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, November 26
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12pm PAOC [Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climates] Colloquium: Mary-Louise Timmermans (Yale)
12pm The Value of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage
12:10pm EH Wilson’s 'Another Planet'— Australia’s Plants, Global Differences, and Landscape Architecture
12:15pm Survival of the Sexiest: NLP, EP, PUAs, and Other “Sciences” of Seduction on the Alt Right
3:30pm Adapting the Urban Built Environment to Coastal Flooding; Challenges with Design under Climate Uncertainty and Inclusion of Social Justice
4pm Mechanisms of neurogenesis and neural repair
5pm State of the State House: Assessing the Results of 2018 Governors Races with Martin O'Malley
6:30pm MDE Lecture Series: Ellen Langer
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Tuesday, November 27
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8:30pm MIT Neurotech 2018
11am HASEL Artificial Muscles—Versatile High-Performance Actuators for a New Generation of Life-like Robots
12pm Computer Simulations to Enhance Vaccine Trials: DIGITAL HEALTH @ HARVARD TALK
12:30pm A Journalist’s Firsthand Report – What’s Wrong with US Policy in Iran
4pm Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall (IDSS Seminar)
4pm Statistical Modeling of Environmental Time Series
6pm A Conversation with John Kerry
6pm Micro-Meltdown: The Inside Story of the Rise, Fall, and Resurgence of the World’s Most Valuable Microlender
6pm Crowdfunding: How to Plan & Launch a Successful Campaign
6pm Ask & Tell: The History & Personal Stories of LGBTQ Veterans
6pm Boston Green Drinks - November 2018 Happy Hour
6pm Boston Student Innovation Night
6pm NeuroTech + Beer
6:30pm The War on Science: What We Need to Do
7pm Defending Planet Earth from Asteroids
7pm Building Electrification: The Third Leg of Our Fossil Fuel-Free Future
7pm The View from Russia: Media, Politics, Elections
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Wednesday, November 28
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7:30am Boston Sustainability Breakfast
11:30am Speaker Series on Misinformation: Online Manipulation of the US Elections: The First Dozen Years
12pm Atmospheric Superrotation at Earth's Surface
12pm The Rise and Fall (?) of the Humanitarian intervention Project
12pm Political Messaging & the Modern Media
12pm Mourning in America: Ronald Reagan, Samuel R. Pierce, and the Crisis of the Modern Black Professional
1pm MIT China Forum: MIT's Strategy on China
3:45pm The Global Politics of AntiRacism: A View from the Canal Zone, 1940-1955
4pm Re-Engineering Life: Tissue Engineering in Health and the Environment
4:30pm MTL Executive Seminar: Age of Accelerated Innovation: From Quantum to Systems and Beyond
5pm The Racialization of Print: Media and Ideology in the Long Eighteenth Century
6pm Somerville Climate Forward Plan Release Celebration
6pm Solar Policy Feedback Session
6:30pm Social Media for Good
6:30pm Lessons from the Liver: Uncovering Novel Approaches for Regenerative Medicine
7pm Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It
7pm ChileMass Ignite | The Fourth Industrial Revolution: A conversation about advance and sustainable manufacturing in Chile
7pm Sex, Science, and the State: The Role of Science in Sexual Reproductive Health and Policy Making
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Thursday, November 29
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12pm Picking your battles (and winning them): Protecting rivers in Massachusetts
12pm How Learning Works: 7 Research-based Principles for Smart Teaching
12pm The Current and Future Socioeconomic Impacts of Climate Change in China
12:15pm Countering Violent Extremism: A Quest for Legitimacy and Effectiveness
12:30pm The Journalistic Craft and Legacy of Anthony Shadid: The Triumph of Human Understanding in a Polarized, Digital Age
3pm Social + Impact Connect 2018
5pm Skewed or Rescued?: The Emerging Theory of Algorithmic Fairness
5pm The Language of Civic Life: Past to Present
5:15pm LWN Speakers Series: The Ins and Outs of Time Trade Circle
5:30pm Local Action, Global Commitments: The Private Sector’s Role in International Climate Policy
6pm Essential Knowledge Series on Carbon Capture, Extremism, and Haptics
6pm The Ghosts of Gombe
6pm Religion and Politics in America
6pm RFK Visiting Professor Lecture: Pablo Allard: The Disaster Artist: or How a Chilean Architect Got Involved (and Survived) in Urban Design, and the Politics of Resilience
6pm Conversations on the Edge - After the Midterms: What's Next?
6pm On Distraction with John Plotz and Marina van Zuylen
6pm Honest Signals: Real-Time Emotional Computing with Cogito
6pm Screening & Conversation: Hira Nabi, "Gadani: Mazdoor, Jahaz, aur Machli”
6pm Boston Drone Racing Hack Night
6:30pm AUGMENTED & VIRTUAL REALITY: DIGITAL TRENDS OF 2019
6:30pm Boston Preparing for Collapse Meetup: First Meetup
7pm Mentalligence: A New Psychology of Thinking
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Friday, November 30
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7:15am Utility Resilience: Lessons From Puerto Rico and Local Preparation
9am Using Telemedicine and Artificial Intelligence to Provide Better Healthcare for All: Opportunities and Challenges
11am Distributional Models of Ocean Carbon Export
12pm Atmospheric formation of strong acids: Sources and implications
1:30pm IACS Seminar: Machine Learning for Materials Discovery
3pm Towards a Large Scale Quantum Computer Using Advanced Fabrication Technologies
3pm Senses: A Symposium
4pm Brains, Minds + Machines Seminar Series: Perceiving what we cannot sense: Insights from 3D vision
4pm Machine Learning Accelerates the Diagnosis, Process Optimization, and Discovery of Novel Energy Materials
4pm Combating the Climate Crisis: from Regulation to Legislation: Senator Edward Markey
7pm Outbreak Culture: The Ebola Virus and the Next Epidemic
7pm The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work,and Connect Across Differences
7pm Ikeda Forum 2018: How Do We Practice Human Rights? A dialogue on dignity and justice in daily life
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Saturday, December 1 – Sunday, December 2
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Harvard HackED 2018
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Saturday December 1
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4pm Venezuela: Reportback from Boston Delegation
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Monday, December 3
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12pm Distinguished Speaker Series: Maura Healey
12pm PAOC [Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, Climates] Colloquium: Daniel Rothman (MIT)
12pm The Oil Climate Index: Analyzing the Heterogeneous Lifecycle Greenhouse Gas Impacts of Global Oils
12:10pm Embracing the complexity of nature –genomic approaches for understanding the development and evolution of forest trees
12:15pm Failed Sociotechnical Imaginaries: Chechnya as the 'Second Kuwait’
12:30pm Felicity Scott and Mark Wasiuta | AgitArch Experiments Roundtable
1pm Book Talk — Politics with the People: Building a Directly Representative Democracy
3pm Beyond Biofeedback and Towards Machine Based Learning in Treating the Extremities of Post-Stroke Survivors
4pm The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility (IDSS Distinguished Speaker Seminar:)
6pm Joan Jonas and Sung Hwan Kim: In Conversation
6pm ONLINE SHOPPING: FRIEND OR FOE?
7pm The Future of Transportation: Autonomy and Interdependence
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Tuesday, December 4
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1pm RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SOIL MICROBIAL PHYSIOLOGY, COMMUNITY COMPOSITION AND CARBON AND NITROGEN CYCLING IN TEMPERATE FOREST ECOSYSTEMS
2:30pm Climate change and food security in the Asia-Pacific: Response and resilience
3:30pm Will solid-state batteries compete with liquid-based Li-ion technology?
4:15pm The Meaning of the Midterms: Who Counted? Who Voted?
4:30pm Asian Americans and Affirmative Action Policy
4:30pm Startup R&D Demo Daya
5:30pm Start-Up Nation Tech Fair at Northeastern University
5:30pm Cleantech Capital: Funding the Energy Future
6pm From Boston to Yorktown: Tales of the National Trails
6pm Race, Political Solidarity & the Future of America
6pm Future of Work: Will Artificial Intelligence and Robots Replace Humans or Create New Job Types?
6:30pm Defining the future of jobs in the midst of AI revolution
7pm The Ethics of Species Conservation
7pm Boston’s Pre-Revolutionary Newspaper Wars (and What They May Tell Us About Today’s News Media
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
Friendly Fascism USA
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Monday, November 26
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PAOC [Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climates] Colloquium: Mary-Louise Timmermans (Yale)
Monday, November 26
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About this Series
The PAOC Colloquium [PAOCC] is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar series that brings together the whole PAOC community. Seminar topics include all research concerning the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmospheres, oceans and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars take place on Monday from 12-1pm in 54-923. Lunch is provided after the seminars to encourage students and post-docs to meet with the speaker. Besides the seminar and lunch, individual meetings with professors, post-docs, and students are arranged. Contact the 2018/2019 Coordinators: paoc-colloquium-comm@mit.edu
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The Value of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage
Monday, November 26
12:00pm to 1:30pm
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, HKS, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Cuicui Chen, Postdoctoral Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, HKS
Lunch will be served.
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EH Wilson’s 'Another Planet'— Australia’s Plants, Global Differences, and Landscape Architecture
Monday, November 26
12:10PM
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Lecture Hall, 300 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain
Margaret Grose, Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, University of Melbourne, Arboretum Sargent Award Recipient.
Watch live on the Arboretum’s YouTube channel if you are unable to attend in person.
Arnold Arboretum Research Talk
(617) 524-1718
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Survival of the Sexiest: NLP, EP, PUAs, and Other “Sciences” of Seduction on the Alt Right
Monday, November 26
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, CGIS South S050, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Moira Weigel, Harvard, Society of Fellows
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 lunches are provided. Please RSVP to via the online form by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
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Adapting the Urban Built Environment to Coastal Flooding; Challenges with Design under Climate Uncertainty and Inclusion of Social Justice
Monday, November 26
3:30pm – 4:30pm
BU, College of Arts & Sciences, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston,
Paul Kirshen, University of Massachusetts Boston
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Mechanisms of neurogenesis and neural repair
Monday, November 26
4:00pm - 5:00pm
MIT, Building 46-3002, Singleton Auditorium, 15 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Magdalena Götz, PhD
We study the mechanisms of neurogenesis in order to implement them for neuronal repair. I will present unpublished work about novel molecular mechanisms important for neurogenesis in the developing murine cerebral cortex and will then turn to using these for direct neuronal reprogramming after traumatic injury of the adult murine cerebral cortex in vivo. I will discuss different viral vector approaches and up-date on a recent breakthrough in direct glia-to-neuron reprogramming achieving high efficiency and mature neuronal subtypes sending out long range projections. I will close by discussing the integration of replaced neurons into the circuitry of the adult murine cerebral cortex, that normally does not integrate new neurons at adult stages and present unpublished data about the mechanisms regulating this integration. Taken together, our knowledge about basic mechanisms of neurogenesis allowed making great strides towards neuronal repair.
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State of the State House: Assessing the Results of 2018 Governors Races with Martin O'Malley
WHEN Monday, Nov. 26, 2018, 5 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Littauer Building, The IOP Conference Room (L-166), 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR HKS Ash Center
SPEAKER(S) Martin O’Malley, Former Maryland Governor
DETAILS Join Senior Visiting Fellow and former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley for a discussion on the results of the 2018 gubernatorial elections from across the country and what trends we might see in 2020. A pizza dinner will be provided. This discussion is co-sponsored by the Taubman Center for State and Local Politics, the Institute of Politics, and the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
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MDE Lecture Series: Ellen Langer
WHEN Monday, Nov. 26, 2018, 6:30 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 48 Quincy Street (room 124), Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Master in Design Engineering at Harvard (MDE) program
SPEAKER(S) Ellen Langer, Professor, Harvard University, Department of Psychology
COST Free
DETAILS Dr. Ellen Langer, Ph.D., is a social psychologist and the first female professor to gain tenure in the Psychology Department at Harvard University. She is the author of eleven books and more than two hundred research articles written for general and academic readers on mindfulness for over 35 years. Her best selling books include "Mindfulness; The Power of Mindful Learning"; "On Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity"; and "Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility." She has also edited the "Wiley Mindfulness Handbook," an anthology on mindfulness in which leading researchers integrate work derived from her western scientific theoretical base of mindfulness with research on eastern derived forms of meditation.
Her websites can be found at www.langermindfulnessinstitute.com and www.ellenlanger.com
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Tuesday, November 27
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MIT Neurotech 2018
Tuesday, November 27
8:30 AM – 6:00 PM EST
MIT, Building 46-3002, Singleton Auditorium, 43 Vassar Street, Cambridge
MIT Neurotech 2018 presents talks by neurotechnology pioneers, whose cutting-edge innovations are changing the face of neurobiological research from molecules to cognition. The symposium is open to the public, but registration is required and seating is limited.
Hosted by CNBE, Professor Alan Jasanoff, and Professor Ed Boyden
Co-Sponsored by: MIT Media Lab, the Department of Biological Engineering, the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences.
2018 GUEST SPEAKERS:
Tim Harris - HHMI Janelia
Na Ji - UC Berkeley
Helen Mayberg - Mount Sinai
Rikky Muller - UC Berkeley
Mickael Tanter - Langevin Institute
Rafa Yuste - Columbia University
Peng Yin - Harvard University
Jin Zhang - UC San Diego
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HASEL Artificial Muscles—Versatile High-Performance Actuators for a New Generation of Life-like Robots
Tuesday November 27
11:00-12:00 (Food will arrive right after the seminar)
MIT, Building 32-G449 (Kiva), 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Christoph Keplinger, University of Colorado Boulder
ABSTRACT
Robots today rely on rigid components and electric motors based on metal and magnets, making them heavy, unsafe near humans, expensive and ill-suited for unpredictable environments. Nature, in contrast, makes extensive use of soft materials and has produced organisms that drastically outperform robots in terms of agility, dexterity, and adaptability. The Keplinger Lab aims to fundamentally challenge current limitations of robotic hardware, using an interdisciplinary approach that synergizes concepts from soft matter physics and chemistry with advanced engineering technologies to introduce intelligent materials systems for a new generation of life-like robots. One major theme of research is the development of new classes of actuators – a key component of all robotic systems – that replicate the sweeping success of biological muscle, a masterpiece of evolution featuring astonishing all-around actuation performance, the ability to self-heal after damage, and seamless integration with sensing.
This talk is focused on the labs' recently introduced HASEL artificial muscle technology. Hydraulically Amplified Self-healing ELectrostatic (HASEL) transducers are a new class of self-sensing, high-performance muscle-mimetic actuators, which are electrically driven and harness a mechanism that couples electrostatic and hydraulic forces to achieve a wide variety of actuation modes. Current designs of HASEL are capable of exceeding actuation stress of 0.3 MPa, linear strain of 100%, specific power of 600W/kg, full-cycle electromechanical efficiency of 30% and bandwidth of over 100Hz; all these metrics match or exceed the capabilities of biological muscle. Additionally, HASEL actuators can repeatedly and autonomously self-heal after electric breakdown, thereby enabling robust performance. Further, this talk introduces a
facile fabrication technique that uses an inexpensive CNC heat sealing device to rapidly prototype HASELs. New designs of HASEL incorporate mechanisms to greatly reduce operating voltages, enabling the use of lightweight and portable electronics packages to drive untethered soft robotic devices powered by HASELs. Modeling results predict the impact of material parameters and scaling laws of these actuators, laying out a roadmap towards future HASEL actuators with drastically improved performance. These results highlight opportunities to further develop HASEL artificial muscles for wide use in next-generation robots that replicate the vast capabilities of biological systems.
BIO
Christoph Keplinger is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a Fellow of the Materials Science and Engineering
Program at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he also holds an endowed appointment serving as Mollenkopf Faculty Fellow. Building upon his background in soft matter physics (PhD, JKU Linz), mechanics and chemistry (Postdoc, Harvard University), he leads a highly interdisciplinary research group at Boulder, with a current focus on (I) soft, muscle-mimetic actuators and sensors, (II) energy harvesting and (III) functional polymers. His work has been published in top journals including Science, Science Robotics, PNAS, Advanced Materials and Nature Chemistry, as well as highlighted in popular outlets such as National Geographic. He has received prestigious US awards such as a 2017 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, and international awards such as the 2013 EAPromising European Researcher Award from the European Scientific Network for Artificial Muscles. He is the principal inventor of HASEL artificial muscles, a new technology that will help enable a next generation of life-like robotic hardware; in 2018 he co-founded Artimus Robotics to commercialize the HASEL technology.
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Computer Simulations to Enhance Vaccine Trials: DIGITAL HEALTH @ HARVARD TALK
Tuesday, November 27
12:00 PM - 1:15 PM ET
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East C (room 2036, second floor), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdzaivImXoAgqb9KWOYSDK8zB_wxY84eEZwthCd95Y1efNulw/viewform
Marc Lipsitch
Event will be live webcast and recorded at 12:00 pm on day of event at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018-11-27/computer-simulations-enhance-vaccine-trials
Infectious disease emergencies are opportunities to test the efficacy of newly developed interventions (eg drugs, vaccines and treatment regimens), yet they raise many intertwined challenges of politics, logistics, ethics, and study design. Consistent with the efforts of CEPI, WHO, and others to encourage development and Phase I/II testing of candidate vaccines (the focus of this talk) in advance of emergencies, it is essential before the emergency strikes to advance the discussion of how such products can and should be tested. This can help to disentangle ethical from political and logistical concerns, reduce the time pressure to make a decision, and encourage rational deliberation by future stakeholders who at the time of deliberation do not know what role (which product, which field site) they may be supporting in an actual emergency.
This luncheon will describe Professor Lipsitch’s work on computer simulation of vaccine trials during epidemics to assess options for trial design, as well as some of his recent work on the ethics of trials in emergencies, with the aim to stimulate discussion on the intersection of these two topics.
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A Journalist’s Firsthand Report – What’s Wrong with US Policy in Iran
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2018, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CMES, Rm 102, 38 Kirkland Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR CMES Middle East Forum
SPEAKER(S) Reese Erlich, Author, journalist, syndicated columnist
CONTACT INFO elizabethflanagan@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Reese Erlich's history in journalism goes back over 40 years. He first worked in 1968 as a staff writer and research editor for Ramparts, a national investigative reporting magazine published in San Francisco. His book "The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of US Policy and the Middle East Crisis" was published in 2007. "San Francisco Chronicle" book reviewer Ruth Rosen said, “Some people are treated as pariahs when they tell the truth; later, history lauds them for their courage and convictions. Reese Erlich is one of those truth tellers.” His other books include, "Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect" (Foreword by Noam Chomsky - 2016), "Conversations with Terrorists: Politics, Violence and Empire" (2010), "Dateline Havana: The Real Story of US Policy and the Future of Cuba" (2009), and "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You" (co-authored with Norman Solomon in 2003). Erlich's newspaper articles have appeared in over 20 daily papers in the United States and around the world, including the "Christian Science Monitor", the "San Francisco Chronicle", "St. Petersburg Times", "The New York Times" Syndicate, "Dallas Morning News", and the "Chicago Tribune".
In 2001, he produced a one-hour public radio documentary "The Struggle for Iran," and in 2002 he produced a two-hour documentary, "The Russia Project," both hosted by Walter Cronkite. The specials were independently distributed to more than 200 public radio stations throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. “Children of War,” hosted by Charlayne Hunter Gault, aired in 2003. The radio documentary “Reaching for Peace in the Holy Land,” hosted by Walter Cronkite aired on Public Radio International stations in 2004. “Lessons from Hiroshima 60 Years Later,” a one-hour documentary was hosted by Walter Cronkite (2005 – PRI). He reports regularly for a variety of radio networks, including National Public Radio, CBC, ABC (Australia), and Radio Deutche Welle.
In June 2005 he traveled to Iran with Norman Solomon and Sean Penn. Erlich’s photos accompanied Penn’s five-part series about the trip that appeared in the SF Chronicle, and later appeared in an A&E biography of Penn. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors declared Sept. 14, 2010, to be “Reese Erlich Day” in honor of his investigative journalistic work. The resolution read, in part, “Investigative reporters are under attack in the U.S. and around the world. Mr. Erlich exhibits the finest qualities of such reporters willing to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
Unless otherwise noted in the event description, CMES events are open to the public (no registration required), and off the record. Please note that events may be filmed and photographed by CMES for record-keeping and for use on the CMES website and publications.
