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, April 22 - Friday, April 26
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Harvard Heat Week
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Monday, April 22
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Resilience Districts Boston - through Friday, May 24
9am We Can’t Wait - Social Network for Climate Action
10am MassForward: A vision for 2030 Agenda
11am Fixit Clinic CDVII (407) Cabot Science Library, Harvard University
11am Earth Day Pop-Up
12pm Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate [PAOC] Colloquium: Revisiting the Redfield Ratio
12pm An Earth Day & Green New Deal Lecture featuring Senator Edward J. Markey
12pm The Purpose Of Business Conference
12pm Harvard Celebrates Earth Day
12:15pm Materializing Time: The Techno-Scientific Transformation of Olive Agriculture in Israel/Palestine
2pm Garbology
3:30pm Sustainability: What It Means for Today’s Business Leaders
3:30pm Women in STEM in the 21st Century: The Stories We Tell and the Action We Need
4pm Hellish or Habitable?: Constraints on The Environment and Early Earth
5pm Flood Protection Infrastructure, Transportation, and Government Networks: Resilient Infrastructures as Seas Rise (RISeR)
5pm Breaking the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Approaches to Improve Youth Health
and Education
5:30pm Behavioral nudges toward increased consumption of improved maize by young children: a cluster randomized experiment in Ethiopia
5:30pm Towards Life 3.0 - Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century: Chess, Go and AI: When Computers Outwit Humans
6pm Community Conversation: Local Experiments in Land Trusts
6pm CDD Forum - Brie Hensold and Gina Ford
6pm A Conversation With James and Deborah Fallows About Their Book "Our Towns”
6pm Innovate@BU Idea Cup Celebration - Spring 2019!
6pm 1deation 2019
6:30pm HarvardX Today
6:30pm Stepping Up: Business in the Era of Climate Change: Climate Politics and Business
7pm Truth in Our Times: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts
7pm JP Solar Happy Hour - April 2019
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Tuesday, April 23
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10am MIT Climate Summit Simulation
12pm Basic Science, Discovery, and Innovation
12pm Climate-Driven Changes in the Composition of Tropical Forests
12pm Striving to Build An Antiracist Education Community
12pm High Stakes on the High Seas and Beyond
12pm The political origins of Mexico’s corruption
12pm Hacking XR Speaker Series: New Forms of Storytelling Shaping Tomorrow’s Entertainment Industry
2pm Breaking Through Gridlock
3pm xTalk: Jeff Ubois - "Lever for Change: Open Grantmaking at Scale
3pm We Don't Have Time Climate Conference and launch of our social network for climate action!
4pm Transitioning the Energy System
4pm Love Or Hate Water?
5pm ARTFUL DESIGN: TECHNOLOGY IN SEARCH OF THE SUBLIME
5pm Improving Forest Satellite Monitoring: Experiences with Capacity Building in African, Asian & Latin American Countries
5pm Global Impact Challenge Pitch Finale
5:30pm The Connected, Intelligent Future - IoT and AI Startup Showcase #BNT100
5:30pm U.S. Healthcare and Drug Pricing Debate
5:30pm Puerto Rico, Debt, and Education
5:30pm Digital Credit: Market Opportunities
5:30pm A Future with More Ferries: Business Plan Release + Panel Discussion
6pm A Conversation with Kara Swisher and Ash Carter
6pm New Venture Competition Finale Show 2019
6pm Special film screening and Q&A: Lobster War: The Fight Over the World’s Richest Fishing Grounds
7pm State Climate Change Legislation
7pm Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West
7pm Psychiatric Drugs: Why They Often Fail Us Over Long Term
7pm Seeing Trees: A History of Street Trees in New York City and Berlin
7pm BU Human Rights film screening "Letter from Masanjia”
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Wednesday, April 24
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10:30am Bias on the Web
12pm Solar Geoengineering Research Seminar
12pm Soldiers' Hearts: The Changing Cost of War-Induced Psychological Trauma
12:30pm What are the barriers to the adoption of environmental techniques in Africa? Evidence from Niger
4pm Linking International Efforts on Tropical Forest Monitoring to International Reporting and SDGs: State of the Art and Ways Forward
4:15pm The Demand for Off-Grid Solar Power: Evidence from Rural India’s Surprisingly Competitive Retail Power Market
5pm IGNITE Engagement
6pm Joseph M. Reagle, Jr.: Hacking Life
6pm Genetic Revolution and the Future of Humanity
6pm Sunrise Boston Full Hub Meeting
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Thursday, April 25 - Friday, April 26
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Vision and Justice: A Convening
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Thursday, April 25
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9am Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science: Evolution and Ethics
9am You are invited to attend the 2nd Annual Public Service Symposium on April 25th!
11:45am Trade and American Leadership: The Paradoxes of Power and Wealth from Hamilton to Trump
12pm The power of story
3pm Computers that Learn to Help
3:30pm Population Palaeogenomics as a Window into the Legacy of the Black Death
4:30pm Designing Contextually Driven AI Systems for Gun Violence Prevention with Chicago Youth
5pm Time for a Technical Fix? The Science and Ethics of Solar Geoengineering
5:30pm Rural Promise: Innovating to Support Rural Students
6:30pm Learn About Solar For Your Home and Go 100% Renewable!
6:30pm Aerial Futures: The Third Dimension
6:30pm Augmented and Virtual Reality Expo
7pm Around the World in 80 Trees
7pm The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865
8pm Thought Leadership for Climate Emergency with Varshini Prakash of Sunrise
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Friday, April 26 - Monday, April 29
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City Nature Challenge
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Friday, April 26
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8am MIT Sustainability Summit: Sustainable Mobility - What Can'(t) Tech Fix?
9am The Smart, Connected Commonwealth: Data-Driven Research and Policy Across the Region
12pm Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar: Dr. Christine Wiedinmyer, NOAA/CU Boulder
12:15pm Asian History at Water’s Edge: Environment and Society in the Long Twentieth Century
2pm Flood Harvard
3pm Imaging a Black Hole with the Event Horizon Telescope
3pm Democratic Discord in Schools: Cases and Commentaries in Educational Ethics
6pm TEDxBU
6:30pm How Can Unitarian Universalists Respond to Populism?: "A Tale of Two Kingdoms”
7pm Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age
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Saturday, April 27 - Saturday, May 4
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Sustainaville Week
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Saturday, April 27
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8am Imagination in Action @ MIT
9am Local Environmental Action Conference
10am SURVIVAL BOSTON 1630-35
10am Hull Wind 1 tour
11am High-yield gardening
11am Growing in the City: Arbor Day and Urban Gardening Festival
12:30am MIT IDEAS Innovation Showcase + Awards 2019
1pm Growing Food Without A Garden
6:30pm The Populist Imagination: A White Man’s Republic?
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Sunday, April 28
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Applied Permaculture 5: Soil improvement and tree planting
11am Somerville Sustainability Tour
1pm Lee McIntyre on 'The Scientific Attitude’
1pm Bike Month Kick-Off
6pm TEDxBrooklineLive
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Monday, April 29
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11am How Norms Change: New Evidence from Data and Experiments
12pm BU AR/VR Festival
12:15pm Agency and Automation: Digital Disobedience and Its Infrastructure
4:30pm Community Voices: Responses to Violence in Boston - Slomoff Symposium 2019
5:30pm Towards Life 3.0 - Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century: David Eaves (Faculty Director, DigitalHKS)
6pm Medium Design
6pm VR in energy and aerospace by Packet 39
7:15pm Community Conversation: What is a Progressive Housing Position?
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Tuesday, April 30
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11am Modeling Opinion Dynamics in the Age of Algorithmic Personalization
12pm What the Quaternary paleobiological record can tell us about vegetation turnover and climate change?
12pm Arctic Shipping and the Northern Sea Route, Shipping Trends, and The New Polar Code Regulations: The Concerns and Contributions of The International Insurance Industry
12pm Tuesday Seminar Series: Resistance and Repression: One Year on from Nicaragua's Civil Uprising
12:30pm BU URBAN Spring Symposium
4pm Are Today's Frontiers In Cities? A Lecture by Saskia Sassen
4:30pm Fireside Chat with Ed Catmull, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios
5pm Our Extravagant Universe: The Undiscovery of Cosmic Deceleration
5:30pm Youth on Climate Justice: Why should we care?
5:30pm Cleantech Startups: Navigating the Mass Cleantech Landscape
6pm Boston Green Drinks - April 2019 Happy Hour
7pm Be the Change: Emily Bazelon & Juliette Kayyem
7pm Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi
7pm White Nationalism, Community Response & the Rule of Law
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
Why isn’t job growth the first thing climate activists mention?
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Climate Change Survey is Now Available!
The UMass Boston School for the Environment and Urban Harbors Institute are developing a new climate projection consensus for the Greater Boston area. This project is led by Dr. Paul Kirshen, SSL Core Faculty member and Dr. Ellen Douglas, SSL Faculty Affiliate. They need your help to ensure that this project is as useful as possible to people in the field.
Do you, in either a professional or volunteer capacity, make decisions that could be influenced by climate change?
AND
Do you work or volunteer in any of the 101 cities and towns in the Greater Boston Area as colored in the map below?
If you answered “yes” to both of those questions, please help us gather information about your climate change-related interests and concerns by completing this 10-15 minute survey:
The survey will close April 23rd.
For more details on this project, including a list of Steering Committee organizations, please visit: https://www.umb.edu/gbrag
If you have questions on the survey or project in general, please contact Kim Starbuck at Urban Harbors Institute at Kimberly.Starbuck@umb.edu.
Thank you in advance for your participation!
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Monday, April 22 - Friday, April 26
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Harvard Heat Week
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Monday, April 22
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Resilience Districts Boston
Monday, April 22 - Friday, May 24
MIT, Gallery 9, Located on the first floor of Building 9 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
The Resilience Districts Boston exhibition introduces a new zoning tool called Resilience Districts for adapting the Greater Boston Area to climate change. Resilience Districts serve as a governance structure for mitigating and pooling systemic risks, capturing agglomeration benefits, and providing a potential framework for metropolitan resettlement. Through maps, diagrams, and drawings, a working method is outlined and nine Resilience Districts are identified within the Greater Boston Area. Each Resilience District is analyzed to inform a series of district-wide urban design strategies that reflect regional flood exposure, local land use designations, and neighborhood development opportunities.
This exhibition is part of the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism's triennial on Equitable Resilience.
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We Can’t Wait - Social Network for Climate Action
Monday, April 22
9am - 1pm
On Earth Day, 22 April, we welcome you to our ´No-Fly´ Climate Conference 2019 and the exciting launch of our Social Network for Climate Action. This event marks the launch of a movement for a safe future, and we are actively involving everyone working to remedy the climate crisis.
During our Earth Day event, climate advocates will pitch their social media campaigns for the climate and the environment. We will discuss the art of effectively communicating the climate crisis, the leading role of the climate youth movement, and the connection between individual lifestyle choices and major systemic change.
