
TICKET WEB LINK masspeaceaction.org…
DETAILS Nuclear weapons strategy in the United States is designed around “presidential first use,” an arrangement that enables one man, the president, to kill and maim many millions of people in a single afternoon. What legal and philosophical principles support or instead prohibit this arrangement? Parallel questions will be asked about the other eight nuclear states.
LINK mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu
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Allston Fixit Clinic
Saturday, November 4
11 am–2 pm
Harvard, Honan-Allston Library, 300 North Harvard Street, Allston
RSVP at http://goo.gl/qTzh9J
Celebrating repair by conveying basic troubleshooting skills, Fixit Clinics are do-it-together hands-on STEM-oriented fix-n-learn community-based exploration and discovery workshops where neighbors, friends, and families work collectively to learn about and repair their broken items.
So bring your broken, non-functioning things: electronics, appliances, computers, toys, sewing machines, bicycles, fabric items, etc.-- for assessment, disassembly, and possible repair. We'll provide 1) workspace 2) specialty tools and 3) volunteer Fixit Coaches to consult with you on the disassembly and troubleshooting of your item.
Whether you fix it or not, you'll learn more about how it was manufactured and how it worked, ready to share your new-found confidence and insight with your friends, neighbors, and the community at large. (Hopefully you’ll be inspired to become a Fixit Coach yourself.)
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 (advance web research is helpful)
Come ready to learn and to share your knowledge with others
An all-ages family-friendly event: accompanied children are heartily invited! COST: Free
The event is sponsored by Fixit Clinic, Harvard University Recycling Services, Harvard Ed Portal, and the Harvard Office for Sustainability. We will be providing pizza, coffee etc, and light snacks to coaches. Bring your own mug, plate & napkin for a special prize.
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Design for Social Impact
Saturday, November 4
11:00 AM – 2:00 PM EDT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
If you're interested in designing for social impact, prototyping ideas, and pitching, attend the Society of Women Engineers Design for Social Impact on November 4th from 11AM-2PM! As part of the challenge, you'll brainstorm ideas, create a physical prototype, and pitch your designs to a panel of MIT students. Whether you want to learn more about merging design and real-world problem solving, visit the MIT community, or connect with us at SWE, we would like to welcome you to attend Design for Social Impact! Lu
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Sunday, November 5
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Sustainability Student Leaders Symposium @ Emerson College
Sunday, November 5
11:00 AM – 5:30 PM EST
Emerson College, 120 Boylston Street, Boston
Cost: $14.22
The Sustainability Student Leadership Symposium is a conference that allows student leaders to participate in a set of presentations, workshops, and roundtable discussions by students or regional professionals. The structure of the symposium allows students from different schools to lead sessions on a variety of topics, providing valuable presentation experience as well as facilitating the spread of ideas between schools. The symposium fills an important role by showing students that they belong to a larger community of people like themselves who are all working for the same cause of creating a sustainably conscious community at their college or university.
Students have the option to attend at one of our locations (Swarthmore, Emerson, or Champlain College). This page allows you to sign up for the conference at Emerson College.
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Monday, November 6 - Tuesday, November 7
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The Agriculture, Nutrition, Health, and the Environment in Africa conference
November 6: Amphitheater, Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston
November 7: HKS, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
More information at https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutrition-and-global-health/lecture-seminar-series/agriculture-nutrition-health-and-the-environment-in-africa/
The Agriculture, Nutrition, Health, and the Environment in Africa conference is a collaboration between Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and Technology, Harvard University Center for African Studies, and Africa Academy for Public Health. It will be held in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts on Monday and Tuesday, November 6-7, 2017.
The conference aims to generate attention and awareness, create opportunities for novel collaborations, and identify a path forward toward solving complex health and development challenges. Understanding the intersections of agriculture, nutrition, and public health is particularly important in Africa, where populations are growing and urbanizing rapidly, and high rates of undernutrition and infectious diseases are exacerbated by an increasing burden of overweight/obesity and noncommunicable diseases. Agricultural production systems are under pressure to keep pace with population shifts and dietary transition. In addition to preventing illness and removing some burden from health systems, a holistic approach to malnutrition can also help foster healthy, sustainable environments, with exponential benefits for planetary health.
There is increasing global attention and commitment to bridging this gap. The recently adopted United Nations Sustainable Development Goals have highlighted the interconnectedness of food security, agriculture, environmental sustainability, and nutrition, and secured high-level commitments from around the globe. There is no doubt that this is an increasingly important issue that requires multisectoral and diverse perspectives.