LINK https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/event/journalist’s-firsthand-report-–-what’s-wrong-us-policy-iran
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Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall (IDSS Seminar)
Tuesday, November 27
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 32-141, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Abstract: As authoritarian governments around the world develop sophisticated technologies for controlling information, many observers have predicted that these controls would be ineffective because they are easily thwarted and evaded by savvy Internet users. In Censored, Margaret Roberts demonstrates that even censorship that is easy to circumvent can still be enormously effective. Taking advantage of digital data harvested from the Chinese Internet and leaks from China's Propaganda Department, this book sheds light on how and when censorship influences the Chinese public. Roberts finds that much of censorship in China works not by making information impossible to access but by requiring those seeking information to spend extra time and money for access. By inconveniencing users, censorship diverts the attention of citizens and powerfully shapes the spread of information. When Internet users notice blatant censorship, they are willing to compensate for better access. But subtler censorship, such as burying search results or introducing distracting information on the web, is more effective because users are less aware of it. Roberts challenges the conventional wisdom that online censorship is undermined when it is incomplete and shows instead how censorship's porous nature is used strategically to divide the public. Drawing parallels between censorship in China and the way information is manipulated in the United States and other democracies, Roberts reveals how Internet users are susceptible to control even in the most open societies. Demonstrating how censorship travels across countries and technologies, Censored gives an unprecedented view of how governments encroach on the media consumption of citizens.
About the Speaker: Margaret Roberts is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. Roberts research focuses on better measuring and understanding the political information strategies of authoritarian governments, with a specific focus on studying censorship and propaganda in China. She has also developed widely used methods for automated content analysis in the social sciences. Roberts received her PhD in Government from Harvard University in 2014, an M.S. in Statistics and B.A. in International Relations and Economics from Stanford in 2009. Her work has appeared in venues such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Political Analysis, Journal of the American Statistical Association and Science.
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Statistical Modeling of Environmental Time Series
Tuesday, November 27
4:00 PM – 5:30 PM EST
Harvard, Sever Hall 102, 33 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Michael L. Stein is Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor in the Department of Statistics and the College at the University of Chicago. Professor Stein’s research focuses on statistical models and methods for spatial and spatial-temporal processes. In particular, he is interested in the nature of the spatial-temporal interactions implied by these models and on developing statistical methods for assessing these interactions.
Abstract for Statistical Modeling of Environmental Time Series
When modeling environmental time series, proper accounting of periodic phenomena is often critical. Seasonal, diurnal effects and their interactions are the most common, but other periodicities may also be present, such as those related to characteristics of the Earth’s orbital cycles. Climate change may affect seasonal and diurnal cycles, further complicating their modeling and estimation. This talk will explore these issues through two examples. The first is estimating quantiles of daily temperatures as they evolve over seasons and years based on large initial condition ensembles of climate model runs. The resulting quantile maps can be used to transform observational data to provide simulations of future climate. The second example reports on some preliminary work on coastal water levels, which are impacted by numerous periodic tidal phenomena related to the relative positions of the Earth, Moon and Sun. Current efforts to address this problem include the use of what is known as “skew surge”, which is the difference between the observed maximum water level and the predicted high water level for each tidal cycle. Recent research has argued that skew surge and predicted tides are close to independent, which, if true, should enable sharper estimates of extreme water levels than by analyzing the water levels themselves. Unfortunately, using the official NOAA predicted tides, this assumption of independence is clearly untrue at some locations. Fortunately, fairly simple statistical approaches may provide better ways for combining information about the periodic components of tides with observational data that should, in principle, lead to better estimates of extreme water levels.
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A Conversation with John Kerry
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2018, 6 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, JFK Jr. Forum, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State (2013-2017), Senator from Massachusetts (1985-2013)
TICKET WEB LINK http://iop.harvard.edu/lottery/conversation-john-kerry
TICKET INFO Enter the lottery before Saturday, Nov. 24 at midnight. Winners will be notified via email on Sunday, November 25. Winners must pick up their tickets at the Institute of Politics on: November 26 and 27 between 9:30 AM-5:00 PM or at the Science Center on Nov. 27 between 11 a.m.-2 p.m.
CONTACT INFO IOP Forum Office 617-495-1380
DETAILS ***THIS FORUM WILL BE TICKETED***
Enter the lottery before Saturday, Nov. 24 at midnight. Winners will be notified via email on Sunday, Nov. 25. Winners must pick up their tickets at the Institute of Politics on Nov. 26 and 27 between 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. or at the Science Center on Nov. 27 11 a.m.-2 p.m.
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Micro-Meltdown: The Inside Story of the Rise, Fall, and Resurgence of the World’s Most Valuable Microlender
Tuesday, November 27
6 PM
Tufts, 7th Floor, Cabot Center, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford
Join us for a conversation with Vikram Akula, A90, a pioneer in market-based approaches to financial inclusion and founder of SKS Microfinance. Akula will discuss his book, Micro-Meltdown: The Inside Story of the Rise, Fall and Resurgence of the World’s Most Valuable Microlender, which details how he founded SKS to improve the lives of India’s poor through small loans aimed at providing a path out of poverty. A unique, for-profit venture, SKS’ impact grew rapidly as did its success. The company was praised for blending philanthropy and capitalism, and Akula was named one of the most influential people in the world by the Wall Street Journal and TIME magazine. Later, as microfinance came under fire in India and around the world, SKS experienced first-hand the costs of what was once heralded as a key solution to global poverty. Micro-Meltdown is the story of SKS’ oversights, challenges and obstacles that led to disaster, the eventual resurgence of the microfinance movement, and the lessons learned in between.
Akula is now Chairperson of Vaya, a financial inclusion start up in India, and founder of the Bodhi School, which provides education to disadvantaged children in rural India. He is a senior fellow at the Fletcher School’s Council on Emerging Market Enterprises and a member of the Tisch College Board of Advisors. This event is cosponsored by the Tufts Entrepreneurship Center and the Fletcher School’s Institute for Business in the Global Context.
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Crowdfunding: How to Plan & Launch a Successful Campaign
Tuesday, November 27
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Suffolk University – Blue Sky Lounge, 5th Floor, 120 Tremont Street (Blue Sky Lounge), Boston
RSVP at https://thecapitalnetwork.org/events/crowdfunding-how-to-plan-launch-a-successful-campaign-2/
Cost: $0 – $35
Crowdfunding has become an increasingly popular funding strategy for early stage entrepreneurs — but it’s not a guaranteed success. Learn strategies to create an enticing campaign that will resonate with your audience and provide your business with the capital it needs to keep growing!
Questions that will be covered include:
Is crowdfunding right for me?
When is the best time to launch a campaign?
What research should I do prior to launch?
What kind of support or team do I need to create a successful campaign?
What types of rewards should I offer?
What can I do to improve my campaign while it’s still live?
I failed to reach my goal- what went wrong?
How can I leverage a successful campaign for follow-up investment?
Jenni Dinger, Assistant Professor, Management and Entrepreneurship at Suffolk University
Jenni Dinger is an Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at Suffolk University Sawyer Business School. Her research is at the intersection of entrepreneurship and organizational behavior, focusing on the sociological aspects of innovation and venture creation. She’s interested in the social interactions between entrepreneurs and their communities. Jenni and Chaim Letwin co-teach the crowdfunding course which was one of the nation’s first experiential courses on crowdfunding introduced by Suffolk’s Sawyer Business School.
Jackson Stone, Business Development at Netcapital
Jackson Stone is the Director of Business Development at Netcapital, a website where anyone can buy and sell stock in private companies. Before joining Netcapital, Jackson was an analyst at ClearView Healthcare Partners, which is a boutique strategy consulting firm serving clients exclusively in the life sciences sector. Prior to that, he was a Harvard-MIT Health Science & Technology Researcher.
Kate Anderson, Co-Founder and Operations Director at iFundWomen
Kate Anderson is the co-founder and Operations Director of iFundWomen. She has driven millions of dollars into the hands of female founders. Named one of NASDAQ’s “10 Best Resources of Funding for Women Entrepreneurs,” iFundWomen’s flexible crowdfunding platform combines a pay-it-forward model, expert startup coaching, professional video production, and a private community for its entrepreneurs, all with the goal of helping female entrepreneurs launch successful businesses. Kate is a leader in generating change and gender equality within the private fundraising space. Prior to launching iFundWomen, Kate spent four years at Hines Interests, one of the largest and most respected real estate organizations in the world with more than $116 billion under management.
Gihan Amarasiriwardena, Co-Founder & President of Ministry of Supply
Gihan Amarasiriwardena is the Co-Founder & President of Ministry of Supply, a Boston-based high performance business wear men’s and women’s fashion brand launched in 2012. The company’s 2012 Kickstarter campaign raised over $400,000 and became the largest amount raised for a fashion product at the time on a Kickstarter project. Early this year, Ministry of Supply run another successful campaign which raised $642,947 on Kickstarter. Gihan is a creative and curious engineer at heart, with an appreciation for aesthetic. He loves developing new, innovative solutions that fuse technology and design. He even set a Guinness World Record for running a half-marathon in a business suit.
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Ask & Tell: The History & Personal Stories of LGBTQ Veterans
Tuesday, November 27
6-8PM
Boston Public Library, Commonwealth Salon, 700 Boylston Street, Boston
Free and open to the public, but tickets are required.
SpeakOUT and The History Project: Documenting LGBTQ Boston invite you to join us on November 27th in honor of Veteran’s Day to share the stories of LGBTQ veterans with a moderated question and answer session. The History Project will also share a short history of LGBTQ people and the military.
Featuring Marvin Kabakoff, The History Project, and moderator, Ellyn Ruthstrom, SpeakOUT. Speakers to be announced.
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Boston Green Drinks - November 2018 Happy Hour
Tuesday, November 27
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Warehouse Bar & Grille, 40 Broad Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/boston-green-drinks-november-2018-happy-hour-tickets-52839159348
Thanksgiving family-time is indeed very special. And so is the recovery!
Debates with your crazy uncle over climate change and turkey leave you needing comaraderie in sustainability? Or perhaps you were the crazy aunt or uncle, fighting the good fight. Or maybe you're just tired of hosting. And now you're exhausted. Your healing solution is clear...Come to Green Drinks!
Join the conversation with sustainability professionals and hobbyists. Enjoy a drink and build your connection with our green community! Boston Green Drinks builds a community of sustainably-minded Bostonians, provides a forum for exchange of sustainability career resources, and serves as a central point of information about emerging green issues. We support the exchange of ideas and resources about sustainable energy, environment, food, health, education.
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Boston Student Innovation Night
Tuesday, November 27
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Alley Powered By Verizon, 10 Ware Street, Cambridge
Boston Student Innovation Night, organized by Startup Island and UNIfy, is an event to create meaningful connections between entrepreneurial-minded college students throughout Boston, to catalyze personal and professional growth, and break down silos among student entrepreneurs.
Whether you're looking to build on a business idea, expand your network, or connect with fellow student entrepreneurs, join us for a night of celebrating the thriving entrepreneurial community in Boston.
Over the course of the night, you will participate in activities designed to get to know fellow event participants in a meaningful way. The night will be highlighted by a series of breakout workshops, hosted by some inspiring entrepreneurs who all share a mission of providing you with unique, targeted lessons, and space where you will be heard, supported, and inspired.
Schedule for the Night:
6-6:15 PM: Check-in, snacks, refreshments, and networking
6:15-6:30 PM: Intros from Startup Island and UNIfy
6:30-7:30 PM: Breakout Sessions:
Post Grad Career Opportunities in Boston
The Business of Being Happy & Healthy
Social Entrepreneurship and Global Impact
Turning Ideas into Action (and a business)
7:30-8:30 PM: Meaningful connecting & one-on-one office hours
Hope to see you there!!
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NeuroTech + Beer
Tuesday, November 27
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Meadhall, 90 Broadway, Cambridge
Attending the 2018 Neurotech symposium at MIT or looking to relax and meet others after the talks?
Come join the Boston NeuroTech community over beers at Meadhall in Kendall Square.
Cash Bar.
Event is 21 + only.
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The War on Science: What We Need to Do
Tuesday, November 27
6:30 PM
Belmont Media Center, 9 Lexington Street, Belmont
Andrew Rosenberg, Ph.D., Director, Center for Science and Democracy, Union of Concerned Scientists Dr. Rosenberg brings more than 25 years of experience in government service and academic and non-profit leadership. He is the author of scores of peer-reviewed studies and reports on fisheries and ocean management and has published on the intersection between science and policy making. In this discussion he explains the present situation in which a significant sector of the American public rejects scientific facts such as climate change. He indicates what the informed public can and must do to diminish resistance to scientific facts and information.
A necessary resource by Dr. Rosenberg for the concerned public: The ABCs of Sidelining Science by the Trump Administration.
Some other current information
E.P.A. to Eliminate Office That Advises Agency Chief on Science
Starving Bears and Snowballs: Talking Science in a Time of Denial
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Defending Planet Earth from Asteroids
Tuesday, November 27
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Museum of Science, Skyline Room, 1 Science Park, Boston
For millions of years, asteroids have been striking the Earth, often causing considerable damage, widespread changes in climate, and even leading to massive extinction events. What should we do to protect ourselves from future asteroid impacts? Should we be researching and creating advanced spacecraft that could use gravity to steer an asteroid from our path? Should we be investing in asteroid-ramming impactors and space-faring nuclear weapons to blow dangerous asteroids off course? How do we prepare civil defense and emergency managements strategies in the event of an asteroid impact?
Come learn from NASA experts about the threats to our planet from asteroids and other near-Earth objects, discuss the tradeoffs of asteroid protection strategies with others, and make recommendations for the future of our planet’s safety!
Speakers:
Victoria Friedensen, Program Executive, Planetary Defense Coordination Office, NASA
Lindley Johnson, Planetary Defense Officer, NASA
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Building Electrification: The Third Leg of Our Fossil Fuel-Free Future
Monday, November 26
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Newton Free Library, 330 Homer Street, Newton
No registration is necessary. Seating is provided on a first come, first served basis.
Learn about heat pumps as an alternative for both heating and cooling your home from two experts. Nathan Phillips will discuss the need to electrify the building heating sector. Dr. Philip Hanser, who has a split system, will speak about heat pumps and split systems for installation in homes including how they work. Cosponsored by Green Newton as part of the Green Newton Series.
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The View from Russia: Media, Politics, Elections
Speech will be delivered in English
Tuesday, November 27
8:00 pm Maariv service will start at 7:00 pm at CKI Chapel Followed by a reception with Mr. Gusman at 7:30 pm, by invitations only.
The Campus/CMT Sanctuary. The 3rd Floor, 384 Harvard Street, Brookline
Cost: $18, reception - $25.
Mikhail Gusman, First Deputy Director General of ITAR-TASS, Russia’s Oldest and Largest News Agency
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Wednesday, November 28
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Boston Sustainability Breakfast
Wednesday, November 28
7:30 and 9:00 am
Pret A Manger, 101 Arch Street, Boston
Join us every month for Net Impact Boston's informal breakfast meetup of sustainability professionals for networking, discussion, and moral support. It's important to remind ourselves that we are not the only ones out there in the business world trying to do good! Feel free to drop by any time between 7:30 and 9:00 am.
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Speaker Series on Misinformation: Online Manipulation of the US Elections: The First Dozen Years
Wednesday, November 28
11:30 am - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Wexner Conference Room, Wexner Building, Room 434AB, Cambridge
Speaker Series on Misinformation, co-sponsored by the NULab at Northeastern University.
Takis Metaxas is a Professor of Computer Science at Wellesley College, studying online social media, primarily related to the propagation of information and misinformation, prediction of political events, and in developing tools that help users evaluate the trustworthiness of information. In particular, with his Wellesley colleagues and students, he has been studying the problem of propaganda and online misinformation since 2002.
"Fake news" is a generic term to indicate lies and propaganda presented as news. It is not a new phenomenon. Instead, its novelty lies in the omnipresence of online search and social media technologies. Its potential is in compromising the foundations of democracy. But how severe is the challenge it presents and what can we learn from the past dozen years of online manipulation during US elections?
I will start by reviewing the history of online efforts to influence public opinion and elections through the manipulation of the web and social media. To understand the extent of the problem, I will present documented cases of successful Google and Twitter misinformation campaigns ("bombs") since 2004. Time permitting, we will discuss some technical solutions proposed over the years, including TwitterTrails, that tracks the spreading of rumors on Twitter. I will end by analyzing why this problem is hard to solve by technical means alone and how epistemology needs to play an integral part of the solution.
More information at https://shorensteincenter.org/event/speaker-series-misinformation-takis-metaxas/
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Atmospheric Superrotation at Earth's Surface
Wednesday, November 28
12:00PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room 440, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Rodrigo Caballero, Professor and Head, Department of Meteorology, Stockholm University, Sweden.
Abstract: Atmospheric superrotation refers to a state with prograde (i.e. westerly) zonal-mean winds at or near the equator. It is an observed feature of several planetary atmospheres, but does not occur on present-day Earth. The question of whether Earth could superrotate under altered climates has attracted attention in recent years and remains unresolved. Though an intriguing problem in geophysical fluid dynamics, superrotation is arguably of limited consequence for the broader climate system unless it is felt at the surface, where it can alter the ocean circulation and surface temperature patterns. In this talk, I will give a general discussion of superrotation and the mechanisms sustaining it. I will also explore whether superrotation can occur at the surface. I show that surface superrotation can occur both in theory and in practice across a hierarchy of Earth-like atmospheric models, albeit in a rather extreme parameter regime.
Harvard Climate Seminar
Contact Name: Sabinna Cappo
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The Rise and Fall (?) of the Humanitarian intervention Project
Wednesday, November 28
12:00-1:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496, Pye Room, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Rajan Menon, City College of New York
Not long ago, humanitarian intervention was all the rage and produced a cottage industry of books, conferences, and plans for action, notably The Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Today, it appears to be on the back foot. This is not surprising given that the basic assumptions underlying humanitarian intervention were flawed from the get-go, yet rarely called into question given the near-unanimity among its proponents about the program's feasibility and international purchase. So what went wrong, why, and what are we left with?
Bio: Rajan Menon is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor in International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York/City University of New York, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University.
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Political Messaging & the Modern Media
Wednesday, November 28
12:00pm - 1:30pm
BU College of Communication, 640 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 209, Boston
RSVP at http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07efu5p1vy3020eec4&llr=sgxoeyrab
In our changing and increasingly diverse media landscape, international and national politics often crowd local coverage. Non-traditional media continues to expand, while the number of newspaper reporters covering local and state politics shrinks. What strategies do local officials use to craft political messaging that resonates with their constituents? Join the Boston University Initiative on Cities and the College of Communication for a discussion on political messaging that highlights lessons learned from seasoned politicians and staff in the field at different levels of leadership. The panel will feature:
Jerry Abramson, former White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs under President Obama, former Lt. Governor of Kentucky, and the former Mayor of Louisville
Setti Warren, Executive Director of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University and the former Mayor of Newton
Margaret Quackenbush (COM ‘15), Deputy Press Secretary at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office
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Mourning in America: Ronald Reagan, Samuel R. Pierce, and the Crisis of the Modern Black Professional
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2018, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Thompson Room, Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research
SPEAKER(S) Leah Wright Rigueur, Assistant Professor, Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
COST Free and open to the public.
CONTACT INFO hutchevents@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Leah Wright Rigueur is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She is the author of the award-winning book, The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power (PUP 2015). An historian by training, she received her B.A. in History from Dartmouth College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Princeton University. Her research interests include 20th Century United States political and social history and modern African American history, with an emphasis on race, civil rights, political ideology, political institutions, social movements, and the American presidency.
Leah’s research, writing, and commentary are featured regularly in a variety of outlets including NPR, PBS, MSNBC, CBS News, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Polity, Souls, and the Journal of Federal History. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, the Dirksen Congressional Center, the Presidential Libraries at the National Archives and Records Administration, the Social Science Research Council, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Currently, Leah is working on a new book project, Mourning in America: Black Men in a White House, which explores the intersection of race, class, and politics in the presidential administration of Ronald Reagan, by way of the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) corruption scandal of the 1980s and the professional and personal experiences of Housing Secretary Samuel R. Pierce, Jr.