Our aim is to show how important it is that everyone – young people, old people, parents, businesses, institutions, elected officials – is needed. Together we are the solution and without collaboration, we will fail. You are therefore invited to our conference in Norrsken House, Stockholm on
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MassForward: A vision for 2030 Agenda
Monday, April 22
10:00 AM – 6:00 PM EDT
Museum Of Science, Museum Of Science Driveway, Boston
This event will be a day of conversations on how the Commonwealth of Massachusetts can continue to lead on emerging technology and its implementation in the workplace. There will be six breakout sessions with industry specific leaders followed by a conversation on public and private sector cooperation featuring Governor Charlie Baker and Dell Technologies Chairman and CEO Michael Dell.
More details on speakers and attendees to come!
Registration opening
10:00 am: Start Time
10:30 - 10:50 am: Opening by Host Executive and Dell Executive
First Round of Sessions
11:00 – 12:00 pm: Session 1A -Healthcare
11:00 – 12:00 pm: Session 1B - Workforce Readiness
Luncheon
12:10 - 1:15 pm: Discussion on STEM Science, technology, engineering and math
Second Round of Sessions
1:30 – 2:45 pm: Session 2A - Education
1:15 – 2:45 pm: Session 2B – Sustainability
Break/Reception/Networking
2:45 - 3:15 pm: Networking Break- with Water, Coffee and Snacks
Third Round of Sessions
3:30 - 4:45 pm: Session 3A - Manufacturing
3:30 - 4:45 pm: Session 3B – Transportation
Future of Work
5:00 - 6:00 pm: Future of Work conversation with Michael Dell and Governor Baker
Reception
6:05 pm: Post Summit Reception
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Fixit Clinic CDVII (407) Cabot Science Library, Harvard University
Monday, April 22
11AM-2PM
Harvard, Cabot Science Library, Harvard University Science Center, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Register at http://bit.ly/fixitcheckin then:
Bring your broken item with all parts necessary to recreate the symptoms (carry-in only: no oversize items)
Bring any parts and tools you already own that might be helpful (e.g. hand tools, sewing supplies)
Come ready to describe what’s wrong and what you’ve tried
Come ready to learn and to share your knowledge with others
An all-ages family-friendly event: accompanied children are heartily invited!
Free!
To make friends, learn and teach how to fix things, and have fun!
Sponsored by Cabot Science Library and Harvard Recycling
More into on Fixit Clinic at www.fixitclinic.org, https://www.facebook.com/FixitClinic/
Building resilient communities through conveying basic troubleshooting skills and celebrating repair, Fixit Clinics are do-it-together hands-on fix-n-learn community-based exploration and discovery workshops staffed by volunteer Fixit Coaches who generously share their time, tools and expertise to consult with you on the disassembly, troubleshooting, and repair of items.
So bring your broken, non-functioning things -- electronic gadgets, appliances, computers, toys, sewing machines, bicycles, fabric items, etc.-- for assessment, disassembly, and possible repair. Fixit Coaches (and helpful neighbors) will be available for consultation on broken items: we'll provide workspace, specialty tools, and guidance to help you disassemble and troubleshoot your item. Whether you fix it or not, you'll learn more about how it was manufactured and how it worked, ready to share your new-found confidence and insight with your friends, neighbors, and the community at large. (Hopefully you’ll be inspired to become a Fixit Coach yourself.)
First-time Fixit Coaches and fixing families are always welcome; sign up at http://bit.ly/fixitcoachsignup
Even if you can’t make it: report your broken item at http://bit.ly/brokenitemreport
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Earth Day Pop-Up
Monday, April 22
11:00 am to 2:00 pm
BU, 775 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Join us as we celebrate Earth Day at our 9th annual Earth Day Festival! Join the challenge and find us all over campus on Monday April 22nd to learn how you can get involved with sustainability and the climate action efforts on and off campus! Make sure to stop by the GSU plaza for our annual Chowderfest and vote for your favorite dining hall! Buy fresh produce and local goods at the Farmers & Sustainability Market.
Contact Name Gabriela Boscio Santos
Phone 857-225-2972
Contact Email gboscio@bu.edu
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Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate [PAOC] Colloquium: Revisiting the Redfield Ratio
Monday, April 22
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Zoe Finkel (Dalhousie University)
The Redfield ratio is the atomic ratio of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in phytoplankton and deep ocean waters. Although C:N:P has often been treated as a constant 106:16:1 there is compelling evidence that it is variable. The causes of this variability and implications for ocean biogeochemical modeling will be discussed.
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An Earth Day & Green New Deal Lecture featuring Senator Edward J. Markey
Monday, April 22
12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EDT
UMass Boston, Campus Center Ballroom B and C, 100 William T Morrissey Boulevard, Boston
The John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies
presents
An EARTH DAY address by U.S. Senator Edward J. Markey on the
GREEN NEW DEAL
Event Co-Sponsored by
University of Massachusetts Boston, School for the Environmentand Sustainable Solutions Lab
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The Purpose Of Business Conference
Monday, April 22
12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EDT
Hult International Business School, Fenway Bleachers, 1 Educations Street, Cambridge
The Business Purpose Conference is our first student-run event linking sustainability and profitability in a single place and time. The event invites influential business leaders to share their experiences in aligning the business’ purpose to the values of the people in a global
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Harvard Celebrates Earth Day
Monday, April 22
12–2 pm
Harvard, Science Center Plaza, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
(rain location: Smith Campus Center)
Celebrate Earth Day at Harvard’s Sustainability Fair on the Science Center Plaza. Explore how the University and our community partners can help green your scene while enjoying activities such as a Freecycle, electronics recycling collection, bike tune-ups, compost tea demonstration, games, live music, samplings, and giveaways. You can also learn more about food and food systems, health and wellness, sustainable transportation options, organic landscaping and gardening, green cleaning, recycling, and more.
We’ll also have secure and safe electronics recycling on site for your personal and Harvard devices.
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Materializing Time: The Techno-Scientific Transformation of Olive Agriculture in Israel/Palestine
Monday, April 22
12:15PM
Harvard, CGIS South S050, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Natalia Gutkowski, Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, will discuss
Please RSVP via the online form by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
STS Circle at Harvard
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Garbology
Monday, April 22
2:00 – 3:00pm
Mass Audubon's Boston Nature Center and Wildlife Sanctuary, 500 Walk Hill Street, Mattapan
You know the saying: Recyle, Reduce, Reuse. Now learn the skills to do it. In conjunction with the Mass Audubon at the Boston Nature Center, kids can dig up compost and discover just which critters are helping to break it down. There will also be a scavenger hunt and craft session along with lessons about reducing water and electricity.
2 p.m. - 3 p.m., $7 for nonmembers, $5 for members, Boston Nature Center, 500 Walk Hill St.,
Mattapan, 617-983-8500,
Organizer: sustainabilitybucalendar@gmail.com
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Sustainability: What It Means for Today’s Business Leaders
Monday, April 22
3:30PM TO 4:30PM
Harvard Business School, Hamilton Hall, North Harvard Street, Allston
The HBS Business & Environment Initiative hosts a lecture with Auden Schendler, VP of Sustainability, Aspen Skiing Company. Moderated by Lisa Wetstone (MBA 2019).
Sustainability is a compelling goal for many businesses, but making progress requires skills in strategy, leadership, organizational change, and internal and external communication. In this session, Schendler reflects on how we can all become sustainability leaders. Open to the Harvard community. No RSVP required.
Contact Name: Marina Jokic
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Women in STEM in the 21st Century: The Stories We Tell and the Action We Need
Monday, April 22
3:30 PM – 5:30 PM EDT
BU, Metcalf Trustee Center, 1 Silber Way, Boston
The ARROWS Annual Lecture recognizes individuals with extraordinary records of leadership and vision in addressing issues facing women in STEM fields. The 2019 Lecture, titled "Women in STEM in the 21st Century: The Stories We Tell and the Action We Need" will be given by Dr. Evelynn M. Hammonds, the Department Chair and Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.
Prof. Hammonds has published articles on the history of disease, race and science, African American feminism, African-American women and the epidemic of HIV/AIDS and analyses of gender and race in science and medicine. Her current research focuses on diversity in STEM fields; the intersection of scientific, medical and socio-political concepts of race in the United States; and genetics and society. Read more about Prof. Hammonds here.
This event is open to the public. Please contact arrows@bu.edu with any questions.
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Hellish or Habitable?: Constraints on The Environment and Early Earth
Monday, April 22
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915/923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Special Seminar: Elizabeth Bell (UCLA)
Several lines of evidence suggest that life on Earth may be as or more ancient than 3.8 Ga. As such, there is a real possibility that Earth became habitable within its first few hundred million years. The chief difficulty in assessing various hypothesized scenarios for the early Earth’s environment is the lack of a known rock record prior to 4.02 Ga. This earliest eon of Earth history (the Hadean) can be studied directly only by detrital minerals in later sediments. The most well-studied suite of Hadean minerals is the Jack Hills detrital zircons (Western Australia), ranging to nearly 4.4 Ga in age and containing a variety of geochemical and petrological information about the Hadean magmas in which they crystallized. While pointing to the composition of at least part of the Hadean crust, these zircons and their cargo of mineral inclusions also provide indirect evidence for conditions in the surface and near-surface environment of Hadean Earth through a variety of isotopic systems and trace elements. A group of zircons with anomalous chemistry ca. 3.9 Ga may have formed through recrystallization – potentially representing some of the first terrestrial evidence for the Late Heavy Bombardment. Carbonaceous mineral inclusions may provide evidence for Hadean carbon cycling: an isotopically light graphite inclusion in a 4.1 Ga zircon may provide evidence for life on Earth by 4.1 Ga. By more fully exploiting mineral inclusions and trace element chemistry, especially in Hadean-Archean zircons from sites other than Jack Hills, we can develop a better grasp on the diversity of materials making up the Hadean crust and the diversity of their thermal histories during hypothesized bombardment episodes. These nontraditional mineral records may help to more clearly constrain not only the igneous crustal composition but potentially also the surficial environment and geodynamic settings at the dawn of life.
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Flood Protection Infrastructure, Transportation, and Government Networks: Resilient Infrastructures as Seas Rise (RISeR)
Monday, April 22
5:00pm
Pre-lecture Reception: 4:30pm
MIT, Building 1-190, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Prof. Samer M. Madanat, Xenel Distinguished Professor of Engineering Emeritus in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley Dean of Engineering at NYU Abu Dhabi
The RISeR research project explores how coastal flooding, shoreline infrastructure, the transportation system, and decision-makers interact in coastal communities, including the feedback between them. It comprises three components: hydrodynamics, governance, and transportation. The geographical focus is the San Francisco Bay Area and the challenges associated with sea level rise and bayside flooding. Its objective is to the development of tools, information and insights to help government institutions and networks be better prepared to make e ective decisions about infrastructure planning and operations.