Contact Name: Todd Datz
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MIT Water Summit: Water & Food Nexus
Monday, November 6 - November 7, 2017
MIT, Building E-51. Wong Auditorium, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Cost: $25 - $150
Early bird pricing until October 24
As populations continue to grow and demand for food rises, the role of water in meeting future food needs will become increasingly critical. This year’s MIT Water Summit will focus on issues at the heart of the food-water nexus, reflecting on the role of water in food production – both in agriculture and aquaculture – and the innovation, policy, and technologies required to support healthy and sustainable communities.
More information at http://www.mitwatersummit.com
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Monday, November 6
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Striving for Zero Waste at Colleges & Universities
Monday, November 6
8:00 AM – 4:00 PM EST
The Harvard Ed Portal, 224 Western Avenue, Allston
Cost: $50 – $75
Organized by the Zero Waste College and University Technical Committee (ZWCUTC) of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), this workshop will showcase zero waste practices and strategies to take waste reduction to the next level on your campus. Best practices from different entities across the U.S. will be presented along with opportunities for interaction among individuals with different backgrounds, knowledge, and experience in practices and topics relating to zero waste. Join us to learn from individuals who are highly involved in waste reduction and zero waste at colleges and universities and beyond.
Included in the workshop is a walking tour of zero waste practices at Harvard University.
Preliminary Agenda:
Introduction – Rob Gogan, Harvard University and Karyn Kaplan, University of Oregon
Strategies to Finance Zero Waste Programs – Katherine Walsh, Boston Public Schools; Sharon Daraphonhdeth, University of California Berkeley; Lin King, University of California Berkeley
Local Collegiate Zero Waste Efforts (TBD)
Hot Topic: Move Out Day – Mark Lennon, Institutional Recycling Network
Recyclemania – Jennifer Hobson, University of Texas at Austin
TRUE Zero Waste Certification – Ryan Peterson, Berkeley Haas Business School and Mike Carey, Orange Coast College
Student Lightening Round – presentations from students on Climate Change & Zero Waste, recycled plastic 3D printing, and more
Greenwashing and Hard to Recycle Items – Colleen McCormick, University of California Merced
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PAOC Colloquium: Trude Storelvmo (Yale)
Monday, November 6
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
I am an atmospheric scientist, focusing my research on the role of aerosol particles and clouds in Earth’s climate. I am particularly interested in how aerosol particles affect climate by acting as cloud condensation nuclei and ice nuclei. I also work on question related to cloud-climate feedback mechanisms and climate engineering involving aerosols and/or clouds. Aerosol/cloud effects are arguable among the most uncertain and poorly constrained influences on the climate system, and will represent a tremendous challenge to the scientific community in years to come.
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Digital Farming: Exploring the Intersection of Computation, Biology, and Photography at the MIT Media Lab
Monday, November 6
12:10PM
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Lecture Hall, 1300 Centre Street, Boston
Tim Savas, Technical Associate, MIT Media Lab
Arnold Arboretum Research Talk
Contact Name: arbweb@arnarb.harvard.edu
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Privacy Default(s) by Design? Personal Data in Cybersecurity Information Sharing
Monday, November 6
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, Room 100F, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Paula Kift (Palantir).
Sandwich lunch is provided. RSVP required.
The Harvard STS Circle is co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
STS Circle at Harvard
Contact Name: sts@hks.harvard.edu
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On a World Climate Assembly and the Social Cost of Carbon
Monday, November 6
12:30PM TO 1:30PM
Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Martin Weitzman, Professor of Economics, Harvard. Lunch is provided.
Energy Policy Seminar
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
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Affordable Housing & Modernist Architecture
Monday, November 6
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 fifth seminar is Monday, Nov 6, in the City Arena, 12:30 - 2 PM: Affordable Housing & Modernist Architecture: Repeated Architectural Mistakes or Resilient Urban Transformation?, with Lawrence Vale and Anya Brickman Reardon, respondent.
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Conversations on Environmental Justice: Pedagogy and Practice
Monday, November 6
12:30pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 9-450B, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
Join DUSP Professor Justin Steil and Visiting Professor Gregg Macey as they lead a participatory conversation on teaching environmental justice and striving towards greater equity in ones practice.
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MIT Solve: Student Challenge Design Workshop!