As the Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow in Fall 2018, she will work on Black Men in a White House.
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MIT China Forum: MIT's Strategy on China
Wednesday, November 28
1:00pm to 2:30pm
MIT, Building E51, Wong Auditorium, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
This panel is a follow-up to the China Summit in Beijing and will address MIT's strategies going forward. Panelists include Richard Lester, MIT Associate Provost; David Goldston, Director of MIT's Washington office; and Yasheng Huang, Professor of Political Economy and International Management at Sloan.
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The Global Politics of AntiRacism: A View from the Canal Zone, 1940-1955
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2018, 3:45 – 5:45 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Robinson Hall, Lower Library (1st floor), 35 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR U.S. Power in the Global Arena Workshop and the Charles Warren Center
SPEAKER(S) Rebecca Herman (University of California, Berkeley)
CONTACT INFO cwc@fas.harvard.edu
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Re-Engineering Life: Tissue Engineering in Health and the Environment
Wednesday, November 28
4-6 pm
BU, Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering, Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room, 610 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Tissue engineering aims to restore, maintain, and improve damaged tissues or whole organs. BU researchers are working to understand the interactions between cells and their surroundings, combining emerging and traditional technologies to identify cell function and guide cell and tissue growth. Attend this Research on Tap to learn more about BU’s research in engineering artificial tissues and building hybrid biological/artificial devices for medical and other applications.
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MTL Executive Seminar: Age of Accelerated Innovation: From Quantum to Systems and Beyond
Wednesday, November 28
4:30pm to 5:30pm (RECEPTION begins at 4:00pm
MIT, Building 32-155, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Dr. Ahmad Bahai: CTO, Texas Instruments Incorporated
Dr. Bahai is the Chief Technology Officer of Texas Instruments and the director of TI Corporate Research, Kilby Labs. He was previously the director of research labs and CTO of National Semiconductor. He also is a consulting professor at Stanford University and IEEE Fellow.
Previously, he was the technical manager of the communication and mixed-signal processing research group at Bell Laboratories until 1997and Professor-In-Residence at UC Berkeley. He later founded Algorex, a communication and acoustic IC and system company, which was acquired by National.
Ahmad co-invented the multi-carrier spread spectrum, which is being used in many modern communication systems. He has been the keynote speaker in major international conferences and served as the associate editor of IEEE Comms journals and ISSCC technical committee.
He has more than 80 IEEE/IEE publications and 45 patents on systems and circuits. He received his MS degree from Imperial College, University of London and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.
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The Racialization of Print: Media and Ideology in the Long Eighteenth Century
Wednesday, November 28
5:00pm to 7:00pm
Northeastern, Holmes Hall, 400B, 39-41 Leon Street, Boston
Joseph Rezek (Associate Professor of English, Boston University) specializes in early and nineteenth-century American literature, British Romanticism, early black Atlantic literature, transatlantic studies, the history of race and racism, and the history of the book. His current book project, The Racialization of Print, tells a new story about the history of race and the history of print before the twentieth century.
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Somerville Climate Forward Plan Release Celebration
Wednesday, November 28
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Greentown Labs, 444 Somerville Avenue, Somerville
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/somerville-climate-forward-plan-release-celebration-tickets-52004435667
Join Mayor A. Curtatone and the Somerville Office of Sustainability and Environment at Greentown Labs to celebrate the release of Somerville's community climate change plan, Somerville Climate Forward. The event will feature several speakers from the Somerville community as well as a special Climate Forward video, ways for Somerville community members to take meaningful action around our climate and carbon neutrality goals, networking with City staff and community experts and stakeholders, and information about some of the cutting edge clean energy technologies being developed in Somerville at Greentown Labs. Refreshments will be served, and all are welcome as we come together to take action against climate change!
Find out more about the plan at www.somervillema.gov/climateforward.
Please note that Greentown Labs does not have any parking on site, so please consider walking, biking, or taking public transportation to the event. The three closest Blue Bikes (formerly known as Hubway) stations are at 33 Dane St., Conway Park and Union Square. It is a short 1-mile walk from the Harvard MBTA station down Kirkland and Washington Streets. Union Square in Somerville is also easily accessible via the #86 and #91 MBTA buses.
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Solar Policy Feedback Session
Wednesday, November 28
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Second Church in Dorchester, 44 Moultrie Street, Boston
The Boston Affordable Energy Coalition will be hosting a solar policy feedback session at Second Church in Dorchester on Wednesday 11/28 from 6 to 8 PM. The three goals of this session are:
1. to update people from environmental justice communities on where the new SMART solar program is and is not meeting requirements for including low to moderate income neighborhoods in the solar industry
2. to hear about possible fixes from solar experts
3. to solicit feedback from people on how they want the policy to change so that it can work for them
It is important for us to meet and incorporate this feedback quickly, because we have a rare opportunity to directly influence the regulations, as the state will be revising the program and implementing changes early next year. This is our chance to make sure that regulators are hearing from the right voices, so that we can ensure that the revised SMART program and the solar industry are accountable to everyone -- especially those who have been left out until now.
Proposed session format:
30 min: meet & greet, refreshments provided
15 min: update on where SMART program (and previous incentive programs) have been successful, and where they're falling short
15 min: proposed revisions to the SMART program
15 min: Q&A
45 min: feedback session
This is a free event. Light dinner provided.
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Social Media for Good
Wednesday, November 28
6:30 PM – 7:30 PM EST
Hall, 44 Gloucester Street, 4th floor, Boston
Cost: $0 – $9
Social media is polarizing. We love when it connects us to friends we haven’t spoken to in a decade and how it provides a platform for fundraising and social good. We hate it when we lose hours of our life to the Instagram discover feed. We'll address both the positive and negative effects of social media, so you won't walk away with a "rose colored glasses" view of it, but with new perspectives to consider. With the help of three panelists, we’ll work unpack the impact of social media on our daily lives along with how we can best manage them. Just like wearing leggings as pants, social media is here to stay, so how can we make the best of it?
We’ll continue the discussion over dinner (included) so we can learn from each other’s successes and misfires living with these platforms.
Joining us will be:
Leslie Green, Social Media Campaign Manager Brand and Buzz at HubSpot
Alexa Hasse, Research Associate for the Youth and Media project at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
Sarah Mitus, Manager, Social Media Strategy at DigitasLBI North America
Hall is a members-only dining hall and community space that provides access to daily dinner, local events and new possibilities. Interested in coming in to see Hall? Visit Hallboston.com to see us in action
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Lessons from the Liver: Uncovering Novel Approaches for Regenerative Medicine
Wednesday, November 28
6:30-8:00pm
Aeronaut Brewing Company, 14 Tyler Street, Somerville
Dr. Kristin Knouse, Ph.D., Scott Cook and Signe Ostby Fellow, The Whitehead Institute
The liver is the only organ in our body that has the ability to regenerate itself. While this remarkable feature of the liver has been appreciated for decades, it is still unclear why the liver can do this while other organs cannot. Dr. Knouse’s laboratory at the Whitehead Institute, an independent non-profit biomedical research organization located in Cambridge, aims to understand what endows the liver with this unique regenerative ability, with the ultimate goal of one day conferring this capacity to other organs in the setting of injury or disease. Please join us for what promises to be an exciting discussion!
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Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It
Wednesday, November 28
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
In this whimsical book, James Geary explores every facet of wittiness, from its role in innovation to why puns demonstrate the essence of creativity. Geary reasons that wit is both visual and verbal, physical and intellectual.
In Wit’s End, Geary embraces wit in every form by adopting a different style for each chapter; he writes the section on verbal repartee as a dramatic dialogue, the neuroscience of wit as a scientific paper, the spirituality of wit as a sermon, and other chapters in jive, rap, and the heroic couplets of Alexander Pope. Demonstrating that brevity really is the soul of wit, Geary crafts each chapter from concise sections of 200, 400, or 800 words. Entertaining, illuminating, and entirely unique, Wit’s End shows how wit is much more than a sense of humor.
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ChileMass Ignite | The Fourth Industrial Revolution: A conversation about advance and sustainable manufacturing in Chile
Wednesday, November 28
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Room Cloud City, 101 Broadway, 14th floor, Cambridge
We are happy to invite you to our first ChileMass Ignite: a space to trigger and discuss innovative ideas that can connect Chile and Massachusetts.
We kick off this space talking about the Industrial Revolution 4.0 and some of its manifestations in advanced manufacturing.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is already here. Billions of people connected by mobile devices, unthinkable access to knowledge and disruptive technologies are everywhere. Artificial intelligence, robotics, Internet of Things, nanotechnology, autonomous cars, biotechnology, and 3D printing/additive manufacturing are revolutionalizing our lives. How we can take advantage of those technologies to improve people lives and grow in a sustainable way?
Our first guest is professor Tim Gutowski, who has some interesting ideas to propose to the Chilean ecosystem. Come, join the conversation!
Timothy Gutowski, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT since 1981. Former director of the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity at M.I.T., and former chairman of the panel on Environmentally Benign Manufacturing from the National Science Foundation. His research interests have ranged from polymer processing to advanced composites manufacturing, to manufacturing systems design, to his current area of study - manufacturing and the environment.
Professor Gutowski has over 150 technical publications, three books, and seven patents and patent applications. His current area of study is focused on the climate change consequences and mitigation strategies for engineered systems including; manufacturing, transportation, buildings and energy systems.
There will be empanadas!
Please RSVP
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Sex, Science, and the State: The Role of Science in Sexual Reproductive Health and Policy Making
Wednesday, November 28
7 to 9:00 p.m.
Harvard Medical School, Armenise Auditorium (in Goldenson Hall), 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston
More information at http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/seminar-series/
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Thursday, November 29
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Picking your battles (and winning them): Protecting rivers in Massachusetts
Thursday, November 29
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Multi-purpose Room, Curtis Hall, 474 Boston Avenue, Medford
Julia Blatt, Executive Director, Massachusetts Rivers Alliance
How do you score a win for the environment when the other side has much deeper pockets (and nicer suits)? Julia Blatt, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Rivers Alliance, has chalked up some surprising wins for rivers in her thirty-year career. She'll share some of her stories and strategies.
Julia Blatt has served as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Rivers Alliance since 2009. The Alliance is a statewide group that works to protect and restore rivers across the Commonwealth and to strengthen and connect its 72 member groups. Prior to holding this position, Julia served as Executive Director of the Organization for the Assabet River for eight years. She has also been a program officer for the Sudbury Foundation, and a congressional aide. A frequent speaker on river protection topics, Julia has been recognized for her contributions to river protection in Massachusetts with awards from the National Park Service, Mass Audubon, the Ipswich River Watershed Association, the Charles River Watershed Association, and Trout Unlimited. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Brown and a master’s in Urban and Environmental policy from Tufts.
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How Learning Works: 7 Research-based Principles for Smart Teaching
Thursday, November 29
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard Faculty Club, The Library, 20 Quincy Street, Cambridge
RVSP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdSBZFHSOx_i15qsmO61i1F_702Oql_-A7E7dA0F7tLTIPAoQ/viewform
Effective teaching is a complex and highly contextualized activity that requires an understanding of how learning works, because “learning results from what the student does and thinks and only from what the student does and thinks” (Herb Simon). Hence, in order to influence learning, faculty must design the conditions that will drive student thinking and behavior in the appropriate direction. In this session, we will focus on seven learning principles and their application.
Susan Ambrose, PhD. Professor of Education and History, Senior Vice Provost for Educational Innovation, Northeastern University
Dr. Susan Ambrose, Professor of Education and History, is Senior Vice Provost for Educational Innovation at Northeastern University. She is an internationally recognized expert in college-level teaching and learning, and has conducted workshops and seminars for faculty and administrators throughout the United States and around the world. She focuses on translating research to practice in the design of curricula, courses and educational experiences for both undergraduate and graduate students. She earned her Doctorate of Arts in history from Carnegie Mellon University, and served as Associate Provost for Education, Director of the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence, and a Teaching Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon before joining Northeastern in August 2012.
Dr. Ambrose is co-author of four books, most recently How Learning Works: Seven Research-based Principles for Smart Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 2010), which has been widely praised for integrating fundamental research in the cognitive sciences and practical application. The book has been translated into Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Italian and Arabic. She has also published articles in The Journal of Higher Education, The Review of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, Quality Approaches in Higher Education, and the Journal of Engineering Education, as well as numerous chapters in edited volumes. She served as a Visiting Scholar for the American Society of Engineering Education and the National Science Foundation (1998-2001) and was named an American Council on Education fellow (1999-2000). Dr. Ambrose’s research has been funded by the NSF, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the ALCOA Foundation, the Eden Hall Foundation, the Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, and the Davis Educational Foundation.
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The Current and Future Socioeconomic Impacts of Climate Change in China
Thursday, November 29
12:00 - 1:30 pm
BU, Pardee Center, 67 Bay State Road, Boston
RSVP at https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07efux0wf62a9ef63a&oseq=&c=&ch=
Global climate change poses serious challenges to sustainable development in China. Beijing Normal University is leading a national R&D project to evaluate the effects of climate change on socioeconomic systems, particularly the distribution of population and economic activity. Funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, and together with four other institutions in China, the project's aim is to model the interactions of climate and socioeconomic factors, and quantify the risks (e.g. affected population, crop yield damage, and GDP loss) over the course of the next several decades.
Join us at the for a discussion with Pardee Center Visiting Scholar Prof. Tao Ye, the general coordinator of the project and a Professor of Geographical Science at Beijing Normal University, where he will provide a broad overview of the effort and the progress to date. Lunch will be provided beginning at 11:30 am.
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Countering Violent Extremism: A Quest for Legitimacy and Effectiveness
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 29, 2018, 12:15 – 2 a.m.
WHERE Harvard, 1 Brattle Square (Room 350), Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR International Security Program
SPEAKER(S) Anina Schwarzenbach, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, International Security Program
CONTACT INFO susan_lynch@harvard.edu
DETAILS Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first-come-first-served basis.
LINK https://www.belfercenter.org/event/countering-violent-extremism-quest-legitimacy-and-effectiveness
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The Journalistic Craft and Legacy of Anthony Shadid: The Triumph of Human Understanding in a Polarized, Digital Age
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 29, 2018, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Rubenstein Building, Ellwood Democracy Lab A (Room 414A), 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Rami Khouri, MEI Senior Fellow; Senior Public Policy Fellow, Issam Fares Institute, American University of Beirut; and Visiting Adjunct Professor of Journalism and Journalist-in-Residence at AUB
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Social + Impact Connect 2018
Thursday, November 29
3:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Venture Cafe Kendall, 1 Broadway, 5th Floor, Cambridge
Save the date for Venture Cafe's Social + Impact Connect mini-conference taking place on November 29th, 2018.
Social + Impact Connect recognize and celebrate innovators and companies looking to solve big problems as ‘social impact’ or ‘impact enterprises’. This special ‘conference night’ event seeks to bring together the brightest minds who are building, funding and innovating to Solving the world’s toughest problems in the Greater Boston area.
AGENDA AT A GLANCE
3:00 – 8:30 PM NETWORKING
3:00 – 5:00 PM OFFICE HOURS
5:00 – 6:00 PM ENTREPRENEUR ROUND ROBIN
5:30 – 8:00 PM SOCIAL + IMPACT DEMOS
6:15 – 7:15 PM SOCIAL + IMPACT MINI HACKS
7:00 – 8:00 PM SOCIAL + IMPACT FUNDING
1) OFFICE HOURS (3:00 - 5:00 PM)
Early stage ventures and prospective entrepreneurs have an opportunity to sign up for Office Hours during this event. Entrepreneurs may sign up for 30-minute consultations with a variety of experts.
2) ENTREPRENEUR ROUND ROBIN (5:00 - 6:00 PM)
Full Details Coming Soon.
3) SOCIAL + IMPACT DEMO (5:30 - 8:00 PM)
Venture Cafe demos are a great way to gain exposure through our online and offline channels. During our Social + Impact Connect event, Venture Café will give a selection of the area’s startups, inventors and researchers an opportunity to showcase their work to the Boston community.Apply to demo: bit.ly/vc-impact-demo18.
Apply to demo by November 15th, 2018.
4) SOCIAL + IMPACT MINI HACKS (6:15 - 7:15 PM)
Full Details Coming Soon.
5) SOCIAL + IMPACT FUNDING (7:00 - 8:00 PM)
Full Details Coming Soon.
SPONSORSHIP Interested in sponsoring Social + Impact Connect? Please contact Chandra Briggman at chandra.briggman@vencaf.org for details.
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Skewed or Rescued?: The Emerging Theory of Algorithmic Fairness
Thursday, November 29
5:00pm to 6:30pm
Harvard, Taubman Building 520 A, B & C, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Cynthia Dwork
Description: Intelligent systems, much like humans, have the ability to see and respond to the world around them. Using data in new ways to make more accurate predictions or enabling new services, these machines offer the hope of overcoming the limitations of our own decision-making. However, with this they bring questions about how we make decisions, the influence of bias in decision making and how experts can ensure that key values – such as fairness – are built into artificially intelligent systems. This talk will introduce the emerging theory of algorithmic fairness: how to use the tools of theoretical computer science to clarify -- and address -- the challenges experts face in ensuring that machines make objective decisions.
Cynthia Dwork, the Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard, the Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and an Affiliated Faculty Member at Harvard Law School, is renowned for placing privacy-preserving data analysis on a mathematically rigorous foundation. A cornerstone of this work is the invention of differential privacy, a strong privacy guarantee now used widely in industry and for disclosure control in the 2020 decennial census. With seminal contributions in cryptography, distributed computing, and ensuring statistical validity, her most recent focus is on fairness in classification algorithms. Dwork is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Engineering, and the American Philosophical Society, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the ACM.
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The Language of Civic Life: Past to Present
Thursday, November 29
5:00pm to 6:30pm
MIT, Building 56-114, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
When everyday citizens interact about politics today, they often do so (1) anonymously and (2) in digital space, which results in a kind of aggressive chaos. But what happens when people identify themselves to one another in place-based communities as they do, for example, when writing letters to the editor of their local newspaper? How does that change public discussion?
This talk by Roderick Hart operationalizes the concept of “civic hope” and reports the results of a long-term study of 10,000 letters to the editor written between 1948 and the present in twelve small American cities. Hart’s argument is that the vitality of a democracy lies not in its strengths but in its weaknesses and in the willingness of its people to address those weaknesses without surcease. If democracies were not shot-through with unstable premises and unsteady compacts, its citizens would remain quiet, removed from one another. Disagreements – endless, raucous disagreements – draw them in, or at least enough of them to sustain civic hope.
Roderick Hart is the Allan Shivers Centennial Chair in Communication at the University of Texas at Austin and the founding director of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life. He is the author of twelve books, the most recent of which is Political Tone: How Leaders Talk and Why. He is also the author of DICTION 7.0, a computer program designed to analyze language patterns. Dr. Hart has been inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers at the University of Texas and has also been designated Professor of the Year for the State of Texas from the Carnegie/C.A.S.E. Foundation.
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LWN Speakers Series: The Ins and Outs of Time Trade Circle
Thursday, November 29
5:15 – 6:15 PM
ANC Community Room, North Hall, 1651 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Free event! Learn more about this innovative approach to sharing skills and time
You have skills. Whether it’s baking bread, editing and typing papers, giving gardening and landscaping tips, anything you have experience with – you have skills. You need help. It could be with rides to medical appointments, advice for redecorating your living room, getting freshly home cooked soup, or organizing your office. Time Trade Circle might just be the answer to finding the assistance you need in exchange for skills you offer. You decide what you can give and you decide what you need.
The Living Well Network warmly invites you to a presentation and discussion about Time Trade Circle, a local bank that keeps track of time. Learn more about this innovative approach to sharing skills and time.
Light refreshments provided.
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Local Action, Global Commitments: The Private Sector’s Role in International Climate Policy
Thursday, November 29
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM EST
Democracy Brewing, 35 Temple Place, Boston
Cost: $25
The UN’s latest report on climate change sends a clear message –– keep man-made global warming impacts to 1.5 degrees celsius, or face irreversible consequences as a result.