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Breaking the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Approaches to Improve Youth Health
and Education
Monday, April 22
5:00-7:00pm
BU, School of Public Health, 670 Albany Street, Auditorium, Boston
Speakers:
Lisa Thurau, Executive Director, Strategies for Youth
Marcia Gupta, LICSW, EdM, Program Coordinator, Dimock Community Health Center
Dep. Superintendent Leonardo DiPietro, Cambridge Police Department
Ritchina Daniel, senior high school student at Pioneer Charter School of Science; Intern, Massachusetts Advocates for Children
Moderator: Trish Elliott, DrPH, Clinical Assistant Professor, Boston University School of Public Health
The school-to-prison pipeline refers to a trend in which punitive school disciplinary policies and practices increase the likelihood that children will become involved with the criminal justice system. This is a critical public health and racial equity issue as it disproportionately affects low-income students, students of color, and students with disabilities. This event will explore approaches from public health, social work, and
legal services that effectively shift the current direction away from policing and discipline and toward approaches that serve the needs of youth and families.
This event is hosted by the BU Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health and the Center of Excellence in Maternal and Child Health.
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Behavioral nudges toward increased consumption of improved maize by young children: a cluster randomized experiment in Ethiopia
Monday, April 22
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
MIT, Building E19-319, 400 Main Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Prof. Margaret McConnell (Harvard)
Undernutrition and stunting are serious problems in Ethiopia, where two out of five children are stunted. Improved crop varieties have the potential to improve child nutrition in agricultural communities, but their introduction has often not translated into meaningful nutritional gains. We tested whether the distribution of Quality Protein Maize, together with a set of behavioral interventions targeted at increasing young children’s consumption of the fortified maize, could change caregiver feeding and cooking practices and improve child growth. We conducted a cluster randomized trial in Oromia, Ethiopia with 610 households that had at least one child between 6 and 35 months (the index child). All households were provided with free Quality Protein Maize (QPM), a conventionally modified maize variety with improved protein quality. Households were randomized with equal probability into either a “QPM-only group” or an arm that was provided with QPM and a targeting intervention, which included a set of tools and messages that used labeling and salience to try to increase child consumption of QPM (“QPM+targeting group”). The intervention package was associated with a 17 percentage point increase in the probability of the index child consuming QPM in the previous week (95% CI 9 to 25), and an average increase in days QPM was consumed in the past week of 0.83 days (95% CI 0.33 to 1.33). There were, however, no positive impacts on anthropometric outcomes such as height-for-age and weight-for-age z-scores. In settings like Ethiopia, child consumption targeting campaigns focused on improved crop varieties that use behavioral nudges such as labeling and earmarking appear to be effective at changing food consumption and cooking behaviors. These changes did not, however, translate into improvements in child anthropometrics, possibly given the short time frame of the study.
Bio: Dr McConnell’s research combines behavioral economics with field and laboratory experiments to understand and evaluate policies designed to change health behaviors, with a specific focus on maternal and child health. Her ongoing research in Kenya examines the effect of cash transfers incorporating pre-commitment on the choice of a high quality maternal delivery facility and the impact of vouchers with and without deadlines on the uptake of postpartum family planning. Her work among low-income populations in Boston examines the impact of cash assistance on the amount of time that families spend engaging in Kangaroo Mother Care with babies born prematurely. Her work focuses largely on urban areas with poor populations. Dr McConnell enjoys broad collaboration with social scientists, physicians and health services researchers.
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Towards Life 3.0 - Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century: Chess, Go and AI: When Computers Outwit Humans
Monday, April 8
5:30pm to 6:45pm
Harvard, Wexner Room 102, 79 JFK Street Cambridge
Towards Life 3.0: Ethics and Technology in the 21stCentury is a new talk series organized and facilitated by Mathias Risse, Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Administration. Drawing inspiration from the title of Max Tegmark’s book, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, the series draws upon a range of scholars, technology leaders, and public interest technologists to address the ethical aspects of the long-term impact of artificial intelligence on society and human life.
Held on select Monday evenings at 5:30 – 6:45 in Wexner 102, and occasionally on other weekdays, the series will also be shared on Facebook Live and on the Carr Center website. A light dinner will be served.
Steven Livingston, Senior Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, will be giving a talk titled, "Chess, Go and AI: When Computers Outwit Humans."
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Community Conversation: Local Experiments in Land Trusts
Monday, April 22
6:00 PM EDT
"The Beehive" at Boston Architectural College, 951 Boylston Street, Boston
How can we use land trusts as a tool to undo centuries of housing segregation and discrimination? Join local leaders in activism, finance and public policy for a community conversation connected to the new Undesign the Red Line Interactive Exhibit.
Panelists: Lisa Owens is the Executive Director of City Life / Vida Urbana, a housing justice organization that works for racial, social, and economic justice and gender equity by fighting displacement and building community power. Lisa has been actively involved in building grassroots organizations and supporting local and national social movement building for over 25 years. A seasoned educator, she also occasionally teaches courses at area colleges on structural racism, US social welfare policy, participatory action research, and nonprofit management and leadership. Lisa serves on the boards of several social justice organizations connected to community control of land and housing, including: the Boston Neighborhood Community Land Trust, Alternatives for Community and Environment, the Resist Foundation, the Right to the City/Homes for All National Alliance, and the Right to the City Boston network.
Deborah Frieze is founder and president of the Boston Impact Initiative, an impact investing fund focused on economic justice, which means investing in opportunity for all people—especially those most oppressed or abandoned by our current economic system—to lead a dignified and productive life. The fund takes an integrated capital approach, combining investing, lending and giving to build a resilient and inclusive local economy. Deborah is co-author (with Margaret Wheatley) of Walk Out Walk On, an award-winning book that profiles pioneering leaders who walked out of organizations failing to contribute to the common good—and walked on to build resilient communities. She is also founder of the Old Oak Dojo, an urban learning center in Boston, MA
Nika Elugardo is the MA State Representative of the 15th Suffolk/Norfolk District, including the neighborhoods of Brookline, Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, and Roslindale. She has over 20 years of experience in community and economic development with public, private, and nonprofit leaders in communities of color, Nika earned her B.S. from MIT in Urban Planning, an MPP from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government with concentrations in political advocacy, leadership, and peace and security, and a J.D. from Boston University Law School with externships in tax law, human rights, and corporate social responsibility.
Through organizing her community, Alma Chisolm was able to place her building and five others onto the new Boston Neighborhood Community Land Trust (CLT). She's a member of City Life’s Leadership Team and as a Community Land Trust Ambassador, Her current professional role as a Quality Assurance Technician and team leader at Mt. Auburn Hospital, and especially her experience as a single mother of five have enabled her to practice and refine skills of building unity, listening, and teaching which she brings to her community leadership. As an Ambassador, she reaches out to the other tenants living in homes on the land trust, in order to educate them about community ownership of housing and land, identify common needs and goals, and invite them to participate in governing the CLT.
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CDD Forum - Brie Hensold and Gina Ford
Monday, April 22
6:00pm
MIT, Building 9-255, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Gina Ford is a landscape architect, co-founder and principal of Agency Landscape + Planning. Underpinning her two decades of practice are a commitment to the design and planning of public places and the perpetuation of the value of landscape architecture via thought leadership, teaching, writing and lecturing. Her work has received awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Architects, among others. She is on the board of directors for the Cultural Landscape Foundation and was the recipient of the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship and Wellesley College’s Shaw Fellowship.
Brie Hensold is an urban planner, co-founder and principal of Agency Landscape + Planning. With a passion for understanding and improving communities and places, Brie brings a systems-based approach that integrates multiple disciplines and celebrates diverse perspectives. She has extensive experience developing creative and meaningful community engagement processes for planning and design projects. Brie’s experience encompasses multiple scales, from downtown plans to citywide park systems to resilience strategies. Her work has received awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Architects, among others. She co-teaches an executive education class in resilient cities at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
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A Conversation With James and Deborah Fallows About Their Book "Our Towns"
Monday, April 22
6:00pm to 7:30pm
MIT, Wong Auditorium in the Tang Center (Building E51) 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
James and Deborah Fallows traveled to dozens of towns and small cities across America – places like Duluth, MN and Demopolis, AL – and from their interviews and experiences crafted their best-selling book “Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America.” In a conversation with Barbara Dyer, Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan and Executive Director of the Good Companies, Good Jobs Initiative at MIT Sloan, the Fallowses will discuss what they’ve learned about the surprising reinvention going on in many American communities. The discussion will be followed by questions from the audience. Before the event, light food and beverages will be provided in the Ting Foyer outside the auditorium between 5:30 and 6 p.m. After the event, there will be a book signing in the Ting Foyer. Register for free tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/journey-into-the-heart-of-america-tickets-59066331989.
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Innovate@BU Idea Cup Celebration - Spring 2019!
Monday, April 22
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
BU, BUild Lab IDG Capital Student Innovation Center, 730 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Celebrate the Most Innovative Ideas of the Semester!
$1,000 is up for grabs - help us select BU's most innovative student idea of spring 2019!
Be inspired by creative apps, cutting-edge research, one-of-a-kind programs, unique events, entrepreneurial business ideas and more! Finalists will showcase their idea and have one minute to pitch and impress the crowd. Dozens of teams will apply, only one will win and the audience decides the champion in this best-of-the-best campus competition!
Light food and beverages will be served.
Interested in presenting your idea at the event? Applications open March 18.
Agenda:
6:00-6:30 - Showcase Tables and Networking
6:30-7:15 - Welcome and 1min Team Pitches
7:15 - 7:50 - Showcases Tables and Voting
7:50 - Announce winners!
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1deation 2019
Tuesday, April 22
6-9PM
MIT, Building 32-123, Ray and Maria Stata Center, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Ideation is an annual event that connects teams with early stage startup ideas to other skilled entrepreneurial students and professionals.
About this Event
Ideation brings together MIT and Harvard, along with the broader Boston science community. Last year’s event gave teams the opportunity to pitch in front of and network with an audience of ~300 people to form new collaborations and find new teammates.
At this event, pitching teams and general audience members hear from established biotech entrepreneurs, successful early stage teams out of Harvard and MIT, and startup funding organizations. Our partners and sponsors in the past have included The Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship, The Engine, MIT 100k, and Harvard Innovation Lab.
Some entrepreneurs, like yourself will also have the opportunity to present an idea in a 2 minute pitch following the featured speakers. Teams will receive feedback from a variety of judges involved in various stages of startup development, as well as the chance to recruit new team members in a networking session following the main event.
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HarvardX Today
Monday, April 22
6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
125 Mt Auburn Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Colin Fredericks
Abstract: As one of edX's founding partners, Harvard has one of the largest MOOC development teams in academia. Come hear how HarvardX is structured, what our production process is like, what kind of courses we're working on, and where we're looking for the future.