Monday, November 6
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
MIT, The Bush Room [77 Massachusetts Ave, Building 10 Room 105], Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mit-solve-student-challenge-design-workshop-tickets-38876615002
Are you a student or recent grad?
Are you interested in technological innovation?
Do you aspire to help solve the world’s most pressing problems?
Or what about making lasting connections with other students and experts in the Boston area?
If you answered yes to one and/or all of these questions, sign up for the Solve Student Challenge Design Workshop!
**Seats are limited; reserve your spot in advance!**
At the Solve Challenge Design Workshop you will work with other local students to brainstorm and identify the most difficult problems our world faces today. From this, you will formulate actionable challenges for which people from across the world can develop and submit innovative solutions. You can make a difference!
Bring an open mind and come prepared to collaborate with other future innovators, entrepreneurs, and change makers!
Note: Pizza and beverages will be provided.
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An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice
Monday, November 6
7:00 PM (Doors at 6:30)
First Parish Church, 1446 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Cost: $5.00 - $27.00 (online only, book included)
Harvard Book Store welcomes KHIZR KHAN—the Muslim American Gold Star father well known for his 2016 Democratic National Convention speech—for a discussion of his debut memoir An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice. He will be joined in conversation by writer, Harvard Law School professor, and human rights expert MARTHA MINOW.
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The Future of Nature: What is the Future of Science?
Monday, November 6
7:00PM TO 8:30PM
Museum of Science, 1 Science Park, Boston
Cost: $10 – includes hors d’oeuvres and drink | Space is limited, so please reserve your ticket.
From gene editing to self-driving cars, in a quickly changing world, innovations in science and technology can raise difficult ethical and social questions—environmental and beyond. Who answers them and how? What’s the role of science? How do we ensure disparate communities and perspectives are heard in the march of progress? The Nature Conservancy and the Museum of Science jointly present a panel discussion featuring Sheila Jasanoff, Professor of Science and Technology, HKS; Daniel Sarewitz, Co-Director, Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Arizona State University; Hugh Possingham, Chief Scientist, The Nature Conservancy; and moderated by Carey Goldberg, editor of WBUR’s CommonHealth, to examine these questions.
More information at https://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/unitedstates/massachusetts/explore/ma-future-of-nature.xml?src=r.future
Contact Name: Cameron Bruns
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Is political correctness why Trump won? - Harvard University
Monday, November 6
7:00 – 10:30 EST
Harvard University Science Center, Science Center Hall C, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
The shock election of Donald Trump has sent many looking for answers. Why didn’t his outlandish statements, his ‘locker-room talk’ and his out-there views sink his candidacy in the way it would have sunk others? While many have chalked his win up to racism, xenophobia and misogyny – others suggest it was a revolt precisely against those who so casually throw around those labels. In short, the election was a referendum on political correctness, a choice between the immaculately focus-grouped Clinton and the from-the-hip Trump. Did PC culture get Trump elected? Will his presidency serve as an antidote to offence culture? Or is the thin-skinned Trump, who rankles at any criticism, just a different kind of ‘snowflake’?
SPEAKERS: Wendy Kaminer is a lawyer and social critic. She has written about law, liberty and feminism for publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal. She is the author of eight books, including Free for All: Defending Liberty in America Today.
Steven Pinker is a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He has written for the New York Times, Time and The Atlantic, and is the author of 10 books, including The Better Angels of Our Nature. His forthcoming book, Enlightenment Now, will be published in February 2018. @sapinker
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked and a regular columnist for Reason and the Spectator. He has also written for the LA Times, the Telegraph, the Australian, and more. This year, he was named best online columnist at the Maggie Awards. He is the author, most recently, of A Duty to Offend.
Robby Soave is associate editor at Reason and a columnist for the Daily Beast. He has also written for the New York Times, New York Post, CNN, USA Today, and more. He is currently on sabbatical, writing a book on activism in the age of Trump.@robbysoave
This is a FREE panel and Q&A, as part of the spiked US Unsafe Space tour.
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Tuesday, November 7
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Alexandra Petri – Satire and Comedy in the Age of Trump
Tuesday, November 7
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Alexandra Petri writes The Washington Post’s ComPost blog, offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of A Field Guide to Awkward Silences. She joined the Post as an intern in 2010, after graduating from Harvard College.