President Trump’s decision to remove the U.S. from the Paris Agreement and rollback Obama-era climate policies signals that the federal government is unwilling to lead international efforts to promote clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In this void, businesses and legislative leaders are stepping up to act on climate, and in doing so, are creating local economic and job growth. In light of this, CABA is hosting a member business reception ahead of our Executive Director, Michael Green's trip to this year's UN Climate Talks in Katowice, Poland.
Be one of the local businesses making a global impact.
Refreshments will be provided.
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Essential Knowledge Series on Carbon Capture, Extremism, and Haptics
Thursday, November 29
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EST
MIT Press Bookstore, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join us at the MIT Press Bookstore for a discussion among three authors of The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series.
The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers accessible, concise, beautifully produced books on topics of current interest.
Howard J. Herzog is Senior Research Engineer in the MIT Energy Initiative. His book, Carbon Capture, is a concise overview of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), a promising but overlooked climate change mitigation pathway.
J.M. Berger is a fellow with the Counter-Terrorism Strategic Communications Project and a nonresident Fellow with the Alliance for Securing Democracy. His book, Extremism, elucidates what extremism is, how extremist ideologies are constructed, and why extremism can escalate into violence.
Lynette A. Jones is Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics. Haptics is an accessible, nontechnical overview of active touch sensing, from sensory receptors in the skin to tactile surfaces on flat screen displays.
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The Ghosts of Gombe
Thursday, November 29
6:00pm
Harvard, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Dale Peterson, Author
On July 12, 1969, Ruth Davis, a young American volunteer at Dr. Jane Goodall’s research site in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, left camp to follow a chimpanzee into the forest. Six days later, her body was found floating at the base of a high waterfall. What happened? Drawing on his recent book, The Ghosts of Gombe, Dale Peterson will delve into the full story of day-to-day life at Gombe during the months preceding Ruth’s death. These months were marked by stress, excitement, social conflicts, cultural alignments, and the friendships that developed among three of the researchers and some of the chimpanzees.
Lecture and Book Signing.
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Religion and Politics in America
Thursday, November 29
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EST
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Columbia Point, Boston
E.J. Dionne, Washington Post columnist, political commentator, and visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School, examines the role of religion in American politics with Margery Eagan, co-host of WGBH's Boston Public Radio.
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RFK Visiting Professor Lecture: Pablo Allard: The Disaster Artist: or How a Chilean Architect Got Involved (and Survived) in Urban Design, and the Politics of Resilience
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 29, 2018, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS)
SPEAKER(S) Pablo Allard, Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; Dean at the Faculty of Architecture at the Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile
COST Free and open to the public
DETAILS With Introduction by Diane Davis, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism; Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design
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Conversations on the Edge - After the Midterms: What's Next?
Thursday, November 29
6pm, with reception to follow
Cambridge Public Library Lecture Hall, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
The 2018 midterm elections are undoubtedly one of the most important elections in recent history with many tense and important races. This conversation will consider what and who influenced this year’s midterms and consider what comes next.
Panelists
Cheryl Clyburn Crawford
Cheryl Clyburn Crawford is the executive director of MassVOTE. She grew up in Boston and has worked for many years in communities of color advocating for voting and civil rights, and joined MassVOTE 2008. She directs the Democracy for Nonprofits program and the Civic Engagement Fund, which distributes seed money and technical support to community nonprofit organizations so that they can to make a significant commitment to voter empowerment.
Alex Goldstein
Alex Goldstein is the founder and CEO of the strategic communications firm 90 West, and was a senior communications advisor for Ayanna Pressley's congressional campaign. He also served as spokesman and senior political advisor to former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick from 2009 - 2013, and as the director of communications for the Massachusetts Democratic Party from 2007-2008.
Mark Horan
Mark Horan has more than 20 years experience consulting on crisis clients and political campaigns, including those of U.S. Senator Edward Markey, former Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Congressman Michael Capuano, Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone and former Congressmen Barney Frank. He also worked as a Senior Vice President at Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications, AT&T, and Engage, an online advertising company. His op-eds have been published in the Washington Post, Boston Globe and other news sites.
Jennifer Nassour
Jennifer Nassour is the COO of ReflectUS, a national, non-partisan coalition of the leading women’s organizations, working to increase the number of women in office and achieve equal representation across racial, ideological, ethnic and geographic spectrums. She is also Of Counsel to Rubin and Rudman and the former Chairman of the MassGOP. In addition to practicing law, she is an accomplished political and charitable fundraiser, an experienced staffer in both the executive and legislative branches of state government, and a veteran of political campaigns and causes.
Moderator
Anthony Brooks - Senior Political Reporter, WBUR
Anthony Brooks is the senior political reporter for WBUR. Before becoming WBUR’s senior political reporter, Brooks was co-host of Radio Boston, WBUR’s local news and talk show. For many years, Brooks worked as a Boston-based reporter for NPR, covering regional issues across New England, including politics, the economy, education, criminal justice and urban affairs.
About Conversations on the Edge:
Cambridge Center for Adult Education started Conversations on the Edge in partnership with Cambridge Community Foundation in 2017. The mission has been to provide space and fodder for discussion on pressing topics that impact our communities by bringing together perspectives on history, law, and activism alongside the general public. The first year saw sold-out conversations on topics of voting rights, immigration, income inequality, and resistance. More information can be found at ccae.org/conversations.
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On Distraction with John Plotz and Marina van Zuylen
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 29, 2018, 6 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Barker Center 110, Thompson Room, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Humanities, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard
SPEAKER(S) John Plotz, Professor of English, Brandeis University
Marina van Zuylen, Professor of French and Comparative Literature, Bard College
Robin Kelsey, Dean of Arts and Humanities, Harvard University
COST Free
CONTACT INFO humcentr@fas.harvard.edu
617-495-0738
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Honest Signals: Real-Time Emotional Computing with Cogito
Thursday, November 29
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
iMotions, 141 Tremont Street, 7th Floor, Boston
This month's Meetup will feature Naomi Nuta, Senior Director of Behavior Science Services at Cogito Corporation!
Cogito, a leader in real-time emotional intelligence solutions, offers a behavior sensing and guidance platform that is driving superior call outcomes at the world’s most customer-focused organizations. Born from decades of research into “honest signals” by Dr. Sandy Pentland, founder of the MIT Media Lab, Cogito uniquely combines behavioral science insights, artificial intelligence, and high-performance computing to analyze hundreds of non-verbal signals in real-time on the call and deliver live guidance to agents, empowering them to make better connections with customers.
This meetup will showcase how a mix of behavioral science and cutting-edge AI can help drive commercial outcomes by augmenting emotional intelligence.
As always, pizza and drinks will be provided!
Schedule:
6:00pm Doors Open, Food & Drinks
6:30pm Welcome by Organizer Jessica
6:35pm Naomi Nuta, Cogito
7:30pm Mingling & Demos
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Screening & Conversation: Hira Nabi, "Gadani: Mazdoor, Jahaz, aur Machli"
Thursday, November 29
6:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Hira Nabi will screen extracts from a work-in-progress film; this will be followed by a conversation between Hira Nabi and Rosalyne Shieh.
In this docu-fictional work, ‘Ocean Master’ a container vessel is anthropomorphized, and enters into a dialogue with several workers at the Gadani yards. The conversation moves between dreams and desire, places that can be called home, and the structural violence embedded in the act of dismembering a ship at Gadani. As the workers recall the homes and families they left behind, the long work days mesh indistinguishably into one another, and the desperation that they carry with them like shackles, they are forced to confront the realities of their work in which they are faced with death every day, and how they may survive and look towards a future.
Hira Nabi is a filmmaker, multimedia artist, and a writer/researcher. Her work looks at repressed memory in urban landscapes, imagined histories and possible futures, movements and migrations, botanical exchanges, infrastructures, and the environment. She has exhibited and screened at Alwan Center for the Arts in New York, Union de Escrituras y Artistas de Cuba, in Havana, The Second Floor, and Vasl Artists Association in Karachi, the International Summer Academy for Fine Arts in Salzburg, Festival de Cine Pobre, Gibara, L’Alternativa Festival, in Barcelona, and the first Lahore Biennial among others. She earned a BA in video and postcolonial studies from Hampshire College in 2010, and an MA in cinema and media studies from The New School in 2016. Her most recent and ongoing work is a study of the shipbreaking yard at Gadani, in Pakistan.
Rosalyne Shieh is the Marion Mahony Emerging Practitioner Fellow. She is a founder of SCHAUM/SHIEH, a collaborative practice based in New York City and Houston. In her research project, Lessons in Prosaic Form: Informal Material Culture in Taiwan, Rosalyne aims to produce an ‘erratic atlas’ fashioned from archival findings, imagistic descriptions, interviews, and photographs. In focusing on the intersections of personal histories, material culture, and the built environment, she hopes to create new ways of thinking on today’s complex issues of culture, identity, and site. Rosalyne will teach studio and a workshop this year. The workshop, Self and Work, looks at collapsing personal and objective knowledge to construct a multi-layered image of place. SCHAUM/SHIEH recently completed a ground-up building for the Transart Foundation in Houston; ongoing projects include a masterplan for the Judd Foundation and a building restoration for the Chinati Foundation, both in Marfa, Texas. They have exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the Storefront for Art and Architecture. They were 2017 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program finalists and a 2016 AIA New Practice New York. Rosalyne has taught at Yale, The Cooper Union, Syracuse, and the University of Michigan, where she was a Taubman Fellow in Architecture. She is also a MacDowell Fellow. She holds an M.Arch. from Princeton, an M.Sc. in Architectural History from The Bartlett, and a B.A. from Berkeley. She is a licensed architect in the state of New York.
MIT Department of Architecture
Fall 2018 Lecture Series
Organized by Rosalyne Shieh, Marion Mahony Emerging Practitioner Fellow, MIT Department of Architecture
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Boston Drone Racing Hack Night
Thursday, November 29
6:00 PM TO 8:00 PM
BU Computer Science and Math building Room 144/148, 111 Cummington Mall, Boston
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AUGMENTED & VIRTUAL REALITY: DIGITAL TRENDS OF 2019
Thursday, November 29
6:30 – 8:30 pm EST
GA Boston, 125 Summer Street 13th Floor, Boston
RSVP at https://generalassemb.ly/education/augmented-virtual-reality-digital-trends-of-2019/boston/60747
We're diving into trends for 2019, centered around the major new player on the digital scene: Augmented and Virtual Reality.
Join us as we sit down with our expert panel to paint a better picture of how diverse industries are looking to use this tech in the future, and how you could get into this exciting field.
By signing up for this event, you're giving our sponsors permission to contact you about upcoming events and promotions.
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Boston Preparing for Collapse Meetup: First Meetup
Thursday, November 29
6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Boloco Boston Common, 176 Boylston Street, Boston (Our table will be the one with flowers in a vase)
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Mentalligence: A New Psychology of Thinking
Thursday, November 29
7:00pm
338 Newbury Street, Boston
Dr. Kristen Lee
One of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves is rethinking what we've been taught, because thoughts become behaviors. The same mind that gets us stuck is the same one that can set us free. It's time to rip up the script society hands us, breathe deep, and reclaim a healthy definition of success that doesn't compartmentalize your mind, body and soul. We need a new organizing framework that allows more flexibility and moral grounding―one that lets science, emotion and spirit to fuse.
Too often, life's disorienting moments can leave us tumbling into messy, downward spirals. We lose clarity, and are held hostage by blind spots that keep us from thriving. We fall into common mindless behavioral traps which lead to perpetual patterns of shutting down, numbing out, binding up and staying stuck. In this uniquely liberating book, Dr. Kristen Lee teaches us how to apply a process of behavioral change using a series of different lenses, to steer our brains to overcome blind spots and cultivate Upward Spiral habits.
A leading expert on resilience and behavioral science, Dr. Kristen Lee developed this new psychology of thinking model from over twenty years of clinical practice, the latest neuroscience, and her own research findings. Mentalligence [men-tel-i-juh-ns] is a sage guide that will help you build meta-awareness by emphasizing an impact-driven rather than a performance-obsessed mindset, and adopt a model of 'collective efficacy' that is less I-focused and more we-focused, to facilitate positive social impact at a time when it's desperately needed. This is what psychologists call 'The Good Life'―living mindfully and consciously. Rather than falling for predominant definitions of 'success' that leave us boxed in, depleted, and oblivious to ways we can work together, Mentalligence helps us find the thinking and behavioral agility to work towards better outcomes for all.
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Friday, November 30
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Utility Resilience: Lessons From Puerto Rico and Local Preparation
Friday, November 30
Registration - 7:15 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.
Forum - 8:00 a.m. - 11:45 a.m.
University of Massachusetts Club, One Beacon Street, Boston
Register at https://climateadaptationforum.org/event/utility-resilience-lessons-from-puerto-rico-and-local-preparation/
Cost: $15 - $45
Adapting utilities to be resilient to climate impacts, from extreme storm events to heatwaves, poses significant challenges and opportunities for providers and communities. Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017 and resulted in the longest blackout in U.S. History. The Forum welcomes Malu Blázquez Arsuaga, the Executive Director of the Resilient Puerto Rico Advisory Commission, and speakers from Resilient Power Puerto Rico to discuss lessons learned from Hurricane Maria and rebuilding resilient utility infrastructure.
We will then turn our focus to local climate impacts and hear what steps are being taken for regional utility resilience. Local utility providers and communities will discuss on-going projects and challenges for climate adaptation in New England.
Keynote Presentation
Malu Blázquez Arsuaga, Executive Director, Resilient Puerto Rico Advisory Commission
Forum Co-Chairs
Julie Eaton, Lead Resiliency Engineer, Weston & Sampson
Alex Papali, Green Justice Coordinator, Clean Water Action
Additional speakers to be announced.
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Using Telemedicine and Artificial Intelligence to Provide Better Healthcare for All: Opportunities and Challenges
Friday, November 30
9 am to 10 am
MIT, Building 32-463, Stata Center: Star Conference Room, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Dr. Amar Gupta, Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES); Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Labs (CSAIL)]
Speaker's information: Dr. Amar Gupta has spent most of his career fostering several technologies, processes, and policies that have been widely adopted around the world. He has spent most of his career at MIT and has also served as Endowed Professor at two universities and as Dean of Computer Science and Information Systems at one of them. Dr. Gupta has served as Advisor to World Health Organization and other leading international international and national organizations, as well as corporations, on the use of evolving technologies and processes. More details about him and his current activities are available at:
health-care-barriers-and-boundaries-amar-gupta-telemedicine-0522
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Distributional Models of Ocean Carbon Export
Friday, November 30
11:00am to 12:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Thesis Defense: B. B. Cael
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Atmospheric formation of strong acids: Sources and implications
Friday, November 30
12:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Professor Cora Young, York University
The atmospheric chemistry of many strong atmospheric acids (pKa < 1) remains an open question in the field. The high surface activity of strong acids leads to short atmospheric lifetimes, measurement challenges, and implications for heterogeneous chemistry. In this presentation, I will focus on the atmospheric chemistry of persistent, toxic perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) and the dominant component of reactive chlorine, hydrogen chloride (HCl).
Despite their strong acidity and short atmospheric lifetimes, PFAAs have been shown to undergo long-range transport. To explore the mechanisms driving this transport, my group collects and analyzes atmospheric deposition. Using deposition dating back to the 1970s from an Arctic ice core, we observed that atmospheric formation from volatile precursors was the dominant source for most PFAAs. I will describe the mechanisms and sources for different PFAA compounds, including the influence of policy such as the Montreal Protocol.
Over the past ten years, the impacts of reactive chlorine (Cly = HCl + ClNO2 + HOCl + 2Cl2) on air quality have become apparent. The dominant component of Cly is HCl, which is extremely challenging to measure with high time resolution. My group used a compact cavity ring-down spectrophotometer to measure ambient HCl in the indoor and outdoor atmosphere at 0.5 Hz. Using these measurements, we can effectively determine sources of HCl to the atmosphere. Observations from marine and continental urban areas will be presented.
Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
Contact Name: Kelvin Bates
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IACS Seminar: Machine Learning for Materials Discovery
WHEN Friday, Nov. 30, 2018, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Geological Museum, Geological Lecture Hall 100, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Information Technology, Lecture, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute for Applied Computational Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
SPEAKER(S) Julia Ling, Director of Data Science at Citrine Informatics
COST Free and open to the public. No registration required.
CONTACT INFO Email: iacs-info@seas.harvard.edu
Phone: 617-496-2623
DETAILS Materials science presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities for machine learning methods in terms of data size, data sparsity, available domain knowledge, and multi-scale physics. In this talk, Dr. Ling will discuss how machine learning can be used to accelerate materials discovery through a sequential learning workflow. You'll examine how domain knowledge can be integrated into data-driven models, the role of uncertainty quantification in driving exploration of new design candidates, and how to forecast the impact of a data-driven approach on a given materials discovery campaign.
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Towards a Large Scale Quantum Computer Using Advanced Fabrication Technologies
Friday, November 30
3:00pm to 4:00pm
Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin G125, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Jim Clarke, Intel Corporation
Today’s quantum processors are limited to 10’s of entangled quantum bits. If you believe the hype, a commercially relevant system is just around the corner that can outperform our largest supercomputers. The reality, however, is that we are at mile 1 of a marathon. There are many unanswered fundamental questions. At Intel, our approach is to rely on the continued evolution of Moore’s Law to build qubit arrays with a high degree of process control.
Here, we present progress toward the realization of 300mm Si-MOS based spin qubit devices in a production environment. This includes (i) isotopically purified 28Si epi substrates with a compelling LT Hall mobility of ~ 10,000 cm2/Vs, (ii) design of a custom qubit layout, (iii) integration of fin-based spin qubit devices using immersion lithography, moving from classical transistor structures to full spin qubits, and (iv) the realization of quantum dots in a nested gate design novel to a 300mm process line.
In addition, this talk will focus on two bottlenecks to moving beyond today’s few-qubit devices. The first bottleneck is in the interconnect design of the quantum circuit. Today’s qubits have personalities. Individual control of each qubit is required. A small quantum processor today has multiple RF and DC wires per qubit. This is a brute force approach to wiring and will not scale to the millions of qubits needed for large applications.
The second bottleneck relates to the speed of information turns in quantum development. Fabrication of spin qubits in a silicon substrate bares similarity to conventional transistors from advanced CMOS technologies. One of the above 300mm wafers has over 10,000 individual quantum test structures. Naturally, R&D should be accelerated by the potential volume of statistical data. While automated electrical testing of a CMOS transistor wafer can be completed in less than an hour at room temperature, data collection at cryogenic temperatures is currently limited to a small number of devices with a turnaround of hours to days. Rhetorically speaking, “How can we deliver an exponentially fast compute technology with slow and serial characterization of quantum chips?”
Speaker Bio: Jim Clarke is the director of the Quantum Hardware research group within Intel’s Components Research Organization. Jim launched Intel’s Quantum Computing effort in 2015, as well as a research partnership with QuTech (TU Delft and TNO). His group’s primary focus is to use Intel’s process expertise to develop scalable qubit arrays. Prior to his current role, Jim managed a group focused on interconnect research at advanced technology nodes as well as evaluating new materials and paradigms for interconnect performance. He has co-authored more than 70 papers and has several patents. Prior to joining Intel in 2001, Jim completed a B.S. in chemistry at Indiana University, a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Harvard University and a post-doctoral fellowship in physical organic chemistry at ETH, Zrich.
Contact: Gioia Sweetland
Phone: 617-495-2919
Email: gioia@seas.harvard.edu
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Senses: A Symposium
WHEN Friday, Nov. 30, 2018, 3 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Science Center, Hall D, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Society for Mind, Brain, and Behavior (HSMBB)
SPEAKER(S) Dr. James DiCarlo, Peter de Florez Professor & Department Head, MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Dr. David Somers, Professor & Department Chair, Boston University Psychological & Brain Sciences
Dr. Donald Katz, Associate Professor, Brandeis Psychology
Dr. Charles Liberman, HMS Schuknecht Professor of Otology & Laryngology; Director, Eaton-Peabody Lab
Dr. Venkatesh Murth, Professor, Harvard Molecular & Cellular Biology
DETAILS
Join HSMBB for our biggest event of the semester - a symposium on the five senses, featuring some of Boston's lead researchers in psychology and neuroscience.