Bio: Sometimes, Colin Fredericks wants to eat EdX developers, while other times he wants to use them to make gold, and still other times he has even more bizarre uses for them. Though he often catches developers who wander by his home or whom he happens across in the forest, he does not know the location of the hidden edX developer village, a fact that continually frustrates him. On some occasions, he has accidentally discovered the location of the village, but sooner or later, gets led away from it due to either a magic spell put on him by Marco Morales or because of some other bizarre factor. He is a Senior Project Lead at HarvardX.
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Stepping Up: Business in the Era of Climate Change: Climate Politics and Business
WHEN Monday, April 22, 6:30 – 8 p.m.
WHERE WBUR CitySpace, 890 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Special Events, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR WBUR, Harvard Business School, BU Questrom School of Business
SPEAKER(S) William Eacho, Partnership for Responsible Growth
Mindy Lubber, CEO, Ceres
Auden Schendler, Vice president of Sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company
COST $15
CONTACT INFO mjokic@hbs.edu
DETAILS In the United States, business has controlled the policy agenda for addressing climate change at the federal level, and the result has been obfuscation and delay. Today more and more business leaders are voicing support of some form of carbon tax or other mechanism to put a price on carbon. What is driving industry action and where will it lead? What is the role for business leaders in climate policy?
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Truth in Our Times: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts
Monday, April 22
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
This event is free; no tickets are required.
Harvard Book Store welcomes Deputy General Counsel at the New York Times DAVID E. McCRAW for a discussion of his new book, Truth in Our Times: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts. He'll be joined in conversation by Boston Globe Magazine staff writer NEIL SWIDEY—author of Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles Into the Darkness.
About Truth in Our Times
In October 2016, when Donald Trump's lawyer demanded that the New York Times retract an article focused on two women that accused Trump of touching them inappropriately, David McCraw's scathing letter of refusal went viral and he became a hero of press freedom everywhere. But as you'll see in Truth in Our Times, for the top newsroom lawyer at the paper of record, it was just another day at the office.
McCraw has worked at the Times since 2002, leading the paper's fight for freedom of information, defending it against libel suits, and providing legal counsel to the reporters breaking the biggest stories of the year. In short: if you've read a controversial story in the paper since the Bush administration, it went across his desk first. From Chelsea Manning's leaks to Trump's tax returns, McCraw is at the center of the paper's decisions about what news is fit to print.
In Truth in Our Times, McCraw recounts the hard legal decisions behind the most impactful stories of the last decade with candor and style. The book is simultaneously a rare peek behind the curtain of the celebrated organization, a love letter to freedom of the press, and a decisive rebuttal of Trump's fake news slur through a series of hard cases. It is an absolute must-have for any dedicated reader of the New York Times.
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JP Solar Happy Hour - April 2019
Monday, April 22
7:00 PM – 10:00 PM EDT
Flann O’Brien’s, 1619 Tremont Street, Roxbury Crossing
Monthly meetup of solar and related sustainability professionals in Jamaica Plain, Roslindale and nearby.
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Tuesday, April 23
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MIT Climate Summit Simulation
Tuesday, April 23
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT
MIT, Building 3-442, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
A role-playing workshop where participants must form a plan to limit global warming to 2 degrees C, backed by real climate data.
What if the UN locked global stakeholders in a room until they agreed on a climate plan that would actually work? What would the CEO of Exxon, Xi Jinping, Angela Merkel, the Chair of Ford, the head of Greenpeace, Donald Trump, and the Alliance of Rainforest Nations come up with? Would their plan limit warming to less than two degrees C in the newest MIT simulation, En-ROADS, used by top decision-makers in the US government, HSBC, and the United Nations, which runs 38,000 equations in a tenth of a second? Participants play roles and embrace the drama.
Andrew Jones (TPP '97) of Climate Interactive leads this live workshop for the MIT community, part of the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative's Earth Weekprogramming on campus. It is a pilot run of the newest simulation game from Climate Interactive and the Sloan Sustainability Initiative. Seats are limited.
Note: This game is additional to the “World Climate” international negotiations game led by Prof. John Sterman and others on campus. Since 2015 more than 53,000 people have participated in the original World Climate roleplay, in 85 nations around the world. If you participated in World Climate, you will love this!
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Basic Science, Discovery, and Innovation
WHEN Tuesday, April 23, 12 – 12:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Medical School Webinar
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Medical School Executive Education
SPEAKER(S) Cigall Kadoch, Ph.D.
Affiliate Faculty of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Biology at Harvard Medical School
Assistant Professor of Pediatric Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Institute Member and Epigenomics Program Co-Director at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
DETAILS This is an exciting time in biomedical research. Exome- and genome-wide sequencing studies have provided unprecedented new insights into the molecular — and, specifically, genetic — underpinnings of human disease. For the first time, we are identifying the genes that drive cancer, neurologic disease and many other conditions. Dr. Cigall Kadoch’s research seeks to translate these human genetic discoveries into biochemical mechanisms and new opportunities for therapeutic development.
This webinar will focus on the efforts of Dr. Kadoch and her team on the regulation of our genome’s architecture and how disturbances in this system can cause disease. It also will provide perspectives into how industry and academia can partner in pursuit of innovation and entrepreneurial opportunities.
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Climate-Driven Changes in the Composition of Tropical Forests
Tuesday, April 23
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard, 22 Divinity Avenue, HUH Seminar Room 125, Cambridge
Kenneth James Feeley, PhD, Smathers Chair of Tropical Tree Biology, Department of Biology, University of Miami, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden
Tropical forests house the vast majority of plant species. Unfortunately, very little is known about most of these species and specifically about how they are being affected by climate change. In his presentation, Dr. Kenneth Feeley describes a suite of studies documenting changes in the composition of tree species in forests throughout the tropical Andes (and beyond) and how these changes are being driven by upslope shifts in species' ranges due to rising temperatures. Dr. Feeley also discusses how ecotone barriers, for example at the timberline and cloud base, may be preventing some species from migrating upslope and thereby hastening extinctions and species loss in these vital ecosystems.
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Striving to Build An Antiracist Education Community
WHEN Tuesday, April 23, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Wexner 434, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Shorenstein Center, Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Jeff Ginsburg, Executive director of the East Harlem Tutorial program
Khalil Muhammad, Professor of history, race and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and director of the Initiative for Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
DETAILS Jeff Ginsburg joined the East Harlem Tutorial Program (EHTP) as Executive Director in 2008. The EHTP network includes East Harlem Scholars Academies (a network of public charter schools), East Harlem Teaching Residency (in partnership with Hunter College School of Education and AmeriCorps), and Out-of-School Time (OST) Programs that serve traditional public school students. EHTP is on track to serve 25% of East Harlem students by 2025, preparing them with the academic skills, strength of character, and emotional well-being to excel in college, lead in their communities, and realize their best possible selves.
Jeff holds a bachelor’s degree from Trinity College in Hartford, and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he studied education policy and nonprofit management while serving as a Founding Chair of the Dean’s Committee on Public Service. He is a member of the New York City Economic Development Corporation Advisory Board. In 2016, Jeff was named to Crain’s 40 under 40. He is married to Erin K. Blakeley, a writer and journalist, with whom he has three children, Liam, Cathleen and Conor.
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High Stakes on the High Seas and Beyond
Tuesday, April 23
12:00PM TO 1:15PM
Harvard, Room 369, Littauer Building, Belfer Center Library, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Join the Environment and Natural Resources Program at HKS for a seminar with NYU environmental studies Professor Jennifer Jacquet on overfishing and unsustainable aquaculture. Professor Jacquet will discuss some of the recent science to understanding fisheries on the high seas, and how it relates to the current negotiations at the United Nation on conservation and sustainable use of the high seas.
Lunch will be provided.
One of the many signs that global fisheries are unsustainable is the continued expansion of fisheries further offshore and into deeper waters. This talk examines some of the recent science to understanding fisheries on the high seas, and how it relates to the current negotiations at the United Nation regarding a legally binding instrument for the conservation and sustainable use of the high seas. Aquaculture (the farming of aquatic species), which is often touted as a substitute for wild fish is, instead, putting additional pressure on the oceans due to the need to catch fish to feed carnivorous farmed species. Many of the current trends in aquaculture, including plans to mass produce octopus, are a mistake for both ecological and ethical reasons.
Jennifer Jacquet works on global cooperation dilemmas, including climate change, the internet wildlife trade, and overfishing. She worked with Daniel Pauly’s Sea Around Us Project at the University of British Columbia for her PhD. Her dissertation was titled “Fish As Food in an Age of Globalization”. She joined NYU in 2012 and has since received a Sloan Research Fellowship in Ocean Sciences and a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation. She has an ongoing project related to high seas fisheries and recently co-curated a special collection on high seas science for the journal Science Advances, where she is an associate editor. Recent publications include, "High seas fisheries play a negligible role in addressing global food security”, “Watch over Antarctic Waters”, and “The case against octopus farming”.
Contact Name: Julia Gardella
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The political origins of Mexico’s corruption
WHEN Tuesday, April 23, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
SPEAKER(S) Viridiana Rios, Ph.D. in Government, Harvard University
Moderated by: Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO drclas@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS In contexts where corruption is widespread, why do some incumbents choose to not be corrupt? My research argues that party loyalty is a major influence to reduce corruption and test this argument using fine-grained data of $12 billion audited to 3,601 local incumbents over a period of 16 years. Contributing to an unsettled and vibrant debate about the influence of partisan politics in corruption, our data allow us to test three possible mechanisms that could be driving political actors to limit the misappropriation of public resources during their tenure: insurance mechanisms, according to which incumbents reduce corruption to avoid prosecution; party loyalty, where corruption diminishes to protect political cliques from public discredit, and ideological incentives, where corruption diminishes because it is part of the programmatic agenda of incumbent’s party. We find the greatest evidence in favor of party loyalty. Our results suggest the existence of a corruption political cycle in which party loyalty modulates corruption according to a tradeoff between accessing illegal resources and protecting the image of the party. Only when partisan loyalty is combined with low resource requirements does corruption diminishes.
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Hacking XR Speaker Series: New Forms of Storytelling Shaping Tomorrow’s Entertainment Industry
Tuesday, April 23
12:00pm to 1:30pm
MIT, Building E15-318, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Coline Delbaere and Mathieu Pradat
New immersive VR/AR/XR storytelling forms are currently trending, with location-based VR (LBVR), multi-user, and multi sensory strategies guiding the entertainment industry to explore cross-overs with theatre and game-design. Some extraordinary location-based experiences include DVGroup’s acclaimed projects Alice, Jack, The Horrifically Real Virtuality and their most recent: The Roaming.