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Fixing Our Broken Sleep
Tuesday, November 7
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM (EST)
MIT, Building 76-156; The David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, 500 Main Street, Cambridge
Presenter – Rick Clerici, Certified Clinical Sleep Educator; Director, Clear Mind Systems
Do you struggle to get a good night’s sleep? If so, you are not alone. Recent studies suggest that we are experiencing a worldwide epidemic of insufficient sleep, with 60 percent of Americans reporting difficulty sleeping nearly every night. In this interactive seminar, attendees will learn techniques for overcoming common sleep problems; examine sleep from a scientific, historic, and traditional perspective; and learn the connections between sleep and health. This presentation has helped many people begin to get better sleep almost immediately. Some sleep concerns that will be addressed include:
Trouble falling asleep
Difficulty staying asleep
Excessive thinking
Waking too early
Daytime sleepiness
Sunday night insomnia
Chronic insomnia
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Computational Ecosystems: Tech-enabled Communities to Advance Human Values at Scale
Tuesday, November 7
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Refreshments: 1:45 PM
MIT, Building 32 - G449, Kiva, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Haoqi Zhang , Northwestern University - EECS Department
Speaker URL: http://users.eecs.northwestern.edu/~hq/
Abstract: Despite the continued development of individual technologies and processes for supporting human endeavors, major leaps in solving complex human problems will require advances in system-level thinking and orchestration. In this talk, I describe efforts to design, build, and study Computational Ecosystems that interweave community process, social structures, and intelligent systems to unite people and machines to solve complex problems and advance human values at scale. Computational ecosystems integrate various components to support ecosystem function; the interplay among components synergistically advances desired values and problem solving goals in ways that isolated technologies and processes cannot. Taking a systems approach to design, computational ecosystems emphasize (1) computational thinking to decompose and distribute problem solving to diverse people or machines most able to address them; and (2) ecological thinking to create sustainable processes and interactions that support jointly the goals of ecosystem members and proper ecosystem function.
I present examples of computational ecosystems designed to advance community-based planning and research training, that respectively engages thousands of people in planning an event and empowers a single faculty member to provide authentic research training to 20+ students. These solutions demonstrate how to combine wedges of human and machine competencies into integrative technology-supported, community-based solutions. I will preview what's ahead for computational ecosystems, and close with a few thoughts on the role of computing technologies in advancing human values at scale.
Bio: Haoqi Zhang is the Allen K. and Johnnie Cordell Breed Junior Chair of Design and assistant professor in Computer Science at Northwestern University. His work advances the design of integrated socio-technical models that solve complex problems and advance human values at scale. His research bridges the fields of Human-Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, Social & Crowd Computing, Learning Science, and Decision Science, and is generously supported by National Science Foundation grants in Cyber-Human Systems, Cyberlearning, and the Research Initiation Initiative.
Haoqi received his PhD in Computer Science and BA in Computer Science and Economics from Harvard University. At Northwestern he founded and directs the Design, Technology, and Research (DTR) program, which provides an original model for research training for 50 graduate and undergraduate students. With Matt Easterday, Liz Gerber, and Nell O'Rourke, Haoqi co-directs the Delta Lab, an interdisciplinary research lab and design studio across computer science, learning science, and design.
Contact: Linda Lynch, 617 715 2459, lindalynch@csail.mit.edu
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Marvin Kalb
Tuesday, November 7
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Marvin Kalb is a distinguished journalist, author, and the founding director of the Shorenstein Center. Kalb’s journalism career included three decades of award-winning reporting for CBS and NBC News as chief diplomatic correspondent, Moscow bureau chief, and anchor of NBC’s Meet the Press. Kalb is the Murrow Professor emeritus at Harvard Kennedy School and hosts The Kalb Report at the National Press Club. His 15th book, The Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956—Khruschev, Stalin’s Ghost, and a Young American in Russia, will be released in October 2017.
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Built Positive Greenbuild Reception
Tuesday, November 7
5:30 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Fraunhofer USA Center for Sustainable Energy Systems, 5 Channel Center Street, Boston
You are invited to an exclusive reception the evening before Greenbuild with William McDonough, FAIA, Int. FRIBA, world renowned architect, author, product designer, and Cradle to Cradle Co-Founder.
Join your materials-minded colleagues from across the Built Positive network at the Fraunhofer USA Center for Sustainable Energy Systems, which is walking distance from the Boston Convention Center. The reception will include drinks, hors d'oeuvres and the opportunity to connect with industry leaders involved in redefining the materials landscape to build a positive future.