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Brains, Minds + Machines Seminar Series: Perceiving what we cannot sense: Insights from 3D vision
Friday, November 30
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 46-3002, Singleton Auditorium, 43 VASSAR ST, Cambridge
Speaker/s: Ari Rosenberg, Assistant Professor - Ph.D., Computational Neuroscience, University of Chicago
Abstract: Our sensory systems are unable to directly sense all the aspects of the world we perceive. For example, our perception of the world as three-dimensional (3D) is compelling, but our eyes only detect two-dimensional (2D) projections of our surroundings. Creating accurate and precise 3D percepts is critical for successful interactions with our environment, but how does the brain solve this inverse problem? Using 3D vision in the macaque monkey as the model system, I will show behavioral, neuroimaging, and electrophysiological data that together reveal a hierarchical, cortical pathway specialized for implementing the 2D-to-3D visual transformation. The results of these experiments reveal roles of little explored brain areas in the dorsal visual pathway, including V3A and CIP, and have broader implications for our understanding of how the brain solves nonlinear optimization problems required to perceive what we cannot sense.
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Machine Learning Accelerates the Diagnosis, Process Optimization, and Discovery of Novel Energy Materials
Friday, November 30
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 3-270 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Machine learning (ML) is ripe to disrupt three research tasks: diagnosis, process optimization, and discovery. “Diagnosis” in this context refers to the purposeful application of characterization to identify underlying performance-limiting physics, an essential step toward improving early-stage prototypes. ML can increase diagnosis speed and efficiency. As an example, I’ll demonstrate how Bayesian inference identifies underlying bulk and interface properties limiting the performance of early-stage photovoltaic devices, ten times faster than traditional spectroscopy methods. Accurate diagnosis directs “process optimization,” which can help determine the performance ceiling of novel materials, and when to abandon unsuccessful candidates quickly. Lastly, materials screening, in combination with high-throughput experimentation enabled by ML, can lead to novel materials “discovery,” as we illustrate with the case of novel lead-free perovskite-inspired photovoltaic materials with promising optoelectronic properties. In conclusion, I’ll illustrate how these principles generalize to other systems, and promise to accelerate the cycle of learning by ≥10x across a range of chemistry and materials disciplines.
Tonio Buonassisi, Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT
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Combating the Climate Crisis: from Regulation to Legislation: Senator Edward Markey
Friday, November 30
4:00pm - 6pm
MIT, Building 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Senator Edward J. Markey, a consumer champion and national leader on climate change, energy, environmental protection and telecommunications policy, has a prolific legislative record on major issues across the policy spectrum and a deep commitment to improving the lives of the people of Massachusetts and our country.
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Outbreak Culture: The Ebola Virus and the Next Epidemic
Friday, November 30
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
At the height of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, a prominent physician working in Sierra Leone, Sheikh Humarr Khan, became infected with the virus and died. As Pardis Sabeti and Lara Salahi show, much more could have been done within the medical community and among international actors to protect not only this renowned infectious disease expert but also the well-being of his patients and others affected by this devastating disease.
Written by an award-winning genetic researcher and a tenacious journalist, Outbreak Culture examines each phase of the epidemic–the largest and deadliest of its kind–and identifies the factors that kept key information from reaching physicians and complicated the government’s response to the crisis. Drawing insights from clinical workers, data collectors, organizational experts, and scholars, Salahi and Sabeti expose a fractured system that failed to share knowledge of the virus and ensure containment.
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The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work,and Connect Across Differences
Friday, November 30
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes Harvard Medical School professor DR. HELEN RIESS and science and medicine historian SUSAN LANZONI for a discussion of their respective new books, The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work, and Connect Across Differences and Empathy: A History.
About The Empathy Effect
Empathy is undergoing a new evolution. In a global and interconnected culture, we can no longer afford to identify only with people who seem to be a part of our “tribe.” As Dr. Helen Riess of Harvard Medical School has learned, our capacity for empathy is not just an innate trait—it is also a skill that we can learn and expand. With The Empathy Effect, the leading researcher presents a groundbreaking teaching book to help us learn essential skills for transforming the way we relate to others in any situation.
“Nourishing empathy lets us help not just ourselves,” says Dr. Riess, “but also everyone we interact with, whether for a moment or a lifetime.” Drawing from her empathy training curricula now used internationally in health care, business, and education, she takes us step by step through her EMPATHY program. Here you’ll learn to enhance empathic behavior in yourself and others; recognize and reverse dehumanization and scapegoating tactics; practice empathy at work, home, and in everyday settings; discover ways to build empathy in groups and leadership positions; and much more.
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Ikeda Forum 2018: How Do We Practice Human Rights? A dialogue on dignity and justice in daily life
Friday, November 30
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue, 396 Harvard Street, Cambridge
Don't miss out on our 14th annual Ikeda Forum on Friday evening, November 30th! This year's theme is, How Do We Practice Human Rights?A dialogue on dignity and justice in daily life.
In a recent statement, Daisaku Ikeda has emphasized that "it has never been more important to create and solidify a movement for human rights education that will foster the social conditions in which people treasure human diversity and dignity within the contexts of their daily lives." In so doing, "ever more individuals can recognize and take personal responsibility for the construction of a culture of human rights."
Inspired in part by this statement, as well as by the work and scholarship of this year's three panelists, the 2018 forum will examine human rights and human rights culture, including its complexities and challenges.
Panelists include:
Elora Chowdhury, Professor & Chair, Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies; Director, Human Rights Minor; UMASS Boston
Catia Confortini, Associate Professor, Co-Director, Peace & Justice Studies Program; Affiliated Political Scientist, Department of Political Science; Wellesley College
Jason Goulah, Associate Professor of Bilingual-Bicultural Education; Director, Institute for Daisaku Ikeda Studies in Education; Depaul University
The panel discussion will be followed by a youth-led dialogue amongst participants.
Please join us on November 30th for this timely discussion on how we can foster a culture of human rights in our daily lives.
This event is free and open to the public. We look forward to seeing you here!
For past events check out https://www.ikedacenter.org/events/ikeda-forum
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Saturday, December 1 – Sunday, December 2
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Harvard HackED 2018
Saturday, December 1, 9:00 AM – Sunday, December 2, 6:00 PM EST
Harvard Innovation Labs, 125 Western Avenue, Boston
Apply for Harvard HackED 2018!
Want to reimagine the future of learning? Interested in developing a new school model? Got ideas for an educational app? Maybe you have a class project that you are excited to develop further in a structured environment and receive feedback from like-minded peers and experienced mentors? Inspired to solve problems that plague our education system?
HIVE's education hackathon is back! HIVE (Harvard GSE Innovation & Ventures in Education) invites Harvard and other Boston-area undergraduate and graduate students from diverse backgrounds to join Harvard HackED 2018. Participants get 2 days to form teams, propose ideas, design solutions and pitch them at the Harvard Innovation Labs. Come connect with like-minded peers, get guidance from experienced mentors, and a chance to win prizes! You don't have to be a techie, or know how to program -- just bring your creativity, energy, and desire to collaborate! Apply here! http://bit.ly/2SLwwGD. For more information, visit our website: http://www.hivehgse.org/harvard-hacked-2/
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Saturday December 1
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Venezuela: Reportback from Boston Delegation
Saturday December 1
4:00 - 6:00 pm
encuentro 5, 9A Hamilton Place, Boston
Venezuela is in crisis but mainstream media gives only one side of the story. Boston activists visited Caracas and Lara State in November on a fact-finding mission. They visited a community council, urban garden, rural agriculture cooperative and the Bolivarian socialist workers union. The delegation talked with Afro Venezuelans, ecosocialists, government officials and people on the street.
The Trump administration is waging economic war and laying the grounds for possible US military intervention. US Left and progressives need to learn the facts and oppose US intervention!? The reportback will feature fresh eyewitness accounts and discussion.
Sponsored by Boston Venezuelan Solidarity Committee.??(508-577-4661)
Endorsed by United for Justice with Peace.
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Monday, December 3
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Distinguished Speaker Series: Maura Healey
Monday, December 3
12 PM
Tufts, Distler Auditorium, Granoff Music Center, 20 Talbot Avenue, Medford
Join Tisch College for a discussion with Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey on state and national politics, critical issues facing the Commonwealth, and what it’s like to take the President to court. Since 2015, Healey has served as the Massachusetts Attorney General, leading fights to uphold the state’s existing assault weapons ban, to overturn the Trump Administration’s controversial immigration policies, and to defend net neutrality protections. Before being elected Attorney General, Healey helped lead the Attorney General’s Office under Martha Coakley, first as Chief of the Civil Rights Division and then as director of the Public Protection & Advocacy Bureau and the Business & Labor Bureau. A prosecutor in Middlesex County and a litigation partner at WilmerHale for several years, Healey also spent two years as a 5’4” starting point guard on a professional basketball team in Austria after graduating from Harvard College and before attending law school at Northeastern University. She is the first openly gay Attorney General in the United States.
Cosponsored by the Political Science Department and JumboVote. Follow the conversation live at #AGHealeyAtTufts
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PAOC [Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, Climates] Colloquium: Daniel Rothman (MIT)
Monday, December 3
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About this Series
The PAOC Colloquium [PAOCC] is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar series that brings together the whole PAOC community. Seminar topics include all research concerning the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmospheres, oceans and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars take place on Monday from 12-1pm in 54-923. Lunch is provided after the seminars to encourage students and post-docs to meet with the speaker. Besides the seminar and lunch, individual meetings with professors, post-docs, and students are arranged. Contact the 2018/2019 Coordinators: paoc-colloquium-comm@mit.edu.
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The Oil Climate Index: Analyzing the Heterogeneous Lifecycle Greenhouse Gas Impacts of Global Oils
Monday, December 3
12:00pm to 1:30pm
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, HKS, 79 Street, Cambridge
Deborah Gordon, Director, Energy and Climate Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Lunch will be served.
HKS Energy Policy Seminar
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Embracing the complexity of nature –genomic approaches for understanding the development and evolution of forest trees
Monday, December 3
12:10p
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill, 1300 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain
Andrew Groover, Research Geneticist, US Forest Service
WATCH LIVE on the Arboretum’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/ArnoldArboretum/) if you are unable to attend in person. The streaming video is entitled “Arnold Arboretum Live Stream” and is visible only when a live stream is in progress.
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Failed Sociotechnical Imaginaries: Chechnya as the 'Second Kuwait'
Monday, December 3
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS North, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Olga Breininger-Umetayeva (Harvard, Slavic).
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 lunches are provided. Please RSVP to via the online form by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
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
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Felicity Scott and Mark Wasiuta | AgitArch Experiments Roundtable
Monday, December 3
12:30pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Part of the Fall 2018 Experiments in Pedagogy: Agit Arch Experiments, organized by Ana Miljacki
Felicity D. Scott is professor of architecture, director of the PhD program in Architecture (History and Theory), and co-director of the program in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture (CCCP) at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University. Her work as a historian and theorist focuses on articulating genealogies of political and theoretical engagement with questions of techno-scientific, environmental, and geopolitical transformation within modern and contemporary architecture, art, and media, as well as upon the discourses, institutions and social movements that have shaped and defined these disciplines, sometimes evidently, sometimes less so.
In addition to publishing numerous articles in journals, magazines, catalogs, and edited anthologies, she has published Architecture or Techno-Utopia: Politics After Modernism (MIT Press, 2007), Living Archive 7: Ant Farm (ACTAR, 2008), Outlaw Territories: Environments of Insecurity/Architectures of Counter-Insurgency (Zone Books, 2016), and Disorientations: Bernard Rudofsky in the Empire of Signs(Sternberg Press, 2016). She is the recipient of many awards, including the German Transatlantic Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin (2013), Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Grants (2011, 2017), a New York State Council on the Arts Independent Project Award (2010), a Clark Fellowship (2008), an Arts Writers Grant from Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation (2007), a J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship (2002-2003), and a Henry Luce/ACLS Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in American Art (1998-1999). She is also a founding co-editor of Grey Room, a quarterly journal of architecture, art, media, and politics published quarterly by MIT Press since Fall 2000.
Continuing to work at the nexus of architecture, media, politics, and environment, and still focused on institutional frameworks, emergent techno-scientific forces, and social movements, Scott’s research has turned to address mechanisms of global and trans-national governance and the developmental regimes that inform the shifting topology of the so-called Global North and Global South, as well as to trace colonial and neocolonial exploitation and violence in its many forms, including war, resource extraction, racism, and gender inequities. Following her recent book, Outlaw Territories: Environments of Insecurity/Architectures of Counterinsurgency,current research addresses: the environment and video works of Chilean artist and architect Juan Downey; space colonization during the 1970s and the haunting return of attendant ideologies today; a “global” film program affiliated with the UN’s Habitat conference in 1976, and claiming to produce “documents of reality,” “visual statements,” or even a “world picture” under the rubric of “communications development aid”; and (in conjunction with Mark Wasiuta) a research/exhibition project on Cambodia’s “post-colonial” modernization and its violent reversals from the mid-1950s to the late-1980s entitled “Absent Archives, Media Afterlives: New Khmer Environments.
Mark Wasiuta is Lecturer in Architecture at Columbia GSAPP and Co-Director of the Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture program.
Wasiuta is the recipient of recent grants from the Graham Foundation, NYSCA and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Recent exhibitions curated and produced with various collaborators include, Environmental Communications: Contact High at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, La Fine Del Mondo at the 14th Architectural Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, Air Manifest: Los Angeles 1955, 1965at Studio X Istanbul in conjunction with the 2nd Istanbul Design Biennial, Deste Fashion Collection 1 to 8 at the Benaki Museum, Athens, and Information Fall-Out: Buckminster Fuller’s World Game at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery.
He is co-editor and co-author of Dan Graham’s New Jersey. Forthcoming publications include the books Environments and Counter Environments, Experimental Media in Italy: The New Domestic Landscape and Collecting Architecture Territories. He is partner in the design and research office the International House of Architecture. The office is currently completing a history of the air urbanism of Los Angeles in the context of a postwar cultural and material economy of contamination and purification.
MIT Department of Architecture
Fall 2018 Lecture Series
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Book Talk — Politics with the People: Building a Directly Representative Democracy
WHEN Monday, Dec. 3, 2018, 1 – 2:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Ash Center Foyer, Floor 2, Suite 200N, 124 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Ash Center, Harvard Kennedy School
COST Free
CONTACT INFO info@ash.harvard.edu
DETAILS "Politics with the People: Building a Directly Representative Democracy" authors Michael Neblo, Ohio State University; and David Lazer, Northeastern University.
Jill Lepore, Harvard University, will serve as a respondent. Archon Fung, Harvard Kennedy School, will moderate. Lunch will be served.
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Beyond Biofeedback and Towards Machine Based Learning in Treating the Extremities of Post-Stroke Survivors
WHEN Monday, Dec. 3, 2018, 3 – 4 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin (G115), Robert and Nadia Lessin Forum, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Wyss Institute at Harvard University
SPEAKER(S) Steven L. Wolf, Ph.D., FAPTA, FAHA, FASNR Professor, Departments of Rehabilitation Medicine (Physical Therapy Education Division), Medicine and Cell Biology, Emory University School of Medicine; Senior Research Scientist and Associate Director for Research, Center for Visual and Neurocognitive Rehabilitation, Atlanta VA Health Care System
CONTACT INFO events@wyss.harvard.edu
DETAILS This presentation highlights the evolution of biofeedback for stroke movement retraining and projects the use of telerehabilitation and biosensing technologies into the future treatment of stroke survivors.
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The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility (IDSS Distinguished Speaker Seminar:)
Monday, December 3
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 32-155, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Abstract: We construct a publicly available atlas of children’s outcomes in adulthood by Census tract using anonymized longitudinal data covering nearly the entire U.S. population. For each tract, we estimate children’s earnings distributions, incarceration rates, and other outcomes in adulthood by parental income, race, and gender. These estimates allow us to trace the roots of outcomes such as poverty and incarceration back to the neighborhoods in which children grew up. We find that children’s outcomes vary sharply across nearby areas: for children of parents at the 25th percentile of the income distribution, the standard deviation of mean household income at age 35 is $5,000 across tracts within counties. We illustrate how these tract-level data can provide insight into how neighborhoods shape the development of human capital and support local economic policy using two applications. First, the estimates permit precise targeting of policies to improve economic opportunity by uncovering specific neighborhoods where certain subgroups of children grow up to have poor outcomes. Neighborhoods matter at a very granular level: conditional on characteristics such as poverty rates in a child’s own Census tract, characteristics of tracts that are one mile away have little predictive power for a child’s outcomes. Our historical estimates are informative predictors of outcomes even for children growing up today because neighborhood conditions are relatively stable over time. Second, we show that the observational estimates are highly predictive of neighborhoods’ causal effects, based on a comparison to data from the Moving to Opportunity experiment and a quasi-experimental research design analyzing movers’ outcomes. We then identify high-opportunity neighborhoods that are affordable to low-income families, providing an input into the design of affordable housing policies. Our measures of children’s long-term outcomes are only weakly correlated with traditional proxies for local economic success such as rates of job growth, showing that the conditions that create greater upward mobility are not necessarily the same as those that lead to productive labor markets.
About the Speaker: Raj Chetty is the William A. Ackman Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He is also the Director of the Equality of Opportunity Project, which uses “big data” to understand how we can give children from disadvantaged backgrounds better chances of succeeding. Chetty’s research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies. His work on topics ranging from tax policy and unemployment insurance to education and affordable housing has been widely cited in academia, media outlets, and Congressional testimony.
Chetty received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2003 and is one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard’s history. Before joining the faculty at Harvard, he was a professor at UC-Berkeley and Stanford University. Chetty has received numerous awards for his research, including a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the John Bates Clark medal, given to the economist under 40 whose work is judged to have made the most significant contribution to the field.
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Joan Jonas and Sung Hwan Kim: In Conversation
Monday, December 3
6:00pm to 7:30pm
MIT, Building E14: Media Lab, 3rd Floor, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
ACT’s Professor Emerita, Joan Jonas, and alumnus, Sung Hwan Kim, will be together in conversation with ACT Director, Judith Barry. This event will honor Jonas’ contribution to ACT, and highlight the re-emergence of a performance art course at ACT, to be taught by Kim in Spring 2019.
Respondents:
Jay Scheib, Professor in Theater, Music And Theater Arts Department, MIT
Karthik Pandian, Assistant Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard
Part of the Fall 2018 Lecture Series: Vibrant Signs and Indeterminant Matter(s)
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ONLINE SHOPPING: FRIEND OR FOE?
Monday, December 3
6:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Alley powered by Verizon, 10 Ware Street, Cambridge
Advances in technology have revolutionized the way we shop. Instead of prowling the mall, hailing cabs, and perusing produce sections, from the comfort of our home we push a button and goods appear. Yet the changes in the retail landscape are far from linear. Just when we thought the future was online, Amazon launched brick-and-mortar stores. Data security issues at Facebook and elsewhere have us rethinking which desires we divulge online. And scandals at Uber remind us that disruptive digital enterprises have dark sides, too. As the holiday shopping season unfolds in America, it’s worth it to pause and reflect: What do we want from retail? Where is it going and why?
Join Civic Series for an in-depth conversation about the future of retail and come away with clarity on:
Why brick-and-mortar stores will survive the digital era
What consumers gain and lose by shopping online
Strategic choices of Blue Apron, Amazon
What to expect from stores this holiday season [how to make shopping work for you]
This session will feature a presentation by MIT Senior Lecturer of Marketing, Sharmila Chatterjee, and plenty of time for questions and answers.
We’ll kick off around 6:15pm followed by 30-40 of presentation and 30 minutes of Q&A. Plus free snacks and beer! Thank you again to Alley powered by Verizon for hosting!