COLINE DELBAERE: Producer
Coline Delbaere, a political science graduate who specialized in “cultural expertise,” began her first years of professional international experience as a multi-disciplinary cultural programmer. She also worked as a producer for a record label, and later for a theater company and film shoots. In 2017, she joined DVgroup, where she works with original content for virtual reality productions involving actors from a multitude of artistic disciplines to contribute to the development of new forms of storytelling. Delbaere has played a leading role in world acclaimed immersive virtual reality theater installations including: Alice, the Virtual Reality Play (2017 – Marie Jourdren and Mathias Chelebourg), The Horrifically Real Virtuality (2018 – Marie Jourdren), The Roaming: Wetlands(2018 – Mathieu Pradat), Umami (2018 – Thomas Pons and Landia Egal), and PLAY! (2018) in collaboration with musician Roscius and choreographers of I Could Never be a Dancer.
MATHIEU PRADAT : Author and director
Mathieu Pradat focuses his practice on the growing interactions between real and virtual worlds, seen as new territories bearing knowledge and emotions. He explores VR’s emerging narratives forms, in particular the spatial aspect of editing specific to this new media. His short documentary and fiction pieces have been selected and awarded at numerous festivals in France and around the world, including Venice Virtual – The Venice Film Festival, the Geneva International Film Festival, the Frankfurt Biennial, the Locarno Film Festival and the Mostra de São Paulo. He is currently launching the room scale in VR fiction The Ghost of Amelie with Chloe Jarry (Camera Lucida) and a large field VR project The Roaming with Coline Delbaere (DVgroup).
Hacking XR Speaker series - Offered in Spring 2019 in conjunction with the MIT class Hacking XR: VR and Immersive Media Production (CMS.339/839), taught by Sandra Rodriguez, and the MIT Open Documentary Lab.
Drawing on MIT’s legacy of media innovation and its deep commitment to open and accessible information, the MIT Open Documentary Lab brings storytellers, technologists, and scholars together to explore new documentary forms with a particular focus on collaborative, interactive, and immersive storytelling.
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Breaking Through Gridlock
Tuesday, April 23
2:00pm to 4:00pm
MIT, Building 3-442, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Having conversations with people on the opposite side of important social, political, and environmental issues can be difficult and uncomfortable. Jason Jay, coauthor of Breaking Through Gridlock: The Power of Conversation in a Polarized World, shares his expert advice on navigating these conversations productively and without animus, with a particular focus on climate change and the environment.
Presented by the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative and the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, this event is open to the MIT community as part of MIT's Earth Week programming. Seats are limited, so please register!
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xTalk: Jeff Ubois - "Lever for Change: Open Grantmaking at Scale
Tuesday, April 23
3:00pm to 4:00pm
MIT, Building 4-237 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Jeff Ubois, of Lever for Change, will discuss the use of open and transparent processes for grantmaking; tradeoffs between innovation, risk, and scale; re-use of grant proposal data; and new forms of funder collaboration.
Jeff Ubois is vice president, knowledge management at Lever for Change, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Affiliate that manages the Foundation’s 100&Change program, as well as other large open calls for proposals requiring $10 million or more. Previously, Jeff worked in the MacArthur Foundation’s Discovery, American Democracy, and Philanthropy programs, for the Bassetti Foundation’s program on responsible innovation, for Intelligent Television, and for the Internet Archive.
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We Don't Have Time Climate Conference and launch of our social network for climate action!
Tuesday, April 22
3:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Confirmed keynote speakers: Prof. Jeffrey D. Sachs, Ph.D. Per E Stoknes, Ph.D. Katharine Hayhoe, Artist Klaus Thymann, Youth activist Jamie Margolin, Author Kate Raworth and Dr. Sweta Chakraborty More speakers to be announced shortly.
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Transitioning the Energy System
Tuesday, April 23
4:00PM
Tufts, Cabot 702, The Fletcher School, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford
RSVP requied at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1pWHQiq8atN1QtFGcEyYur4cBBJLy6Yn_uno4OM7aYNI/viewform?edit_requested=true
Please join the working group on Climate and Energy of Tufts University’s Research and Scholarship Strategic Plan (RSSP) in collaboration with the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy for a lecture by Gary Dirks on the transitioning energy system. There will be a talk at 4:00pm followed by a reception at 5:30pm. RSVP required at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1pWHQiq8atN1QtFGcEyYur4cBBJLy6Yn_uno4OM7aYNI/viewform?edit_requested=true
Contact Name: Jillian DeMair
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Love Or Hate Water?
Tuesday, April 23
4:00pm - 5:00pm
Harvard Northwest Science Building, B101, 52 Oxford Street, Cambridge
This talk is on three techniques recently developed at HKU that use bioinspired microstructures to precisely manipulate liquids: water collecting, liquid repelling, and droplet capturing/releasing.
Unique structural and topological features of spider-silks and their web enable them being an excellent water collector evident from a large number of water droplets hanging on them in the early morning. With the microfluidic technology, we have precisely fabricated robust microfibers with spindle cavity-knots and different topological fiber-networks in mimicking these features. These microfibers are endowed with unique surface roughness, mechanical strength, and long-term durability, thus enabling excellent performance in collecting water. The maximum water volume collected on a single knot is almost 495 times the knot volume; the water collection is even more efficient and scalable with their networks. These light-weighted, yet tough, low-cost microfibers offer promising opportunities for water collection in water-deficient areas.
Liquid-repellent surfaces repel liquids instead of allowing droplets to adhere. These surfaces are important in many fields including self-cleaning clothes and kitchenware, enhanced heat transfer, and anti-fouling, anti-corrosive and drag reduction coatings. The dream of research and development on liquid-repellents is a structure that has robust liquid repellency, strong mechanical stability, and is inexpensive to produce on a commercial scale. However, the functional outcomes of existing liquid-repellent surfaces have not been satisfactory, because of inadequacies of conventional structural design and fabrication approaches in engineering microstructures and properties of such surfaces. We developed a low-cost scalable approach for the fabrication of well-defined porous surfaces with robust liquid repellency and strong mechanical stability. The design of the liquid-repellent surfaces is inspired by structures on springtail cuticles, which can effectively resolve the longstanding conflict between the liquid repellency and the mechanical stability. Springtails are soil-dwelling arthropods whose habitats often experience rain and flooding. As a consequence, springtails have evolved cuticles with strong mechanical durability and robust liquid repellency to resist friction from soil particles and to survive in watery environments. We design the porous surfaces to be composed of interconnected honeycomb-like microcavities with a re-entrant profile: the interconnectivity ensures mechanical stability and the re-entrant structure yields robust liquid repellency. The cuticle-like porous surfaces are fabricated by self-assembly using microfluidic droplets, which takes full advantage of the capabilities of microfluidics in terms of scalability and precise-handling of small fluid volumes. The generation of these cuticle-like porous surfaces using microfluidics has led to precise, controllable, scalable, and inexpensive fabrication.
Some semiaquatic insects can readily walk on water and climb up menisci slope, due to the dense hair mat and retractable claws of complementary wettability on their tarsi. Inspired by this, we created a mechano-regulated surface whose adhesive force to liquid droplets can be simply switched through mechanical regulation. The mechano-regulated surface functions as a “magic hand” that can capture and release multiple tiny droplets precisely in a loss-free manner, and works for both water and oil droplets down to nano-liter scale. These surfaces are relevant and crucial in various high-precision fields such as medical diagnosis and drug discovery where the precise transferring of tiny liquid amounts is a must.
More information at https://wyss.harvard.edu/event/love-or-hate-water/
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Artful Design: Technology in Search of the Sublime
Tuesday, April 23
5:00 PM – 6:30 PM EDT
MIT, Building 35-225, 127 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
What is the nature of design, and the meaning it holds in human life? What does it mean to design well — to design ethically? How can the shaping of technology reflect our values as human beings? Drawing from Ge's new book ARTFUL DESIGN: TECHNOLOGY IN SEARCH OF THE SUBLIME (a 488-page photo comic), this talk dissects the designs of everyday tools, musical instruments, toys, and social experiences, examining the ways in which we shape technology and how technology shapes us and our society, in turn. This is a meditation for the “engineer with a soul” as well as for anyone curious (or concerned) about technology — not only what it does for us, but also what it does *to* us.
About Ge Wang
Ge Wang is an Associate Professor at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). He researches artful design of tools, toys, games and social experiences. Ge is the architect of the ChucK music programming language, director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra, co-founder of Smule and designer of the Ocarina and Magic Piano apps for mobile phones. He is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow and the author of ARTFUL DESIGN: TECHNOLOGY IN SEARCH OF THE SUBLIME, a photo comic book about the ethics and aesthetics of shaping technology. Based on the book, Ge is currently teaching a new critical thinking course at Stanford, "THINK66: Design that Understands Us."
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Improving Forest Satellite Monitoring: Experiences with Capacity Building in African, Asian & Latin American Countries
Tuesday, April 23
5:00 - 6:30 pm
BU Hillel House, 4th Floor, 213 Bay State Road, Boston
Alessandra Rodrigues Gomes, Head of the Amazon Regional Center, National Institute for Space Research
The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and the Land Use and Livelihoods Initiative at the Global Development Policy Center invite you to attend an upcoming series of keynote lectures titled "The Environmental Science & Policy Impacts of Remote Sensing on Governance & Land Use in Tropical Forests." The keynotes are part of a seminar and workshop series with leaders working at the front lines of international, national & local climate change policy and conservation in tropical forests. The series is co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Remote Sensing, the African Studies Center, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the Department of Earth and Environment.
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Global Impact Challenge Pitch Finale
Tuesday, April 23
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
BU, BUild Lab, 730 Commonwealth Avenue, Brookline
CELEBRATE THE GLOBAL IMPACT CHALLENGE AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY!
Get an inside view of student ideas that are developing the most compelling solution for the 2019 Global Impact Challenge addressing innovation in the field of health and human rights. One team will earn a spot in the Innovate@BU Summer Accelerator Program and a stipend of $10,000 to take their social impact venture to the next level.
2019 Theme: Health & Human Rights Social Impact Hackathon
Date/Time/Location
April 23, 2019, 5-6:30 pm at 730 Commonwealth Ave (The Build Lab)
Agenda:
5:00-5:15 pm Event Begins, Introductions
5:15-6:00 pm - Presentations by 4 teams (early/idea stage)
Teams have 6 minutes to present
Judges have 4 minutes for Q&A (Rubric attached)
6:00 -6:45 pm - Break, Acknowledgements, while Judges deliberate
6:45 - 7:00 pm - Judges Feedback, Winner Announcement.
Refreshments will be served.
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The Connected, Intelligent Future - IoT and AI Startup Showcase #BNT100
Tuesday, April 23
5:30 PM EDT
Mendix, 22 Boston Wharf Road, Boston
Cost: $0 – $39
Actions and Detail Panel
21+. Join us to:
See 7 innovative and exciting local IoT & AI technology demos, presented by startup founders
Hear a keynote on the future of tech and short talks about the Boston startup community from special guests
Network with attendees from the Boston-area startup/tech community
Enjoy dinner with beer, wine and more
Each company presents an overview and demonstration of their product within 5 minutes and discusses questions with the audience.
Please click here to share/tweet this event.