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Resilience & Our Built Environment
Tuesday, November 7
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
CIC Cambridge - Venture Cafe, 1 Broadway, 5th Floor, Cambridge
Cost: $8 – $12
In the wake of an unprecedented season of concentrated and extreme environmental disasters – hurricanes, earthquakes, heat waves, drought, flooding and forest fires – one question looms large for millions of people: How on earth do we fix the systems we have or, in some cases, rebuild after these disasters?
Critical lifeline services like housing, energy, water, sanitation, waste treatment, transportation, and communication underpin our civil and economic needs. When collapse of these systems happens at scale (e.g. entire cities, states, nations), the instinct is naturally to want to get things back to normal as quickly as possible for those impacted. Doing things quickly does not traditionally lend itself to a high-quality outcome though, but if a longer-term solution means a slower recovery or greater cost, what is the choice?
Our guest speaker(s) will share select frameworks and strategies used by decision-makers to determine the resilience of the built environment around us and how it can either support or undermine our social and economic objectives. What have we learned from past experiences? How well is our current infrastructure designed to accommodate changes over time? What is the potential for emerging strategies, such as distributed energy services, water purification, solid waste treatment and other engineering innovations, to mitigate social and environmental disasters in the future?
Sarah Slaughter, Founder & Director, Built Environment Coalition
Dr. Sarah Slaughter is a recognized expert on resilience and sustainability for the built environment. She is the CEO and founder of the Built Environment Coalition, a research and education nonprofit (501c3) focused on community sustainability and resilience. She currently serves on the Green Building Advisory Committee (GBAC) to the U.S. General Services Administration on sustainable federal built facilities, and was recently a Visiting Lecturer in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning on resilient urban communities. Before the Coalition, she was the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Associate Director for Buildings and Infrastructure, and co-founder and faculty head of the Sustainability Initiative in the MIT Sloan School of Management. Previously, she was founder and CEO of MOCA Systems, Inc., and, before she founded MOCA, she was a MIT professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and earlier, was a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Lehigh University.
Dr. Slaughter is currently a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Construction. She was previously on the National Research Council (NRC) Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment (BICE), several Boards and committees for the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and other national and international advisory committees. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Charles River Watershed Association. She received her PhD, SM, and SB from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Andrea Atkinson, Executive Director, One Square World
Andrea is a Executive Director of One Square World, a nonprofit dedicated to community-powered sustainable development worldwide. Andrea is a sustainability professional with a background in international relations, organizational management and sustainable community development. Andrea’s innovative community engagement and project management work for projects such as My Job Stories (a project of the Skees Family Foundation), NEXUS Green Building Resource Center, Down2Earth Boston, Elevate Destinations Haiti Volunteer Trips and philanthropic education programs has resulted in high-impact and high-profile outcomes for environmental and social change.
In the New England area, Andrea is creating a network of practitioners for regenerative development to provide a framework that benefits communities and the environment. In 2007, Andrea launched the NEXUS Green Building Resource Center, a first of its kind community center in the Northeast to promote and educate stakeholders implementing green building measures. Her work with New England Sustainable Energy Association resulted in a peer-to-peer educational network for energy efficiency providers and consumers in Massachusetts.
Andrea grew up in Brazil, Bolivia, and Niger and has traveled extensively. She has a degree in International Relations with a focus on sustainable development in Latin America and Africa from Boston University and a graduate certificate in environmental management from Tufts University.
Note: Additional speakers pending
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Smart Cities - Utility
Tuesday, November 7
6:00 PM to 8:30 PM
CDM Smith, 75 State Street, Suite 701, Boston
Welcome to the second event in our Smart Cities Series, where the topic this time is Smart Utilities.
Power, water, sewer, and other utilities are fundamental infrastructures required to support our modern communities and neighborhoods. As urban areas grow, we are faced with a question: Can we leverage data to understand a city as a holistic system, build a smarter city that is more sustainable, and better plan for future growth?
Please join us as innovators from public and private sectors share their experiences utilizing data in applications such as optimizing electricity and gas delivery, improving water management, and enhancing communication robustness. Stay tuned for more updates!
Agenda:
6:00-6:30pm Mix & Mingle with food & refreshments
6:30-7:30pm Presentations from corporates and startups panel members (~5 minutes each), followed by Q&A
7:30-8:30pm Organizer announcement + 30 sec shout-outs, followed by networking
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Opportunity
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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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