Sharmila C. Chatterjee is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing and the Academic Head for the MBA Track in Enterprise Management (EM) at MIT Sloan. Chatterjee teaches the graduate course in B2B Marketing and is deeply engaged in Action Learning as a faculty mentor for G-Lab, China/India Lab, and as an instructor for the Enterprise Management (EM) Lab. Her research explores sales-marketing interface, customer acquisition and retention, the diffusion of technological innovations, value based management, brand trust, financial literacy and multicultural marketing. Chatterjee has published in Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing, among others, and is an award winning case writer. Chatterjee graduated from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani and worked briefly in Faridabad, India before earning her Ph.D. in Marketing from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
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The Future of Transportation: Autonomy and Interdependence
Monday, December 3, 2018
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
The Venture Cafe at the Cambridge Innovation Center, One Broadway, 5th Floor, Kendall Square, Cambridge
Doors open @ 6pm -- Come early and meet other Long Now thinkers -- Presentation starts @ 7pm
RSVP at https://futureoftransportinterdependence.eventbrite.com [CIC members use your discount at Eventbrite; Students must use Eventbrite because we can't set up student tickets here]
A Long Now Boston Community Conversation with
Robin Chase, Transportation Entrepreneur, Co-Founder of Zipcar
Hollywood and the comic books get it all wrong. There are no flying cars. Yet.
The movie Minority Report (2002) offered an interesting vision of urban transportation, with self-driving hover cars moving on multi-tiered 3D highways at high speeds – all fully interconnected and (it turns out) fully controlled by an untrustworthy bureaucracy. According to Robin Chase, the co-founder of Zipcar and Veniam and a leading visionary on the shared economy, that image is comically flawed.
Join the Long Now Boston conversation as Robin Chase shares her perspective on the not too distant future of transportation technology, and the roadmap we need to follow to get there.
Among the topics we'll explore through a Long Now lens:
What technology innovations will be fundamental to the movement of people and goods in the future?
What are the institutional challenges we are going to have to solve to achieve smarter, cleaner transportation systems?
How do current policies and regulatory frameworks stifle innovation and reward complacency --- and how do we fix them?
What changes in infrastructure investments, and even in capitalism itself, are needed to enable more sustainable, adaptive and resilient transportation systems?
Join the conversation and be part of the solution.
$15 in advance // $20 at the door. Students w/ID admitted free.
Audience participation is encouraged.
The Long Now Boston Conversation Series hosts leading transportation entrepreneur, Robin Chase to share her vision for a future where transportation is optimized for human needs. The opportunities are closer than you think.
Robin Chase is a leading transportation entrepreneur. The co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, she also founded Buzzcar, a peer-to-peer car sharing service, and GoLoco, a ride-sharing company, and is co-founder of Veniam, a vehicle network communications company. In 2015, she authored, Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism (2015). Robin is a graduate of Wellesley College (B.A.), and the MIT Sloan School of Management (M.B.A.), and won a Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She is a popular speaker and presenter, and serves as a Board member for the World Resources Institute.
We’re proud and excited to welcome Robin to the Long Now Boston community.
Cambridge Innovation Center is an in-kind sponsor of this Long Now Boston conversation. We are very grateful for their support.
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Tuesday, December 4
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RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SOIL MICROBIAL PHYSIOLOGY, COMMUNITY COMPOSITION AND CARBON AND NITROGEN CYCLING IN TEMPERATE FOREST ECOSYSTEMS
Tuesday, December 4
1:00 pm
BU, 24 Cummington Mall, Room 103, Boston
GRS Dissertation Defense of Mustafa Saifuddin
Contact Name Tyler Wasson
Phone617-353-2696
Contact Email grsrec@bu.edu
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Climate change and food security in the Asia-Pacific: Response and resilience
Tuesday, December 4
2:30pm to 3:30pm
MIT, Building 66-360, 25 Ames Street, Cambridge
Join visiting scholar Md. Saidul Islam from Nanyang Technological University Singapore for the third event in his guest lecture series. Climate change is putting a large strain on food production, and that pressure is on track to increase. Come hear Professor Islam discuss regional initiatives and future resilience in regard to climate change's impact on food security in the Asia-Pacific.
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Will solid-state batteries compete with liquid-based Li-ion technology?
Tuesday, December 4
3:30pm to 4:30pm
MIT, Building 66-110, 25 Ames Street, Cambridge
The Materials Science and Engineering Seminar Series presents Prof. Jeff Sakamoto from the University of Michigan.
Abstract: There is tremendous interest in making the next super battery, but Li-ion technology works so well and has inertia in several commercial markets. Supplanting Li-ion will be difficult. Recent breakthroughs in Li metal solid-state electrolytes could enable a new class of non-combustible solid-state batteries (SSB) with twice the energy density (1,200 Wh/l) compared to Li-ion. However, technological and manufacturing challenges remain. The discussion will consist of recent milestones and knowledge gaps to include:
Stability and kinetics of the Li metal-solid electrolyte interface
Understanding and controlling an unusual phenomenon: Li metal penetration in solid electrolytes; how can something soft penetrate something hard?
Solid-state mechanics of Li metal and composite ceramic electrodes
Despite the challenges, SSB technology is rapidly progressing. Multi-disciplinary research in the fields of materials science, solid-state electrochemistry, and solid-state mechanics will play an important role in determining if SSB will make the lab-to-market transition.
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The Meaning of the Midterms: Who Counted? Who Voted?
WHEN Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2018, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Aimee Allison, president, Democracy in Color
Katherine J. Cramer, professor of political science, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Sarah Lenti, CEO, director, and board secretary, Serve America Movement
Robert O. Self RI ’08, Mary Ann Lippitt Professor of American History, Brown University
Moderated by Asma Khalid, political reporter, NPR
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS The year 2018 will be remembered for its surge in women's candidacies. Whether through individual, high-profile victories or the sheer force of hundreds upon hundreds of women standing for office, this electoral cycle has reflected options at the local, state, and national levels that are starkly different from any that Americans have confronted before at the ballot box. Whatever the outcomes of the November elections, the role of women, as well as of people of color, immigrants, and other historically underrepresented groups, will be pivotal.
This panel will offer an analysis of the election results through a diverse set of perspectives — academic, experiential, gendered, generational, geographic, and political — to enhance our understanding of the midterms.
Register online.
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Asian Americans and Affirmative Action Policy
Tuesday, December 4
4:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Van C. Tran, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, is a sociologist whose research and writing broadly focus on the incorporation of Asian and Latino immigrants and their children, as well as its implications for American culture, politics and society. Within this area, his contribution lies in the study of the immigrant second generation (i.e. children of immigrants born in the U.S.) and how ethnic neighborhoods and cultural processes shape social mobility among second-generation Asian and Latino/a Americans.
His research has been published in both sociology and interdisciplinary journals, including Social Forces, International Migration Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, City & Community, Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, and The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. His scholarship has been recognized with awards from the Section on International Migration, Section on Latino/a Sociology and Section on Community and Urban Sociology of the American Sociological Association.
Tran was born in Vietnam and grew up in Thailand before resettling in New York City as a refugee in 1998. He developed his interest in immigration and urban inequality as an observer of the city’s many diverse communities.
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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Startup R&D Demo Day
Tuesday, December 4
4:30 PM – 5:30 PM EST
Harvard, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Room 301, Cambridge
Come meet our student-innovators, learn about their startups, and hear the latest ideas that are making waves in our world. Their startups span the Nutritional Science, AI, FinTech, Blockchain and beyond. Boston entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, and students interested in joining startups will be in attendance. Explore teams' presentations, speak one-on-one with the founders, and enjoy great food.
Teams are from ES95r: Startup R & D course at the Harvard School of Engineering. View a preview of the presenting teams at https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1uPFgVFwli-jfKic3xTJIJ5DfdJUHrhWQAjjtj6fJSzc/
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Start-Up Nation Tech Fair at Northeastern University
Tuesday, December 4
5:30 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Northeastern, Curry Student Center, 260 Huntington Avenue, Boston
The Start-Up Nation Technology Fair at Northeastern University is a professionally organized expo floor featuring early-stage Israeli companies exhibiting innovative products and technologies. The fair also features internship and employment opportunities with the exhibiting Israeli companies, a LinkedIn photobooth, raffle prizes and more.
Explore Israeli technology, meet innovators, and acquire internships at this incredible event.
FREE! Walk-ins Welcome!
For more information, please visit:
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Cleantech Capital: Funding the Energy Future
Tuesday, December 4
5:30pm to 8:30pm
Wolf Greenfield, 600 Atlantic Avenue, Boston
Cost: $5 - $30
This event will be live streamed
Fundraising is challenging, particularly in the cleantech space. However, the sector has seen a recent increase in startup funding and corporate interest that has been coupled with a desire for more digital, distributed, and resilient solutions. Join us for a primer on energy fundraising – a panel of cleantech investors will discuss their approach to investing from initial pitch and diligence to investment and long-term engagement. Investors will also share their perspectives on why the market is ripe for energy innovation, highlighting emerging energy technologies and trends that are attractive in the venture space. You will gain insight into how to engage with investors as an early-stage company, and how investors can add value and serve as strategic partners beyond funding.
Join us to learn where to start, what to look for, who to reach out to, how to reach out, what processes to anticipate, and how to work with your investors.
Moderator
Kathryn Meng Elmes, Investment Associate, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center
Panel
Matthew Nordan, Co-founder, PRIME Coalition, Managing Director, PRIME Impact Fund
Ally Yost, Associate, The Engine
Patrick Walsh, Investment Director, National Grid Corporate Development
Christina Karapataki, Investor, Breakthrough Energy Ventures
Event Schedule
5:30-6:00 Registration and networking
6:00-7:30 Welcome and panel discussion
7:30-8:30 Networking
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From Boston to Yorktown: Tales of the National Trails
Tuesday, December 4
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EST
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Columbia Point, Boston
In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the National Trails Act of 1968, Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown, and other panelists explore key events at historic sites featured in National Historic Trails and National Recreation Trails.
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Race, Political Solidarity & the Future of America
Tuesday, December 4
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Northeastern, Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering Complex (ISEC) Auditorium, 805 Columbus Avenue, ISEC 102 - Auditorium, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/race-political-solidarity-the-future-of-america-tickets-52541821001
A talk with Dr. Theodore R. Johnson, discussing the history of black political behavior by looking at race, party and income.
Over the last decade, the feeling among Americans is that race relations have progressively worsened. From riots following the killing of unarmed black men to white nationalists marching to protest the growing racial diversity in the United States, the majority of Americans fear the nation is reaching a tipping point. Either we address the race question head on or we risk the collapse of our democracy.
In this talk, Dr. Theodore R. Johnson proposes that the most effective approach to overcoming the effects of racism is the establishment of a national solidarity among the American people. This solidarity is centered on notions of civil religion and is the means to ensure our liberal democracy endures. Moreover, Johnson argues that the model for national solidarity is the political solidarity found within black America.
Racism is an existential threat to the United States and the American idea. Solidarity is required to ensure the American experiment succeeds.
Dr. Theodore R. Johnson is a public policy scholar and military veteran. He writes and speaks on issues of social justice, race, and politics, as well as cybersecurity and national security. He holds a Doctorate of Law and Policy from Northeastern University, where his research focused on African American political and voting behavior was awarded the Dean’s Medal for Outstanding Doctoral Work.
Dr. Johnson has more than 15 years of public policy experience in federal departments and agencies, including as a White House Fellow where he served as the Cyber Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy undertaking cybersecurity initiatives to secure the nation’s electric grid. A retired naval officer, he served as a cybersecurity expert, a Speechwriter to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, and as a military aide to the Director of the National Security Agency, among other assignments.
His work has appeared in the The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and a number of other publications writing primarily on issues of race relations, public policy, and current national news topics. He’s also appeared on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR talk radio discussing racial justice and public policy.
He is currently working on a book titled "When the Stars Begin to Fall: Race, Solidarity, and the Future of America", and it will be published by Grove Atlantic in 2020.
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Future of Work: Will Artificial Intelligence and Robots Replace Humans or Create New Job Types?
Tuesday, December 4
6:00-8:00 pm
Seaport World Trade Center, 200 Seaport Boulevard, ROOM: BEACON HILL, Boston
Cost: $15
Imagine a world where artificial intelligence-assisted healthcare professionals will be able to diagnose, prescribe and treat humans and animals. Robotic assistants will help the elderly or disabled, cost-efficiently. Robots with human attributes will follow voice commands. Trainable robots will be the norm and collaborative robots or co-bots will make people work more effectively and efficiently.
In reality, this will be our world in the very near future. As chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov says—we should be thinking of intelligent machines as augmented intelligence vs artificial intelligence.
The panelists will discuss:
The future of artificial intelligenceEmerging technologies and their impact on society
Role of Intelligent machines and chatbots - at home and in business
and more. . .
Note: Come early and network. Use the AI World Expo pass to access the entire Expo hall, startup pavilion, and technology solutions theater
Featured Speakers
Bethany Plaza, VP, IT Services, RCM Technologies
For 25 years, Bethany Plaza has been an energetic and outspoken leader in the IT industry. She has played a pivotal role in helping individuals and business thrive while solving Technology challenges. Drawing on her unique blend of solutions-oriented, strategic thinking, and person-centered leadership development, she has helped a wide range of organizations meet and exceed their goals in business.
Bethany has owned and sold five companies-most recently she sold her IT Services company to a publicly traded company-RCM Technologies, Inc. She now heads up the IT-professional services divisions-to support the most cutting-edge technologies-including AI, Security, and HCM solutions.
Bethany is a master of team dynamics and recognized as a change leader in the ever-evolving IT industry. Bethany is able to help leaders develop cohesive models that value and integrate the myriad skill sets located within the organization.
More than a savvy professional, Bethany is a leader of leaders. While her clients regularly need help in the mechanics of developing a successful organization, they also need wise companions to motivate and guide them; to instill hope and confidence in otherwise uncertain circumstances. Bethany makes it her mission to help these individuals find success and fulfillment for both their businesses and themselves.
Bethany also serves as a National Director for Women in Technology, International. WITI's mission is to empower women worldwide to achieve unimagined possibilities and transformations through technology, leadership, and economic prosperity.
Stephen Pappas, head of North American operation and senior vice president, Panviva
Steve has built a career-transforming, customer experience. By taking a 360-degree view of the customer, Steve makes sure each employee has the actionable knowledge necessary to make better decisions and serve customers in a way that increases loyalty, referrals, sales, and satisfaction.
In his role with Panviva, the omnichannel knowledge cloud company, Steve consults with hundreds of companies annually on their CX strategies. Industry associations, publications, and Fortune 500 companies invite him to speak and write about CX best practices in healthcare, finance, utilities, insurance, and telecommunications.
A successful entrepreneur in his own right, Steve has built and sold six companies. Each company has held to the mantra of "the customer is at the center of the universe." When he is not driving CX strategy, Steve plays the guitar and mentors young entrepreneurs. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and sons.
Parna Sarkar-Basu, CEO and Founder, Brand and Buzz Marketing
Parna Sarkar-Basu, a tech advocate, helps companies navigate the digital era and created the robot technology category and ecosystem along with the founders of iRobot.
Leveraging her two passions - technology and brand building - Parna humanizes corporate brands, builds thought leaders, simplifies the complex and creates industry buzz to elevate companies to new heights. She has been instrumental in propelling tech companies into innovation leaders in highly competitive markets, including artificial intelligence, enterprise software, storage systems, robots, agtech, health tech, and mobile.
Recipient of multiple awards, Parna has led marketing and communications functions for various global companies, including Kaminario, iRobot, iCorps Technologies, Invention Machine (acquired by IHS), and PTC. She now serves as a strategic advisor to entrepreneurs and CEOs in the United States, and Europe, and works with their team on a variety of initiatives, including corporate and product positioning, new market entry, innovation marketing, and digital transformation.
She appears frequently as a speaker at key local and industry events - from innovation and entrepreneurship to tech trends and emerging technologies. Parna also serves as the VP of marketing for WITI (Women in Technology International).
Ying Chen, Chief Product Officer, Luminoso
As the Chief Product Officer of Luminoso Technologies, Ying Chen leads product design and development for the firm's portfolio of products focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language understanding (NLU). Prior to joining Luminoso, Ying has spent decades leading Fortune 1000 organizations and VC-backed startups to deliver award-winning product solutions that have resulted in these organizations grow in their existing market while pivot into new ones.
Most recently, Ying led the global go-to-market and strategy at Pegasystems for the firm's digital process automation platform, including launching new capabilities such as robotic automation and intelligent virtual assistants. She is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and contributor to publications on topics related to digital transformation, technology trends such as chatbots, and product management.
Ying holds a bachelor's of science degree from Carnegie Mellon University and a master's degree in business administration from Boston University.
David Clear, V.P. Business Development, Vecna Robotics
David Clear is Vice President of Business Development at Vecna Robotics. He leads the Business Development team in bringing Vecna Robotics' flexible and agile autonomous solutions to the warehouse and logistics market. Clear cultivates strategic partnerships with global fortune 500 companies, privately held organizations, and government agencies. Before joining Vecna, Clear worked in the retail and logistics industry, overseeing process improvement and auditing throughout Lidl Ireland GmbH network and leading Loss Prevention at Heatons Stores. Clear went on to spend five-plus years consulting with start-ups and SMEs on expansion, marketing, product, and fundraising strategies. He holds master degrees in Business Administration and Philosophy- Operational Risk Management from the University of Glasgow's Adam Smith School of Business.
Schedule of Events
6:00 p.m. - Registration, Networking, and Appetizers
6:20 p.m. - WITI Overview and Speaker Introduction
6:30 p.m. - Program and Discussion
7:15 p.m. - Raffle Prizes!
8:00 p.m. - Adjourn
Meeting Notes
A light supper and beverages are provided
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Defining the future of jobs in the midst of AI revolution
Tuesday, December 4
6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
Seaport World Trade Center, 1 Seaport Lane, Harborview 2 Room, Boston
AI is disrupting every aspect of our lives. Ever wonder how is it impacting our future of jobs and work and how businesses are preparing themselves to take advantage of this new trend. In this panel, Boston's finest startups that are disrupting and defining the future of jobs/work landscape will come together and share their insights. This is a must attend conversation about the future of jobs in the midst of AI revolution. Future of work is changing rapidly and its success criteria is also getting redefined. Come and join one of the most important conversation of our professional lives. This session would be a glimpse into what is happening in work space, how our jobs would transform in the future and how we could change to cope up. There would be insights on how to best navigate our trajectory so we are always relevant and have access to relevant resources in this disrupting future.
Moderator: Vishal Kumar, CEO/President AnalyticsWeek
Panelists:
Scott Jamison, CEO at AskHR
Rob May, CEO at Talla
Ram Katamaraja, Co-founder at Refactored.ai
Akash Savdharia, CEO at Patheer
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The Ethics of Species Conservation
Tuesday, December 4
7:00–8:15pm
Arnold Arboretum, Hunnewell Building
RSVP at https://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/Policies.aspx or call 617-384-5277
Cost: $0 - $10
Ronald Sandler, PhD, Chair and Professor of Philosophy; Director, Ethics Institute, Northeastern University
Rapid ecological change, and climate change in particular, poses challenges to traditional conservation paradigms and strategies. It has also led some conservationists to endorse novel conservation techniques, such as assisted colonization, gene drives and even de-extinction. This talk will explore the values and philosophies that underlie species conservation under conditions of rapid change. It will ask us to think about what is valuable about species and why we ought to try to conserve them.
Ronald Sandler is the author of the following books: Environmental Ethics (2017, Oxford University Press), Food Ethics (2014, Routledge), The Ethics of Species (2012, Cambridge University Press), Ethics and Emerging Technologies (2013, Palgrave Macmillan), and Character and Environment (2007, Columbia University Press).
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Boston’s Pre-Revolutionary Newspaper Wars (and What They May Tell Us About Today’s News Media
Tuesday, December 4
7-9 p.m.
The Loring Greenough House, 12 South Street, Boston
Cost: $5 – $10
A presentation by J. L. Bell, author & historian
A "Tuesday in the Parlor" series lecture.
In the period leading up to the Revolution, colonial journalists produced a lively array of print publications aimed at keeping the populace informed about—or inflamed by—the political news of the day. On the left were The Boston Gazette and The Massachusetts Spy while The Boston News-Letter, The Boston Chronicle, and Boston Weekly Post-Boy espoused viewpoints from the right. The Boston Evening-Post tried to maintain a centrist voice. The newspaper business could be a nasty and dangerous one, prompting rivalries between printers and occasional violence.
Join us for J. L. Bell’s enlightening talk about the how America’s early news medium operated in the volatile pre-Revolutionary environment and the significance of this history for today’s information media.
J. L. Bell specializes in history, analysis, and unabashed gossip about the start of the American Revolution in Massachusetts. His book The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War will be available for purchase at the presentation.