Please follow @BostonNewTech and support our startups by posting on social media using our #BNT100 hashtag. We'll retweet you and you'll be entered to win one of ten sets of BNT shirts & hats, courtesy of Ink'd Stores!
To save on tickets and enjoy exclusive benefits, purchase a BNT VIP Membership.
Brought to you by:
Mendix, a Siemens business and the global leader in low-code for the enterprise, is transforming the world of legacy software and application development by bringing business and IT teams together to rapidly and collaboratively build robust and modern applications for the enterprise. The Mendix application development platform directly addresses the worldwide software developer talent gap, and involves business and IT at the very start and throughout the entire application building and deployment process. Recognized as a “Leader” by top analysts, including Gartner and Forrester, Mendix helps customers digitally transform their organizations by building, managing, and improving apps at unprecedented speed and scale. More than 4,000 forward-thinking enterprises use the Mendix platform to build business applications that delight customers and improve operational efficiency.
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U.S. Healthcare and Drug Pricing Debate
WHEN Tuesday, April 23, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard University Science Center, Hall B, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard GSAS Biotechnology Club in partnership with Harvard Business School Healthcare Club
SPEAKER(S) Peter Kolchinsky, Co-founder, Portfolio Manager, & Managing Director, RA Capital Management
John Maraganore, CEO and Director, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals
Shawn Bishop, Vice President, Controlling Health Care Costs and Advancing Medicare, The Commonwealth Fund
Moderator: Vivek Ramaswamy, Founder & CEO, Roivant Sciences
COST Free
TICKET WEB LINK https://harvardbiotechclub.typeform.com/to/LJGRDi
CONTACT INFO harvardbiotechclub@gmail.com
DETAILS Trump and Bernie can agree on one thing: they’re both worked up about the cost of prescription drugs, and they’re not alone. 80 percent of Americans believe that drug prices are unreasonable. Are they right? Why do medicines cost so much in the U.S.? Why can’t the government negotiate drug prices? What can be done about it?
Come hear the thoughts of health care experts. Ask questions on current policies.
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Puerto Rico, Debt, and Education
Tuesday, April 23
5:30 PM - 7 PM
Harvard Science Center Hall D, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
This public dialogue gives visibility to the Puerto Rican debt crisis and how it's affecting education systems on the island and in the
diaspora, from K-12 through higher education. ###Part <https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/part> of Heat Week, April
22nd-26th###. Featuring legendary black Puerto Rican activist Rosa Clemente. This event is sponsored by The Democracy Center, The Hutchins
Center for African & African American Research, and the Boston Teacher's Union.
Free and open to the public.
More information at https://www.facebook.com/events/1111756022340679/
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Digital Credit: Market Opportunities
Tuesday, April 23
5:30pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building E52-164, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Africa has hundreds of millions of unbanked and underbanked individuals, households, and MSMEs. Venture capital-backed startups are forging digital models to increase financial inclusion directly through mobile phones. These new services and business models are creating channels for traditional financial institutions to reach large segments of unbanked and underbanked consumers to offer better products.
A networking session will follow the conversation.
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A Future with More Ferries: Business Plan Release + Panel Discussion
Tuesday, April 23
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Exchange at 100 Federal, 100 Federal Street, Boston
Join Boston Harbor Now and our partners for a the release of two water transportation business plans and a panel discussion on the implementation of new ferry routes. Learn more about the proposals for an Inner Harbor Connector ferry and a new route connecting Squantum Point in Quincy and Columbia Point in Dorchester with Long Wharf by boat. Hear from national experts on expanding water transportation in New York, San Francisco, and Boston.
The evening will include:
Opening remarks by MassDOT Secretary Stephanie Pollack
Overview of the two proposed ferry routes by Kathy Abbott, President and CEO of Boston Harbor Now
Panel discussion on national best practices for implementing water transportation service
James Wong, Executive Director of NYC Ferries
Jim Folk, Executive Director of Transportation at Encore Boston Harbor
Michael Gougherty, Senior Transportation Planner at the San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA)
Moderated by Monica Tibbits-Nutt, Executive Director of the 128 Business Council
A special thank you to our study sponsors: Barr Foundation, Cabot Family Charitable Trust, Clippership Wharf, Envoy Hotel, Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, MassDOT, Massport, National Park Service, and the Seaport Council of the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Affairs.
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A Conversation with Kara Swisher and Ash Carter
WHEN Tuesday, April 23, 6 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Kara Swisher, Editor-at-large, Recode; host, Recode Decode and Pivot Podcasts; contributing opinion writer, New York Times
Ash Carter,Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Belfer Professor of Technology and Global Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School; director, Technology and Public Purpose Project; Belfer Professor of Technology and Global Affairs; United States Secretary of Defense (2015-2017)
CONTACT INFO IOP Forum Office, 617-495-1380
DETAILS Kara Swisher, Editor-at-Large of Recode, discuss the intersection of technology and public purpose with Professor Ash Carter, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
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New Venture Competition Finale Show 2019
Tuesday, April 23
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
Harvard Business School, Klarman Hall, Soldiers Field Road, Boston
The Flagship Event for Entrepreneurship at HBS
Open to HBS students, faculty, staff and the broader entrepreneurship community.
LIVE Pitches by the NVC Finalists of three separate tracks (student business, student social enterprise, and alumni)
Award Ceremony - A total of $315,000 in cash prizes are awarded across 3 tracks: $75K for the grand, $25k for runner up, and $5k for crowd favorite... that's right, YOU get to vote!
Limited seating available. Reserve your tickets now! Doors will open at 5:30 pm.
To share and follow updates, use #HBSNVC
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Special film screening and Q&A: Lobster War: The Fight Over the World’s Richest Fishing Grounds
Tuesday, April 23
6–8:30 pm
Harvard Museum of Natural History, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Film Screening (unrated, 74 min.)
Free and Open to the Public
Lobster War is an award-winning documentary film about a conflict between the United States and Canada over waters that both countries have claimed since the end of the Revolutionary War. The disputed 277 square miles of sea known as the Gray Zone were traditionally fished by U.S. lobstermen. But as the Gulf of Maine has warmed faster than nearly any other body of water on the planet, the area’s previously modest lobster population has surged. As a result, Canadians have begun to assert their sovereignty, warring with the Americans to claim the bounty. Directed by David Abel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Boston Globe, and Andy Laub, an award-winning documentarian. Abel and Laub are also producers of the acclaimed Discovery Channel documentary Sacred Cod. See more about the film at www.lobsterwar.com.
David Abel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who covers fisheries and environmental issues for The Boston Globe. Abel’s work has also won an Edward R. Murrow Award, the Ernie Pyle Award from the Scripps Howard Foundation, and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Feature Reporting. He co-directed and produced Sacred Cod, a film about the collapse of the iconic cod fishery in New England, which was broadcast by the Discovery Channel in spring 2017. He also directed and produced two films about the Boston Marathon bombings, which were broadcast to national and international audiences on BBC World News, Discovery Life, and Pivot. His last film, Gladesmen: The Last of the Sawgrass Cowboys, is now being screened at film festivals around the country. Abel is the film’s director, producer, and co-director of photography. See more about Abel at http://www.davidsabel.com
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State Climate Change Legislation
Tuesday, April 23
7:00 pm
First Parish Church, 3 Church Street, Cambridge
Senator Marc Pacheco, chair of the Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change, will talk about current legislative proposals and strategies to implement the Global Warming Solutions Act in light of the Green New Deal and most recent IPCC report.
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Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West
Tuesday April 23
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Fights over the Green River’s water–and future–are longstanding, intractable, and only getting worse as the West gets hotter and drier with each passing year. As a former raft guide and an environmental reporter, Heather Hansman knew these fights were happening, but she felt driven to see them from a different perspective—from the river itself. So she set out on a journey, in a one-person inflatable pack raft, to paddle the river from source to confluence and see what the experience might teach her.
Heather Hansman is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in Outside, California Sunday, Smithsonian, and many others. After a decade of raft guiding across the United States, she lives in Seattle.
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Psychiatric Drugs: Why They Often Fail Us Over Long Term
Tuesday, April 23
7PM
Belmont Public Library, 336 Concord Avenue, Belmont
Robert Whitaker, prize-winning author of Anatomy of an Epidemic, Mad in America, and co-author of Psychiatry Under the Influence. He is also the founder of the resource/info organization Mad in America.com
More than one in five Americans now takes a psychiatric medication. Yet, as our use of these medications has soared, so too has the burden of mental disorders in our society. Why would this be so? Unfortunately, research has shown that long-term outcomes for medicated patients are poor. As a result, new initiatives are emerging that lessen the use of medications and focus instead on creating supports that help children and adults struggling with mental difficulties get well and stay well.
Robert Whitaker is an American journalist and author who has won numerous awards as a journalist covering medicine and science, including the George Polk Award for Medical Writing and a National Association for Science Writers’ Award for best magazine article. In 1998, he co-wrote a series on psychiatric research for the Boston Globe that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. His first book, Mad in America, was named by Discover magazine as one of the best science books of 2002. Anatomy of an Epidemic won the 2010 Investigative Reporters and Editors book award for best investigative journalism. He is the publisher of http://madinamerica.com
Science for the Public Lectures
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Seeing Trees: A History of Street Trees in New York City and Berlin
Tuesday, April 23
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
A fascinating and beautifully illustrated volume that explains what street trees tell us about humanity’s changing relationship with nature and the city
Today, cities around the globe are planting street trees to mitigate the effects of climate change. However, as landscape historian Sonja Dümpelmann explains, the planting of street trees in cities to serve specific functions is not a new phenomenon. In her eye-opening work, Dümpelmann shows how New York City and Berlin began systematically planting trees to improve the urban climate during the nineteenth century, presenting the history of the practice within its larger social, cultural, and political contexts.
About the Author:
Sonja Dümpelmann is associate professor of landscape architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and author or editor/co-editor of several books, including the 2015 John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Prize–winner Flights of Imagination: Aviation, Landscape, Design.
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BU Human Rights film screening "Letter from Masanjia”
Tuesday 23 April
7:00 EDT
BU, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, CAS-313, Boston
Please join us for the screening of the award-winning documentary.
An Oregon woman finds an SOS message from a Chinese dissident in a package of Halloween decorations from Kmart, setting off a chain of events that would shut down the entire labor camp system in China and ignite the letter-writer’s dangerous quest to expose a deadly persecution.
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Wednesday, April 24
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Bias on the Web
Wednesday, April 24
10:30 am
Northeastern, 177 Huntington Avenue, 11th floor, Boston
RICARDO BAEZA-YATES, Professor of Practice and Director of Data Science Programs, Northeastern University, Silicon Valley
The Web is the most powerful communication medium and the largest public data repository that humankind has created. Its content ranges from great reference sources such as Wikipedia to ugly fake news. Indeed, social (digital) media is just an amplifying mirror of ourselves. Hence, the main challenge of search engines and other websites that rely on web data is to assess the quality of such data. However, as all people has their own biases, web content as well as our web interactions are tainted with many biases. Data bias includes redundancy and spam, while interaction bias includes activity and presentation bias. In addition, sometimes algorithms add bias, particularly in the context of search and recommendation systems. As bias generates bias, we stress the importance of debiasing data as well as using the context and other techniques such as explore & exploit, to break the filter bubble. The main goal of this talk is to make people aware of the different biases that affect all of us on the Web. Awareness is the first step to be able to fight and reduce the vicious cycle of web bias. For more details see the article of same title in Communications of ACM, June 2018.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ricardo Baeza-Yates is Professor of Practice and Director of Data Science Programs at Northeastern University, Silicon Valley campus, since August 2017. He received a Ph.D. in CS from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 1989. He is also CTO of NTENT, a semantic search technology company. Before, he was VP of Research at Yahoo Labs, based in Barcelona, Spain, and later in Sunnyvale, California, from January 2006 to February 2016. He is co-author of the best-seller Modern Information Retrieval textbook published by Addison-Wesley in 1999 and 2011 (2nd ed), that won the ASIST 2012 Book of the Year award. In 2009 he was named ACM Fellow and in 2011 IEEE Fellow, among other awards and distinctions. His areas of expertise are web search and data mining, information retrieval, data science, and algorithms in general.
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Solar Geoengineering Research Seminar
Wednesday, April 24
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room 429, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Presentation by Ray Pierrehumbert, University of Oxford
Lunch provided.
Contact Name: eburns@g.harvard.edu
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Soldiers' Hearts: The Changing Cost of War-Induced Psychological Trauma
Wednesday, April 24
12:00pm to 1:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496 (Pye Room), 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Tanisha Fazal (University of Minnesota)
BIOTanisha Fazal is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict. Fazal's current research analyzes the effect of improvements in medical care in conflict zones on the long-term costs of war. She is the author of State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation (Princeton University Press, 2007), which won the 2008 Best Book Award of the American Political Science Association's Conflict Processes Section, and Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict (Cornell University Press, 2018). Her work has also appeared in journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Daedalus, Foreign Affairs, International Organization, International Security, International Studies Review, Journal of Global Security Studies, and Security Studies. She has been a fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, and the Carnegie Council on International Ethics.
SSP Wednesday Seminar
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What are the barriers to the adoption of environmental techniques in Africa? Evidence from Niger
Wednesday, April 24
12:30PM TO 1:45PM
Tufts, 310 Goddard (Crowe), The Fletcher School, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford
Jenny Aker, Professor of Development Economics, The Fletcher School
Despite decades of investment in rainwater-harvesting (RWH) techniques in the Sahel, adoption of these techniques remains low. This may be due to barriers to initial adoption or to disadoption. Using a randomized control trial of training and financial incentives designed to encourage the adoption of demi-lunes in rural Niger, we find that adoption of these environmental technologies is high amongst all treatments as compared to a control, and that farmers are able to increase their area of cultivated land.
Tufts University CIERP Research Seminar
Contact Name: Sara Rosales
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Linking International Efforts on Tropical Forest Monitoring to International Reporting and SDGs: State of the Art and Ways Forward
Wednesday, April 24
4:00 - 5:30 pm
BU Hillel House, 4th Floor, 213 Bay State Road, Boston
Inge Jonckheere, Team Leader, Remote Sensing Team in National Forest Monitoring, Forestry Department, Food and Agriculture Organization
The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and the Land Use and Livelihoods Initiative at the Global Development Policy Center invite you to attend an upcoming series of keynote lectures titled "The Environmental Science & Policy Impacts of Remote Sensing on Governance & Land Use in Tropical Forests." The keynotes are part of a seminar and workshop series with leaders working at the front lines of international, national & local climate change policy and conservation in tropical forests. The series is co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Remote Sensing, the African Studies Center, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the Department of Earth and Environment.
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The Demand for Off-Grid Solar Power: Evidence from Rural India’s Surprisingly Competitive Retail Power Market
Wednesday, April 24
4:15PM TO 5:30PM
Harvard, Littauer-382, HKS, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Robin Burgess, London School of Economics; Michael Greenstone, University of Chicago; Nicholas Ryan, Yale University; and Anant Sudarshan, University of Chicago.
Contact Name: Casey Billings
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IGNITE Engagement
Wednesday, April 24
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM EDT
Scholars American Bistro and Cocktail Club, 25 School Street, Boston
The event is FREE with your RSVP: https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eg8by3gy58f0e526&oseq=&c=&ch=
We are thrilled to invite you to IGNITE Engagement - a civic engagement professionals mixer at Scholars American Bristro and Cocktail club. We would love to see you there!
Also make sure to confirm on our Facebook event and share with your friends and colleagues!
https://www.facebook.com/events/314896882556289/?notif_t=plan_user_associated¬if_id=1554303556405854
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Joseph M. Reagle, Jr.: Hacking Life
Wednesday, April 24
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
MIT Press Bookstore, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Please join MIT Press Bookstore in welcoming Prof. Joseph M. Reagle, Jr., for a discussion of his upcoming book, Hacking Life: Systematized Living and Its Discontents.
Life hackers track and analyze the food they eat, the hours they sleep, the money they spend, and how they’re feeling on any given day. They see everything as a system composed of parts that can be decomposed and recomposed, with algorithmic rules that can be understood, optimized, and subverted. In Hacking Life, Joseph Reagle examines these attempts to systematize living and finds that they are the latest in a long series of self-improvement methods. Life hacking, he writes, is self-help for the digital age’s creative class.
Joseph M. Reagle, Jr., is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University. He is the author of Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia and Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web, both published by the MIT Press.
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Genetic Revolution and the Future of Humanity
Wednesday, April 24
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
George Church, Juan Enriquez, and Jamie Metzl
World renowned geneticist George Church and visionary investor Juan Enriquez join futurist Jamie Metzl to explore how the genetic revolution will transform healthcare, baby-making, and our evolution as a species. The event commemorates the release on April 23 of Metzl's new book, Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity. According to CNN's Sanjay Gupta,"If you can only read one book on the future of our species, this is it.”
About the speakers:
Jamie Metzl
Is a technology futurist and geopolitical expert, novelist, entrepreneur, media commentator, and Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council. In February 2019, he was appointed to the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on developing global standards for the governance and oversight of human genome editing. Jamie previously served in the U.S. National Security Council, State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations in Cambodia. He is a former Partner of a New York-based global investment firm, serves on the Advisory Council to Walmart’s Future of Retail Policy Lab, is a faculty member for Singularity University’s Exponential Medicine conference, was Chief Strategy Officer for a biotechnology company, and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District in Kansas City in 2004. Jamie has served as an election monitor in Afghanistan and the Philippines, advised the government of North Korea on the establishment of Special Economic Zones, and is the Honorary Ambassador to North America of the Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy.
George Church
Leads Synthetic Biology at the Wyss Institute, where he oversees the directed evolution of molecules, polymers, and whole genomes to create new tools with applications in regenerative medicine and bio-production of chemicals. Among his recent work at the Wyss is development of a technology for synthesizing whole genes, and engineering whole genomes, far faster, more accurate, and less costly than current methods. George is widely recognized for his innovative contributions to genomic science and his many pioneering contributions to chemistry and biomedicine. In 1984, he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method, which resulted in the first genome sequence (the human pathogen, H. pylori). He helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 and the Personal Genome Project in 2005. George invented the broadly applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods, and array DNA synthesizers. His many innovations have been the basis for a number of companies including Editas (Gene therapy); Gen9bio (Synthetic DNA); and Veritas Genetics (full human genome sequencing). George is Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is Director of the U.S. Department of Energy Technology Center and Director of the National Institutes of Health Center of Excellence in Genomic Science. He has received numerous awards including the 2011 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science from the Franklin Institute and election to the National Academy of Sciences and Engineering.
Juan Enriquez
Managing Director, Excel Venture Management, bestselling author, speaker. An investor in early stage private companies in the life sciences, brain, and big data sectors, Juan is one of the world’s leading authorities on the uses and benefits of genomic code. He is the co-author of Evolving Ourselves: Redesigning the Future of Humanity – One Gene at a Time which describes a world where humans increasingly shape their environment, themselves, and other species. He is also the author of the global bestseller As The Future Catches You and of The Untied States of America, and co-author of Homo Evolutis. Juan writes, speaks, and teaches about the profound changes that genomics, brain technologies, and other life sciences will cause in business, technology, politics and society. He is one of the TED all-stars. He and Bill Gates were the first outside guest curators for TED. He was the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project, is on the Harvard Medical School Advisory Council, and is a Research Affiliate in MIT’s Synthetic Neurobiology Group. He serves on numerous Boards/Committees. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the President’s Council of the National Academy. He has published papers and articles in a wide variety of forums including The Harvard Business Review, Foreign Policy, Science, Nature, and the New York Times.He earned a BA and MBA from Harvard, with Honors.
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Sunrise Boston Full Hub Meeting
Wednesday, April 24
6 PM – 8 PM
Old South Church in Boston, 645 Boylston Street, Boston
Come join us! We are excited that we have grown so much that we are moving to a larger space called the Guild Room in Old South Church for this hub meeting!! We were absolutely packed at our last full hub meeting and we are still growing a whole bunch.
Directions to the Guild Room: Come into Old South Church through the double doors and take the elevator to the left of the reception desk to the 4th floor. The Guild Room is to the right when you get off the elevator. (There will also be signs if you don't want to remember all of that).
At this meeting we will be doing an introduction to Sunrise, celebrating the huge success of our Road to a Green New Deal Tour Stop, planning getting as many politicians to support the federal Green New Deal as possible, and working on the Road to a Massachusetts Green New Deal. We are excited to see you there!
This location is wheelchair accessible.
Questions? Email: SunriseMovementBoston@gmail.com
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Thursday, April 25 - Friday, April 26
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Vision and Justice: A Convening
Thursday, April 25 - Friday, April 26
Radcliffe, Sanders Theater, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge
"Vision and Justice" is a two-day creative convening (April 25–26, 2019) that will consider the role of the arts in understanding the nexus of art, race, and justice.
This public event, conceived by Sarah Lewis, assistant professor of history of art and architecture and African and African-American studies at Harvard University, grows out of the award-winning Vision & Justice issue of the photography journal Aperture (May 2016), which she guest edited. The convening is organized around three guiding questions. How is the foundational right of representation in a democracy—the right to be recognized justly—tied to the work of images in the public realm? What is the role of the arts for justice? How have narratives created by culture—the arts, performances, and images—both limited and liberated our definition of national belonging in this digital age?