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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, December 5
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Pulse of the People: Rap Music and Black Politics
WHEN Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE Hiphop Archive & Research Institute, 104 Mount Auburn Street, Floor 3R, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research
SPEAKER(S) Lakeyta M. Bonnette-Bailey, Associate Professor, Political Science, Georgia State University
COST Free and open to the public.
CONTACT INFO hutchevents@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Dr. Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey, is an associate professor at Georgia State University in the Political Science Department. Her research interests include Hip Hop culture, political behavior, political attitudes, African-American politics, political psychology and public opinion.
She completed her doctoral degree in the Department of Political Science at The Ohio State University, where her research examined the political impact of rap music on Black political attitudes.
Dr. Bonnette-Bailey has written numerous articles and book chapters including her book, published (2015) with the University of Pennsylvania Press entitled, Pulse of the People: Rap Music and Black Political Attitudes. In 2017 she hosted the first political Hip Hop conference at Georgia State University entitled, Behind the Music: Hip Hop and Social Justice, which examined the ways in which social justice is addressed and expressed within Hip Hop culture.
Dr. Bonnette-Bailey currently teaches classes on American government, Black women and politics, Black political behavior, Black politics, Hip-Hop and politics, racial attitudes and identity politics.
As a Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow at the Hiphop Archive Research Institute for Fall 2018, she will work on What's on Your Radio?: Political Rap Music and Racial Attitudes.
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"Likely to Become a Public Charge": Federal Immigration Policy and the Health of Our Communities
WHEN Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Gordon Hall, Waterhouse Room, 25 Shattuck Street, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences, Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Office for Diversity Inclusion & Community Partnership; co-sponsor: Latino Medical Student Association at Harvard Medical School
SPEAKER(S) Justin J. Lowe, J.D., Legal Director, Health Law Advocates
COST Free
TICKET WEB LINK https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ESJ_12-5-18
CONTACT INFO Jackie Wright
617-432-2645
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Prices versus Quantities Reassessed
Wednesday, December 5
4:15PM TO 5:30PM
Harvard, Littauer Building, L-382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Larry Karp, University of California, Berkeley, and Christian Traeger, University of Oslo.
Support from Enel Endowment for Environmental Economics and the Department of Economics is Gratefully Acknowledged.
Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy
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The Digital Is Not Neutral: Thoughts on the Digitization of Threatened Cultural Heritage
Wednesday, December 5
5:30pm
Tufts, Granoff Music Center Room 155, 20 Talbot Ave, Medford
Erin Thompson, Associate Professor John Jay College (CUNY)
The recent targeting of cultural heritage during con ict, including the 2015 de- struction of Roman-era temples in Palmyra, Syria, by the Islamic State, has led to many new initiatives that seek to ght destruction with digital technologies. These projects recreate threatened or destroyed cultural artifacts or sites by developing 3D digital models. They thus apply new technology towards an old goal of creating 3D models of non-Western cultural heritage for Western audi- ences (including, e.g., plaster casts and stereoscopic photography). But digital collecting does not create neutral, truthful, exact reproductions of artifacts and sites. Digitization is not an automatic process; it requires the intervention of humans, and these interventions are based on our biases, assumptions, hopes, and hatreds. The talk will point out a number of problematic areas in digital collecting and will then compare these projects to alternative models of digi- tal collecting offered by contemporary artistic recreation projects. The talk will conclude by offering a few draft best principles for digital modeling of cultur- al heritage: transparency, radical hospitality, and the embrace of dissonance.
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Cannabis Technology, High Possibilities
Wednesday, December 5
5:30 pm – 8:00 pm
MIT, Sala de Puerto Rico (W20-202), Stratton Student Center, 2nd Floor, 84 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Cost: $5 -$45; Livestream $5 - $10
This event will be live streamed - select the live stream ticket option @ checkout if you would like to watch the event online.
If you registered for the live stream, you'll be emailed a link & password between 5:30PM & 6:00PM on the day of the event
A dialogue with industry experts about entrepreneurship in the cannabis industry
MITEF invites you back to continue the dialogue we started last year on the current and future state of Cannabis technology and your place in it. Once again we have brought together an exciting spectrum of cannabis cognoscenti from across business, community, academia, and technology to offer a range of views, insights, and opinions for how best to face the brave new world of legalized cannabis.
Our panelists will address:
What problems and opportunities exist in the Cannabis industry and how can we mobilize entrepreneurs to get involved in both?
What is the role of the innovation ecosystem in helping cannabis entrepreneurs? How are you a part of this ecosystem?
What have we learned about Cannabis in the recent past and fast coming future?
Are recreational and medicinal two separate things? Where are the connections and opportunities?
How can we use quantitative data to improve the qualitative experience?
How can technology help the cannabis industry grow without limitation?
What technologies and tools can be used to improve cultivation?
We look forward to your participation. There will be a discussion from the panel, followed by Q&A, followed by an opportunity to meet the local organizations pushing the threshold of technology at the 4th-floor bar!
Moderator
Vinit Nijhawan, Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist, Academic
Panel
Simon Espinosa, CEO, En Volá Cannabis HUB / Quema
Mara Gordon, Founder, Zelda Therapeutics, Aunt Zelda’s, The Oil Plant
Jess Leber, Ph.D., Head of Business Development, Small Molecule APIs, Ginkgo Bioworks
Kevin McKernan, Chief Scientific Officer, Medicinal Genomics
Marion McNabb, Dr. PH, MPH, CEO and Co-Founder, Cannabis Community Care and Research Network
Event Schedule
Registration & Networking: 5:30 - 6:00 PM
Welcome and Panel Discussion: 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Beer, Wine & Networking: 8:00 - 9:00 PM
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UN Climate Negotiations: What has been achieved, where have we failed and what lessons can be drawn?
Wednesday, December 5
6 pm
Harvard Law School, Pound Hall Room 102
With Dr. Stefanos Mouzas. Professor Mouzas will share findings from his research on the multi-party, multi-issue negotiations involved in UN conferences on climate change, held between 2005 and 2017. His work builds on behavioural science to examine the dynamic process of responses to climate change. He will discuss key obstacles that hinder negotiations at the UN, and offer insights into why it is so challenging to achieve progress on a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gases.
More information at https://www.pon.harvard.edu/events/un-climate-negotiations-what-has-been-achieved-where-have-we-failed-and-what-lessons-can-be-drawn/
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Tackling The New Sharing Economy with Origin Protocol
Wednesday, December 5
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
501 Boylston Street, Boston
Andrew Hyde, Head of Community at Origin Protocol, will join us and discuss how the new decentralized sharing economy works on Origin Protocol, and its' advantages over the tradition models. He will also discuss Dapp development, Identity and messaging.
Schedule
6:00pm - 6:33pm: Networking and Drinks
6:34pm - 7:16pm: Presentation
7:17pm - 8:00pm: QA / Hangout
What Is Origin Protocol?
Origin is building a platform that enables the creation of many decentralized marketplaces, allowing buyers and sellers to connect and transact directly on the blockchain. The company is building a set of protocols, developer libraries, and a decentralized application using the Ethereum blockchain and IPFS, with an initial focus on disrupting sharing economy marketplaces. Origin's mission is to reduce or remove transaction fees, promote open and transparent commerce, redistribute value more fairly to buyers and sellers, and empower the 2 billion currently unbanked individuals around the world to participate in digital marketplaces.
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Mission 2022 Final Presentation
Wednesday, December 5
7:00pm to 10:00pm
MIT, Building 10-250, Huntington Hall, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Come see this year’s Terrascope students present their proposals for increasing water security on Navajo Nation to a panel of experts. Questions welcome from the audience as well as the panel.
Free and open to the public. Reception to follow.
Can’t make it?
Webcast link forthcoming!
OR watch our live stream on our Twitter (https://twitter.com/MITterrascope) or Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/events/2117644181819164/)
The class 12.000 Solving Complex Problems is part of Terrascope Mission 2022.
For more information, contact:
Elise Chambers (617-253-4074) - terrascope@mit.edu
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Thursday, December 6
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Urban Health: State of the Science
Thursday, December 6
8:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m. BREAKFAST (DOORS OPEN), 8 A.M.
BU, Hiebert Lounge, 72 East Concord Street, Boston
Services for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing People Provided
#BUSPHSymposia
Livestreaming Available During Event
More than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. By the year 2030, this will have increased to two-thirds. Urban living is an ubiquitous exposure for health. The day will bring together scholars from around the world to discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with creating health in urban contexts. Presenters will also discuss methods that can advance urban health scholarship and feature case studies from cities that have invested in population health, synthesizing the state of the science of urban health.
Cohosted with Boston University Initiative on Cities and Yale Institute for Global Health.
Agenda
8:00 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.
Breakfast and Informal Greetings
8:30 a.m. – 8:45 a.m.
OPENING REMARKS
Welcome
Sandro Galea, Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor, Boston University School of Public Health
David Vlahov, Associate Dean for Research and Professor, Yale School of Nursing and Professor of Epidemiology, Yale School of Public Health
PART ONE: HEALTH CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN CITIES
8:45 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
CITY TRENDS
Inequities in Cities and in Urban Health
Patricia O’Campo, Vice President of Research, St. Michael’s Hospital and Professor, School of Public Health, University of Toronto Dalla Lana
Climate Change and the Health of Urban Populations
Patrick L. Kinney, Beverly Brown Professor of Urban Health, Boston University School of Public Health
Aging Populations
Kathleen Cagney, Professor of Sociology and Deputy Dean of the Social Sciences, University of Chicago
The Role of Health Departments in Creating Healthy Cities
Daniel Kass, Senior Vice President for Environmental Health, Vital Strategies, Inc.
Crime and Criminal Justice
Matt Vogel, Associate Professor, Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri–St. Louis and Researcher, OTB – Research for the Built Environment, TU Delft, the Netherlands
Moderated by: Kelly Henning, Public Health Program Lead, Bloomberg Philanthropies
9:45 a.m. – 10:40 a.m.
RESOURCES IN CITIES
Housing
Roshanak Mehdipanah, Assistant Professor, Health Behavior and Health Education,
School of Public Health, University of Michigan
Transportation
Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, Professor, Barcelona Institute for Global Health
Children and Adolescents in Cities
Shakira F. Suglia, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
Economic Conditions
Atheendar Venkataramani, Assistant Professor, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Improving Access to Health Foods in Cities
Monica Wang, Assistant Professor, Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health and Instructor, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Moderated by: David Dudley, Editor, City Lab
10:45 a.m. – 11:00 a.m
Break
PART TWO: METHODS AND APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING HEALTH IN CITIES
11:00 a.m. – noon
THROUGH THE LENSES OF OTHER DISCIPLINES
History
Richard Rodger, Professor of Economic and Social History, University of Edinburgh
A Systems Science Approach to Urban Health
Danielle C. Ompad, Associate Professor, College of Global Public Health, New York University and Deputy Director, Rory Meyer College of Nursing’s Center for Drug Use and HIV Research, New York University
Health Services Research: Studying Healthcare Services in the City
Michael K. Gusmano, Interim Chair, Department of Health Policy and Behavioral Health Science and Associate Professor, Health Policy, School of Public Health, Rutgers University
Cells-to-Society Approaches
Guia Guffanti, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School and Director, Computational Genomics Lab, McLean Hospital
Moderated by: Nineequa Blanding, Director, Health and Wellness, The Boston Foundation
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
APPROACHES
Urban Design
Oliver Gruebner, Senior Researcher, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Community-Based Participatory Research: An Approach to Research in the Urban Context
Barbara A. Israel, Professor, Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of Michigan and Director, Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center and Angela G. Reyes, Founder and Executive Director, Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation
Multilevel Perspectives to Urban Health
Dustin T. Duncan, Associate Professor, Population Health, School of Medicine, New York University
Environmental Health Assessment
Carlos Dora, Former Coordinator, Public Health and the Environment Department, World Health Organization and Visiting Professor, Columbia University Medical Center.
Urban Planning: Leveraging the Urban Planning System to Shape Healthy Cities
Helen Pineo, Lecturer in Sustainable and Healthy Built Environments, Bartlett Faculty, Built Environment, University College London
Moderated by: Jalonne L. White-Newsome, Senior Program Officer, The Kresge Foundation
1:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Lunch
PART THREE: CASE STUDIES IN URBAN HEALTH
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
CityHealth: Policies for Today’s Urban Health Challenges
Brian C. Castrucci, Chief Executive Officer, de Beaumont Foundation
New York City: The Fit City Examples
Karen Lee, Associate Professor, Preventive Medicine, University of Alberta
Observatory for Urban Health in Belo Horizonte City: An Innovative and Cross-Sectoral Collaboration in Urban Health
Waleska Teixeira Caiaffa, Professor of Public Health and Epidemiology, Belo Horizonte Observatory for Urban Health, School of Medicine, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
Rapid Urbanization in China
Brian J. Hall, Professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau
Boston: A Case Study
Russell P. Lopez, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health
Moderated by: Lola Adedokun, Director, Child Well-being Program and African Health Initiative, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
PART FOUR: THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF CITIES
2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Migration
Sabrina Hermosilla, Research Scientist, Global Mental Health Program, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University
City Leadership for Health, Equity, and Sustainable Development
Agis D. Tsouros, International Advisor on Health Policy and Strategy, Global Healthy Cities and Former Director, World Health Organization
Healthy and Safe Spaces to Play and Work
Renée Boynton-Jarrett, Associate Professor, Pediatrics, Boston University School of Medicine
Regional Planning for Health
David Siscovick, Senior Research Scientist, The New York Academy of Medicine and Professor Emeritus, Medicine and Epidemiology, University of Washington
Moderated by: Katharine Lusk, Executive Director, Initiative on Cities, Boston University
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Walking Data and Talking Sculptures: Artistic Experiments in Environmental Education
Thursday, December 6
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Multi-purpose Room, Curtis Hall, 474 Boston Avenue, Medford
Catherine D’Ignazio, Assistant Professor of Civic Media and Data Visualization, Emerson College
In a world of pressing environmental issues, we don't just need civic engagement. We need civic imagination – the capacity to imagine alternatives to current social, political or economic conditions. In this talk, Dr. Catherine D’Ignazio will discuss two art and education projects that help posit these alternate futures in the environmental realm, as a way of mobilizing our capacity to collectively and joyfully dream of a more just society. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own creative environmental projects to share as well.
Catherine D’Ignazio (@kanarinka) is a scholar, artist/designer and software developer who focuses on data literacy, feminist technology and civic engagement. She has designed global news recommendation systems, run women’s health hackathons, created
talking and tweeting water quality sculptures, and led walking data visualizations to envision the future of sea level rise. Her art and design projects have won awards from the Tanne Foundation, Turbulence.org and the Knight Foundation and exhibited at the Venice Biennial and the ICA Boston. Her research at the intersection of technology, design & the social change has been published in the Journal of Peer Production, the Journal of Community Informatics, and the proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM SIGCHI). D’Ignazio is an Assistant Professor of Civic Media and Data Visualization at Emerson College, a Senior Fellow at the Engagement Lab and a research affiliate at the MIT Center for Civic Media & MIT Media Lab.
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Changing Security Dynamics in the Persian Gulf
WHEN Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018, 12:15 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, One Brattle Square (Room 350), Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR International Security Program
SPEAKER(S) Dina Esfandiary, Research Fellow, International Security Program
CONTACT INFO susan_lynch@harvard.edu
DETAILS Please join us. Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first-come-first-served basis.
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xTalk with Prof. Emanuel "Ely” Sachs: Guided Discovery as a Teaching Method
Thursday, December 6
3:00pm to 4:00pm
MIT, Building 1-246, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
The term “Guided Discovery” refers to a teaching and learning environment where students are actively participating in discovering knowledge. The goal of discovery is to facilitate deep learning on the part of the students – learning that has its basis in fundamental understanding and often arises from viewing a problem from multiple perspectives. The pedagogical underpinning is that if the students discover the knowledge, they will, in the process, have created and added to their own scaffolded understanding. They will have formulated and evaluated hypotheses, rejected those that don’t seem to explain observations, confronted misconceptions, encountered surprises and finally come to an understanding that comports with experiment. By re-creating knowledge which already exists but is heretofore unknown to them, students will progress in learning how to create new knowledge, and they will have training in inductive reasoning – the method used to create most human knowledge.
This highly interactive presentation will showcase some of the guided discoveries used, in collaboration with my ME colleagues, in teaching 2.001. Data on student response will be presented.
Emanuel “Ely” Sachs is the Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He has been recognized for pioneering new approaches to teaching undergraduate education, focusing on active, hands-on participation by students in the discovery of knowledge.
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The Political Economy of Energy and the Potential for Conflict in the Middle East: From Iran to Gaza and Beyond
WHEN Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018, 4:30 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, Room S050, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR CMES/WCFIA Middle East Seminar
SPEAKER(S) Paul F. Saba, Esq., International Energy Attorney
CONTACT INFO elizabethflanagan@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Please note: this talk will take place in CGIS South, Room S050, 1730 Cambridge St.
Unless otherwise noted in the event description, CMES events are open to the public (no registration required), and off the record. Please note that events may be filmed and photographed by CMES for record-keeping and for use on the CMES website and publications.
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Ethics in a World of Strangers
WHEN Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018, 5 – 6 p.m.
WHERE 25 Shattuck Street, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Ethics, Health Sciences, Humanities, Law, Lecture, Religion, Science, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics
SPEAKER(S) K. Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy and Law, New York University
COST Free, registration required
TICKET INFO http://bioethics.hms.harvard.edu/gay-lecture
CONTACT INFO HMS Center for Bioethics
DETAILS Hailed as a "postmodern Socrates," novelist, philosopher, and scholar, K. Anthony Appiah will deliver the 2018 Gay Lecture. One of the most powerful thinkers in the world, according to Forbes magazine, Appiah is known for his examination of the most compelling social issues of the day including morality, ethnicity, biologic race, religion, and identity. The Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine, Appiah addresses ethical questions weekly and is the author of numerous books including The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, which received the Arthur Ross Book Award.
The George W. Gay Lecture is the oldest endowed lectureship at Harvard Medical School, and quite possibly the oldest medical ethics lectureship in the United States. The lectureship was established in 1917 by a $1,000 gift from Dr. George Washington Gay, an 1868 graduate of HMS. Gay gave Harvard the fund to provide an annual income to support lectures “to the advanced, or graduating classes in the Medical School upon Medical Ethics, and upon wise and proper methods of conducting the business of physicians, as relates to fees, collections, investments, etc.” The Gay Lectureship perpetuates his deep concern for the welfare of his patients and his appreciation of the constantly arising social and economic forces that impinge on medical care.
LINK bioethics.hms.harvard.edu
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Assessing the Relationship Between MIT and the Saudi Monarchy
Thursday, December 6
5:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building 1-190, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Please join us for this substantive forum that will explore ethical questions and potential conflicts of interest generated by the recent agreements between the Saudi monarchy and the MIT Administration.
The assassination of journalist Jamal Kashoggi and the military role of the Saudi Monarchy in Yemen call for a thorough examination of this relationship. The forum will include an authority on the Saudi monarchy, Helen Whiston of Human Rights Watch, and MIT faculty and graduate student panelists addressing questions of whether such relationships conform to MIT's mission and principles. A representative from the Administration has been invited to report on the Administration's examination of the relationships.
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Dolores film: Documentary on Dolores Huerta of the United Farmworkers Union
Thursday, December 6
5:00pm to 8:30pm
MIT, Building 4-370, 182 Memorial Drive (REAR), Cambridge
Film "Dolores" followed by a Q&A with Roxana Rivera from SEIU.
Pizza at 5pm
Film at 5:30pm
Sponsored by WGS + SA+P
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Groundwork and the Hanukkah Goblets at Winter Hill Brewing Co.
Thursday, December 6
5 PM – 9 PM
Winter Hill Brewing Company, 328 Broadway, Somerville
Groundwork Somerville and Winter Hill Brewing Company present Groundwork and the Hanukkah Goblets, our interpretation of the beloved children's story "Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins." But there's nothing to fear—the goblins will be replaced by goblets and defeated by the bright lights of our community coming together to support Groundwork's programs!
Join us on December 6th from 5 PM to 9 PM to raise your goblets—full of locally-brewed beer—and eat lovely latkes to benefit Groundwork Somerville! Known for putting the FUN in fundraising, Groundwork Somerville is collaborating with WHBC to celebrate Hanukkah and raise vital funds to support our many youth development, food access, environmental justice, and racial equity programs.
If you're not familiar with Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblin's story, you can watch a teaser of the acclaimed book at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0cQoMo0Enc and experience more of its magic at this event on the fifth night of Hanukkah.
Satisfy your inner goblin on December 6th with local beer ($1 from each sold donated directly to GWS), a full dinner menu including WHBC's take on latkes (potato pancakes), raffles for unique Groundwork and Somerville-based goodies and experiences, and a chance to hang out with the Groundwork staff and Green Team!
For more information, visit: bit.ly/groundworkgoblets
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Social Innovation Forum Annual Winter Reception
Thursday, December 6
5:30pm - 7:30pm
Microsoft New England R&D Center, Cambridge, MA
We invite our community of investors, supporters, and portfolio organizations to join us for the formal announcement of the 2019 Social Innovators and a celebration of the achievements of our portfolio organizations!
The evening will feature cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and celebration.
We look forward to raising a glass to each of you - our incredible community of leaders, friends, volunteers and supporters
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Building a Better Internet
Thursday, December 6
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EST
The MIT Press Bookstore, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join the MIT Press Bookstore in welcoming David D. Clark and Josephine Wolff to discuss their new books: David D. Clark’s Designing an Internet and Josephine Wolff's You'll See This Message When It Is Too Late.
David D. Clark & Josephine Wolff
David D. Clark is a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and a leader in the design of the Internet since the 1970s. In Designing an Internet, David Clark explains how the Internet is actually put together, what requirements it was designed to meet, and why different design decisions would create different internets.
Josephine Wolff is Assistant Professor in the Public Policy Department and Computer Security Department at Rochester Institute of Technology. She is a Faculty Associate at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and a Fellow at the New America Cybersecurity Initiative. Her new book, You'll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches, examines a series of cybersecurity breaches from 2005 to 2015, the patterns that emerge from them, and what we can learn in their wake.
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RPP Colloquium: Natural “SuperCooperation” and the Future of Our Human Family: Evolutionary Dynamics, Altruistic Virtues, and Spiritual Resources
Thursday, December 6
6 – 8:30pm
Harvard, Sperry Room, Andover Hall, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
Evolution is an organizing principle of the living world. While competition is integral to evolution, cooperation can be seen as the master architect of biological complexity, language, and culture. Human beings have emerged from this evolutionary process as “SuperCooperators.” Nowak will discuss the scientific interpretation of evolution and its compatibility with Christian theology, which holds that God is the primary cause for all that exists, the creator and sustainer of the universe.
In conversation with members of the Sustainable Peace Initiative, Nowak will offer insights on how evolutionary dynamics, altruistic virtues of “SuperCooperation,” and spiritual resources can be leveraged to advance sustainable peace and on the potential role of universities.
Speaker
Martin Nowak, Professor of Mathematics and of Biology at Harvard University and director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics
Moderator and Discussant
Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies and associate dean for faculty and academic affairs at Harvard Divinity School
Discussant
Anne Monius, Professor of South Asian Religions at Harvard Divinity School
Martin Nowak is Professor of Biology and of Mathematics at Harvard University and director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. He works on the mathematical description of evolutionary processes, including the evolution of cooperation and human language, as well as the dynamics of virus infections and human cancer.
An Austrian by birth, Nowak studied biochemistry and mathematics at the University of Vienna with Peter Schuster and Karl Sigmund, receiving his PhD sub auspiciis praesidentis in 1989. He went on to the University of Oxford as an Erwin Schrödinger Scholar and worked there with Robert May, the later Lord May of Oxford, with whom he coauthored numerous articles and his first book, Virus Dynamics (2000). Nowak was a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College and later at Keble College, and a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow. He became head of the mathematical biology group at Oxford in 1995 and Professor of Mathematical Biology in 1997. A year later, he moved to Princeton to establish the first program in theoretical biology at the Institute for Advanced Study. He accepted his present position at Harvard University in 2003.
A corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Nowak is the author of over 400 papers and four books, and the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Weldon Memorial Prize of Oxford University, the David Starr Jordan Prize of Stanford University, and the Akira Okubo Prize.
Recommended Readings
Nowak, Martin A., and Roger Highfield. SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed. New York: Free Press, 2012.
Nowak, Martin A., and Sarah Coakley. Evolution, Games, and God: The Principle of Cooperation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.
With generous support from the Rev. Karen Vickers Budney, MDiv ’91, and Mr. Albert J. Budney, Jr., MBA ’74, as well as the Once Here Foundation.
This monthly public series, convened by HDS Dean David N. Hempton, brings together a cross-disciplinary RPP Working Group of faculty, experts, graduate students, and alumni from across Harvard University and the local area to explore topics and cases in religions and the practice of peace. A diverse array of scholars, leaders, and religious peacebuilders are invited to present and engage with the RPP Working Group and general audience. A light dinner is served and a brief reception follows the program.
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The State of AI
Thursday, 6 December
6:30 – 8:30 pm EST
GA Boston, 125 Summer Street 13th Floor, Boston
Today, tech startups and corporate giants alike are experimenting with artificial intelligence. We know it’s coming, but where are we in the advent of AI and how soon will it weave into our daily lives—or has it already?
Overview: From applications in AI across industries to major ethical debates, the panel will discuss the state of artificial intelligence and how it’s evolved.
What You’ll Take Away: Attendees will learn about major trends in artificial intelligence and take away key use cases to look out for in the coming years.
Why It Matters: Your job--and all aspects of your life-- will be impacted greatly by artificial intelligence in the very near future. Learn how to harness the power of AI to make it work to your benefit.
About Our Partners
Boston New Technology
Boston New Technology is a tech and startup community whose mission is to help local startups succeed through free publicity, education, business connections, resources and live presentation opportunities at monthly events.
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Securing a World of Physically Capable Computers
Thursday, December 6
7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
MIT, Building 32-G449, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
This talk will be webcast on the MIT CSAIL Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYs2iUgksAhgoidZwEAimmg/live beginning at 7pm.
Bruce Schneier
Computer security is no longer about data; it’s about life and property. This change makes an enormous difference, and will shake up our industry in many ways. First, data authentication and integrity will become more important than confidentiality. And second, our largely regulation-free Internet will become a thing of the past. Soon we will no longer have a choice between government regulation and no government regulation. Our choice is between smart government regulation and stupid government regulation. Given this future, it’s vital that we look back at what we’ve learned from past attempts to secure these systems, and forward at what technologies, laws, regulations, economic incentives, and social norms we need to secure them in the future.
Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, called a security guru by the Economist. He is the author of 14 books — including the best-seller Click Here to Kill Everybody — as well as hundreds of articles, essays, and academic papers. His influential newsletter Crypto-Gram and blog Schneier on Security are read by over 250,000 people. Schneier is a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University; a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School; a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, AccessNow, and the Tor Project; and an advisory board member of EPIC and VerifiedVoting.org. He is also a special advisor to IBM Security and the Chief Technology Officer of IBM Resilient.
You can read more about him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Schneier and follow his blog at https://www.schneier.com/.
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, building 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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Practical Online Virtual Reality in Higher Education
Thursday, December 6
7:00 PM – 10:30 PM EST
Brookline Interactive Group, 46 Tappan Street, 3rd floor, Brookline
Cost: $60
This workshop provides an introduction to the use of Multi-User Online Virtual Environments (MUVEs) in the classroom. The lecture will survey the basic uses of MUVEs to convey information and opportunities for project based learning with commonly available platforms. We will also take special care to compare the traditional interface (screen + mouse + keyboard) to the new VR headset interfaces (e.g. an Oculus Rift).
In the second half, attendees will virtually meet in MUVE using the HMD and computers available at Brookline Interactive Group. We will also experiment with content creation. The class is intended for teachers in colleges, high schools, and possibly middle schools.
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Friday, December 7
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Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
Friday, December 7
12:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Professor Chris Cappa, UC Davis, will give a talk. Title TBA.
Contact Name: Kelvin Bates
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LEED Platinum Urban Community Development
Friday, December 7
12pm – 6pm
Orient Heights, East Boston
RSVP at http://nesea.org/12-07-18
Cost: $25 -$35
Join NESEA for the final Pro Tour of 2018, the first stage of a planned 373 unit project in East Boston, designed and built for LEED Platinum certification.
This event will be hosted by ICON Architecture, and will showcase Orient Heights, a new construction of residential and community buildings ranging in height from two-to-five stories in a combination of townhouses and midrises. In addition to learning about the design and construction strategies, attendees of this tour will learn about the history of the site and the creation new open spaces and improve pedestrian and bicycle connections across the site.
Orient Heights will eventually include 42 units of affordable housing, a new community center and management office, a new public park, and significant connectivity improvements and enhancements that will improve circulation, safety, and access for vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists.
The buildings are being constructed to a high level of energy performance – tight thermal envelope, triple glazed windows, heat recovery systems, and VRF systems in the townhouses and are expected to meet or exceed LEED Platinum standards.
Site Details
Units: Phase 1 includes 120 units of a planned 373 unit project
Square Footage: 105,000
Type of construction: New - still under construction
Mix of townhouse-style units and mid-rise style units
Project includes community center, management office, & public park
Units are being built with a tight thermal envelope, triple glazed windows, heat recovery systems, & VRF systems
Schedule
12:30 PM Doors open, registration, networking and coffee
1:00 PM Welcome by NESEA
1:10 PM Overview of the project by the host
2:00 PM Tour of project begins; attendees rotate through content-specific stations
3:45 PM Group Reconvenes back at initial meeting point
4:00 PM Reception with light refreshments
4:15 PM Q&A Panel with members of project team
5:00 PM Event Concludes
If you have questions about this event, you can contact Florence at fmacgregor@nesea.org or 413-774-6051 x10.
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BU Wind: A Student Forum on our Clean Energy Future
Friday, December 7
12:30 PM – 1:30 PM EST
BUild Lab, 730 Commonwealth Avenue, Brookline
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bu-wind-a-student-forum-on-our-clean-energy-future-tickets-52140220804
Join us to talk about BU's Climate Action Plan, our recent Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) to build a new wind farm, and the role of students in creating significant and lasting change in BU's sustainability.
This event will include a short presentation on the PPA by Dennis Carlberg, breakout working groups, and lunch will be served!
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India on the U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda
Friday, December 7
2:00pm
MIT, Building E51-275, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Joint Seminar on South Asian Politics
South Asia's economic and strategic relevance has grown significantly and offers enormous intellectual and scholarly interest. The seminar, co-sponsored by MIT, Brown University, and Harvard University, explores the region with leading experts.
Speaker: Alyssa Ayres is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She came to CFR after serving as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia from 2010 to 2013. Her book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2018, and was recently selected by the Financial Times for its “Summer 2018: Politics” list. At CFR her work focuses on India’s role in the world and on U.S. relations with South Asia. In 2015, she served as the project director for the CFR-sponsored independent task force on U.S.-India relations, and from 2014 to 2016, as the project director for an initiative on the new geopolitics of China, India, and Pakistan supported by the MacArthur Foundation. During her tenure at the State Department in the Barack Obama administration, Ayres covered all issues across a dynamic region of 1.3 billion people (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and provided policy direction for four U.S. embassies and four consulates.
Joint Seminar on South Asian Politics is co-sponsored by the Brown-India Initiative at the Watson Institute at Brown University, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and South Asia Institute at Harvard University, and the MIT Center for International Studies
Free & open to the public | Refreshments served
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Jennifer Light | Playing at City Building
Friday, December 7
5:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
A century ago, American children regularly played at city building in schools and youth serving institutions. Much of this activity took the form of “junior republics” – miniature cities, states, and nations run by kids. With supervising adults in the background, the young officials made laws, took civil service exams, paid taxes, ran restaurants, printed newspapers, and role played other civic activities. This talk, which draws on my forthcoming book States of Childhood, explores the historical and contemporary significance of these participatory simulations. I'll argue that the history of the republic movement helps to make visible children’s widespread contributions to American city building, and how their varied contributions were rendered invisible through an earlier era’s discourse about simulation and play. I'll also discuss the republic movement's resonances with a range of contemporary techniques and technologies from role playing and gamification to virtual worlds and augmented reality games, and suggest how recent work in the history of computing and information technology is making available new bodies of theoretical and empirical research for scholars and practitioners seeking a “usable past.”
Jennifer Light, Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society; Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology; Professor of Urban Studies and Planning
Jen Light’s eclectic interests span the history of science and technology in America over the past 150 years. She is the author of three books as well as articles and essays covering topics from female programming pioneers, to early attempts to organize smart cities, to the racial implications of algorithmic thinking in federal housing policy, to the history of youth political media production, to the uptake of scientific and technical ideas and innovations across other fields. Professor Light is especially fascinated by smart peoples’ bad ideas: efforts by well-intentioned scientists and engineers to apply scientific methods and technological tools to solve social and political problems—and how the history of their failures can inform contemporary scientific and engineering practice.
Light holds degrees from Harvard University and the University of Cambridge. She has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study and the Derek Brewer Visiting Fellow at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. Her work has been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and honored with the Catherine Bauer Wurster Prize from the Society for American City and Regional Planning History and an honorary doctorate from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Light serves on the editorial boards IEEE Annals of the History of Computing; Information and Culture; Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences; and Journal of Urban History. Professor Light was previously on the faculty of the School of Communication and the Departments of History and Sociology at Northwestern University.
MIT Department of Architecture
Fall 2018 Lecture Series
Design and Computation Lecture Series
Pasts, Presents, and Futures of Spatial Computing
Organized by Carlos Emilio Sandoval Olascoaga, PhD student
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Saturday, December 8
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Playing For The Planet: World Music Against Climate Change
Saturday, December 8
7 PM – 10 PM
The Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston Street, Boston
Cost: $15 - $20
The eighteenth “Playing For The Planet” benefit concert showcases master musicians from three different musical traditions in a rare and joyful pan-cultural evening, with all proceeds going to benefit the environmental advocacy group 350MA.org. Featured performers include Do Yeon Kim, the contemporary virtuoso of the Korean gayageum, Nepalese sarangi master Shyam Nepali, and New England’s great exponents of American folk tradition, Lorraine Lee & Bennett Hammond.
More information at http://www.warrensenders.com
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Sunday, December 9
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Humanism 2019: The Challenge of Eternal Vigilance
Sunday, December 9
1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Phillips Brooks House, Harvard Yard, Cambridge
We'll hold our next lecture event (with snacks at 1) at the Phillips Brooks House again, on the Harvard University campus, Sunday December 9th at 1:30 pm. It is entitled, "Humanism 2019: The Challenge of Eternal Vigilance."
David Niose, legal director of the American Humanist Association's Appignani Humanist Legal Center and former president of both the AHA and the Secular Coalition for America, will discuss some of the major issues facing humanists and organized humanism in the the coming year and beyond.
With the 2018 election now behind us, Niose will discuss such questions as: What Church-State issues will be in the forefront in the coming year? Are there new possibilities for the Humanist movement in the changing American landscape? What about the Christian Right, anti-intellectualism, corporate power, and other obstacles to humanistic policy? Are the dynamics evolving--or not? Niose will discuss the activist issues that are likely to be front-and-center as we make our way through 2019 and head toward yet another election year in 2020.
We'll have time for a lively discussion after the talk.
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Monday, December 10
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Program on Misinformation
December 10
11:30 AM- 1:00 PM
Harvard, Adams House, 26 Plympton Street, Room TBA, Cambridge
Will Stevens, U.S. Department of State, Director of the Public Diplomacy Division, Foreign Service Institute
Bio. Will Stevens began work as the Director of the Foreign Service Institute’s Public Diplomacy (PD) Training Division in June 2017. Mr. Stevens is an experienced PD-coned Foreign Service Officer with overseas experience in Russia, Turkmenistan, Israel, and Belarus, as well as experience in Washington in the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs and the Bureau of African Affairs. He received the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public Diplomacy in 2014 for his work leading the U.S. Government’s Interagency Task Force on countering Russian propaganda during the Ukraine crisis. Mr. Stevens joined FSI from the Bureau of African Affairs, where he was a Senior Advisor on countering violent extremism. He previously worked in the Africa Bureau as Bureau Spokesperson, where he directed the public affairs planning and messaging for the 2014 U.S.-Africa Heads of State Summit, which brought together 50 African leaders in Washington for the first time. Mr. Stevens was the Spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow from 2014-2016, where his team’s work was recognized in the Public Diplomacy Council’s annual “Ten Best” for the “Best Use of Social Media by an Embassy.” He has also served as Chief of Staff at the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, chief of public affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Turkmenistan, and in the press and cultural affairs offices at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.
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ACT Fall 2018 Lecture Series: Untranslatable: Conceptual Art since the 90s
Monday, December 10
6:00pm to 7:30pm
MIT, Building E15-001, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
David Joselit
ACT’s lecture series draws together artists, scholars, and other cultural practitioners from different disciplines to discuss artistic methodologies and forms of inquiry at the intersection of art, architecture, science, and technology. Each spring and fall semester brings a different thematic focus and the format for each event shifts depending on the visitor(s) and the nature of their presentations and performances.
ACT Fall 2018 Lecture Series: Vibrant Signs and Indeterminant Matter(s)
ACT’s Fall 2018 series is conceived by Judith Barry, ACT Director.
This series is made possible with the generous support of our partners and collaborators: The Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT)
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Are Humans Evolved to Run: Why (and how much) exercise is good for our health
Monday, December 10
6:30pm - 8pm
The Burren, 247 Elm Street, Somerville
More information at http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/science-by-the-pint/
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Tuesday, December 11
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THE BIOLOGY OF COMPLEX SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
Tuesday, December 11
12:00pm
Harvard, BioLabs Building, Room 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
Michael Platt, UPENN
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A Nice History of Bird Migration: Ethology, Expertise, and Conservation in 20th Century North America
Tuesday, December 11
5:15PM
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston
The Massachusetts Historical Society hosts "A Nice History of Bird Migration: Ethology, Expertise, and Conservation in 20th Century North America" with Kristoffer Whitney, Rochester Institute of Technology. Comment by Marilyn Ogilvie, University of Oklahoma.
Attendance is free, but you can subscribe online ($25) for the convenience of advance online access to the papers in FOUR series: this, our new Boston African American History Seminar, the Boston Area Early American History Seminar, and the Boston Seminar on Modern American Society and Culture.
Boston Seminar on Environmental History
Contact Name: Alex Buckley
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The Era of Artificial Intelligence: A BKC BOOK TALK FEATURING AUTHOR, KAI-FU LEE
ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE OF AI
Tuesday, December 11
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM ET
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East B (Room 2036, Second Floor), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Kai-Fu Lee
In this talk, Kai-Ful Lee will talk about the four waves of Artificial Intelligence (AI) , and how AI will permeate every part of our lives in the next decade. He will also talk about how this will be different from previous technology revolutions -- it will be faster and be driven by not one superpower, but two (US and China). AI will add $16 trillion to our global GDP, but also cause many challenges that will be hard to solve.
Kai-Fu Lee will talk in particular about AI replacing routine jobs -- the consequences, the proposed solutions that don't work (such as UBI), and end with a blueprint of co-existence between humans and AI.
This event will be live webcast and recorded. RSVP for attendance in person is required and admission will be by ticket only. Please join us in the Harvard Law School Pub (downstairs from the event) immediately following this event for continued conversation. We will have copies of Kai-Fu Lee's book, AI Super-Powers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order available for sale during
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Opportunity
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Announcing Destination 2040: The next long-range transportation plan for the Boston region
How would you improve the Boston region’s transportation system? That’s the question at the heart of the MPO’s preparations for Destination 2040, which the MPO expects to adopt in the spring of 2019.
Every four years, the MPO identifies the system’s strengths and weaknesses; forecasts changes in population, employment, and land use; and creates a plan to address existing and future mobility needs. The resulting long-range transportation plan (LRTP) allocates funding for major projects in the Boston region and guides the MPO’s funding of capital investment programs and studies.
Use the new Destination 2040 website at http://ctps.org/lrtp-dev to explore the state of the system; learn how the MPO will identify needs, revisit its vision and goals, and prioritize its investments; and share your own interests, concerns, and ideas.
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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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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
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/
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
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.