Cover of the Vision & Justice issue of the photography journal Aperture (May 2016) courtesy of Aperture. Photo: Richard Avedon. Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader, with his father, Martin Luther King, Baptist minister, and his son, Martin Luther King III, Atlanta, Georgia, March 22, 1963 (C) The Richard Avedon Foundation
Cover of the Vision & Justice issue of the photography journal Aperture (May 2016) courtesy of Aperture. Photo: Richard Avedon. Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader, with his father, Martin Luther King, Baptist minister, and his son, Martin Luther King III, Atlanta, Georgia, March 22, 1963 (C) The Richard Avedon Foundation
The convening takes its conceptual inspiration from Frederick Douglass’s landmark Civil War speech “Pictures and Progress,” about the transformative power of pictures to create a new vision for the nation. In this long understudied speech, Douglass described a vision of race, citizenship, and image making that he stated might take a century or more to be understood. This “Vision and Justice” convening will focus on both the historic roots and contemporary realities of visual literacy for justice in American—and particularly African American—civic life.
The program will emphasize short, stimulating presentations with a goal of outlining and catalyzing ideas for future work in art and justice around the country and the world. The sessions will focus on a wide range of related topics, from “Race, Justice, and the Environment” to “Cultural Narratives and Media.” The program incorporates a range of dynamic speakers and events, including a performance by Carrie Mae Weems, a film screening of work by Ava DuVernay and Bradford Young, a performance by Wynton Marsalis, and exhibitions of works by Gordon Parks, Willie Cole, and Kara Walker, all culminating with a keynote by Bryan Stevenson on Friday evening and the conferral of the inaugural Gordon Parks Foundation Essay Prize at Harvard.
This public-facing event will convene a large group of prominent activists, academics, artists, and public servants. The event will also be live streamed and videotaped for later online posting as part of the Radcliffe Institute’s commitment to bringing its programming to audiences around the world.
The event is hosted by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, with additional major funding from the Ford Foundation, and is cosponsored by the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, the Harvard Art Museums, and the American Repertory Theater.
Open to the public.
Registration opens on April 10 for the Harvard community and April 11 for the public.
#visionandjustice
Schedule
Participants
Schedule
Information is accurate as of April 4, 2019. There may be adjustments to this schedule, so please consult this page for the most current information.
THURSDAY, APRIL 25
OPENING PROGRAM: Knafel Center, Radcliffe Institute
1:00 – Welcome Remarks: Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin
Introduction: Sarah Lewis
Amanda Gorman, video
Gordon Parks Foundation Essay Prize Presentations: Dean Robin Kelsey
Remarks about the Parks Foundation: Peter Kunhardt Jr.
Kasseem Dean (Swizz Beatz)
1:45 – Citizenship and Racial Narratives
Alexandra Bell, Jelani Cobb, Nicole Fleetwood, and Makeda Best [moderator]
Khalil Gibran Muhammad tribute to Jamel Shabazz
Leigh Raiford tribute to Dawoud Bey
Student readings
Video about the Vision & Justice Project Student Ambassadors
3:00 Break
3:15 – Elsa Hardy reading/Intro David Adjaye
David Adjaye
3:30 – Originality and Invention
Carrie Mae Weems, David Adjaye, and Sarah Lewis [moderator]
Audience Q&A
4:30 – Sarah Lewis introduces Carrie Mae Weems
Performance: Carrie Mae Weems, Grace Notes: Reflections for Now.
Commissioned to commemorate the Emanuel 9
Concluding Remarks: Dean Larry Bobo
5:30 – End of program
FRIDAY, APRIL 26
MORNING SESSION: Sanders Theatre
9:00 – Welcome Remarks: Alan M. Garber
Darren Walker
Musical Opening: Wynton Marsalis
Introduction: Sarah Lewis
Cultural Citizenship
Wynton Marsalis, Anna Deavere Smith, and Drew Gilpin Faust [moderator]
Race, Culture, and Civic Space
Introduction: Dean Mohsen Mostafavi
David Adjaye, Theaster Gates, and Sarah Lewis [moderator]
Audience Q&A
10:45 – Break
11:00 – Teju Cole tribute to LaToya Ruby Frazier
Race, Justice, and the Environment
Focus: Discovering the Flint crisis
LaToya Ruby Frazier video
Chelsea Clinton and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha
Race, Childhood, and Inequality in the Political Realm
Introduction: Dean Claudine Gay
Robin Bernstein and social justice activist Naomi Wadler
Concluding comments: Claudia Rankine
12:30-1:45 – Lunch Break
AFTERNOON SESSION: Sanders Theatre
2:00 – Hank Willis Thomas interviewed by Cheryl Finley
Turnaround Arts [White House Program]
Introduction and moderator: Kimberly Drew
Damian Woetzel and Melody Barnes
3:15 Break
3:30 – Race, Technology and Algorithmic Bias
Joy Buolamwini, Latanya Sweeney, and Darren Walker [moderator]
Mass Incarceration and Visual Narratives
Introduction: Tommie Shelby
Bryan Stevenson, Anna Deavere Smith, Elizabeth Hinton, and Danielle Allen [moderator]
5:00 – Concluding Remarks: Vincent Brown
6:00 – Public Reception in the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, Hutchins Center
“Gordon Parks: Selections from the Dean Collection”
EVENING SESSION: Sanders Theatre
7:30 – Introductions
Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin
President Larry Bacow
Sarah Lewis
Vision & Justice Ambassadors (video)
Vision & Justice Award tributes:
Sadie Rain Hope-Gund and Catherine Gund tribute to Agnes Gund
Martha Tedeschi tribute to Carrie Mae Weems
Hank Willis Thomas tribute to Deborah Willis
Franklin Leonard tribute to Ava DuVernay and Bradford Young
Discussion of When They See Us, a series on the Central Park 5
Ava DuVernay, Bradford Young, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. [moderator]
9:00 – Keynote Introductions: Elizabeth Alexander and Evelyn Higginbotham
Closing Keynote: Bryan Stevenson
Conference Close: Sarah Lewis
Participants
David Adjaye, architect and principal, Adjaye Associates
Elizabeth Alexander, poet, educator, memoirist, scholar, and arts activist; chancellor, Academy of American Poets; president, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University
Lawrence Bacow, president, Harvard University
Melody C. Barnes, distinguished fellow at the School of Law, Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics and senior fellow at the Miller Center, and codirector for policy and public affairs for the Democracy Initiative, University of Virginia
Alexandra Bell, multidisciplinary artist
Maurice Berger, research professor and chief curator, Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Robin Bernstein, Dillon Professor of American History and professor of African and African American studies and of studies of women, gender, & sexuality, Harvard University
Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, Harvard Art Museums, and lecturer on history of art and architecture, Harvard University
Lawrence D. Bobo, dean of social sciences, Harvard College Professor, and W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University
Vincent Brown, Charles Warren Professor of History and professor of African and African American studies, Harvard University
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, and professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
Joy Buolamwini, founder, Algorithmic Justice League
Chelsea Clinton, vice chair, Clinton Foundation
Jelani Cobb, Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism, Columbia University; staff writer, New Yorker
Teju Cole, photography critic, New York Times Magazine; Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing, Harvard University
Kasseem Dean (Swizz Beatz), record producer, rapper, and DJ
Kimberly Drew, writer, curator, and activist
Ava DuVernay, writer, director, producer, and film distributor
Michael Famighetti, editor, Aperture magazine
Drew Gilpin Faust, president emeritus, Harvard University
Cheryl Finley, associate professor of art history, Cornell University
Nicole R. Fleetwood, associate professor of American studies and graduate faculty in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
LaToya Ruby Frazier, photographer; video artist; and associate professor of photography, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Alan M. Garber, provost, Harvard University; Mallinckrodt Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School; professor of economics, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences; professor of public policy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government; and professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University
Theaster Gates, founder and executive director, Rebuild Foundation; inaugural distinguished artist in residence and director of artist initiatives, Lunder Institute for American Art; professor, Department of Visual Arts, the University of Chicago
Claudine Gay, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Amanda Gorman, National Youth Poet Laureate
Agnes Gund, philanthropist and art collector; founder, Art for Justice Fund; president emerita, Museum of Modern Art
Catherine Gund, producer, director, writer, and activist; founder and director, Aubin Pictures
Mona Hanna-Attisha, assistant professor of pediatrics and human development and founder and director of the Michigan State University–Hurley Children's Hospital Pediatric Public Health Initiative, Michigan State University
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Elizabeth Hinton, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department History and the Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Sadie Rain Hope-Gund, photographer and writer
Robin Kelsey, dean of arts and humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography, Harvard University
Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., executive director, The Gordon Parks Foundation
Franklin Leonard, film executive; founder, the Black List
Sarah Lewis, assistant professor of history of art and architecture and African and African-American studies, Harvard University
Wynton Marsalis, musician, composer, and bandleader; managing and artistic director, Jazz at Lincoln Center
Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design, Harvard University
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Suzanne Young Murray Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University
Leigh Raiford, associate professor and H. Michael and Jeanne Williams Chair of African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Claudia Rankine, poet; chancellor, Academy of American Poets; Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry, Yale University
Tommie Shelby, Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Anna Deavere Smith, actress, playwright, and author; university professor, New York University
Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director, Equal Justice Initiative; professor of clinical law, New York University
Latanya Sweeney, professor of government and technology in residence, Department of Government, Harvard University
Martha Tedeschi, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director, Harvard Art Museums
Hank Willis Thomas, conceptual artist
Naomi Wadler, activist
Darren Walker, president, Ford Foundation
Carrie Mae Weems, artist
Deborah Willis, university professor and chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts and director of the Institute of African American Affairs, New York University
Damian Woetzel, president, the Juilliard School
Bradford Young, cinematographer
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Thursday, April 25
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Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science: Evolution and Ethics
Thursday, April 25
9:00am - 5:30pm
BU, The Terrace Lounge, George Sherman Union, 775 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
9:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.: "Mammalian Morality?," Kristin Andrews, Philosophy, York University, Canada "The Evolution of Norms and Institutions," Victor Kumar, Philosophy, Boston University "Right and Good: On the Doxastic and Ecological Rationality of Deontic Rules," Shaun Nichols, Philosophy, University of Arizona
2:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. "The Co-evolution of Moral Norms and Human Knowledge," Richmond Campbell, Philosophy, Dalhousie University, Canada "An Evolutionary Argument for Ethical Pluralism," Allen Buchanan, Philosophy, Duke University "Language, Food, and Morals," Alexandra Plakias, Philosophy, Hamilton College
More information at https://www.bu.edu/cphs/colloquium/
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You are invited to attend the 2nd Annual Public Service Symposium on April 25th!
Thursday, April 25
9:00-4:00
Suffolk, Sargent Hall, 120 Tremont Street, Boston
Cost: $0 - $35
Program:
8:30 – 9:00 Registration & Breakfast
9:00 – 9:45 Richard Blanco Reading & Book Signing
10:00 – 11:15 Panel 1: The Role of Universities in Cultivating Spheres of Engagement
11:15 – 12:30 Panel 2: Best Practices: Cases in Activating Will and Capacity to Serve
12:30 – 2:00 Lunch & Student Poster Session
1:00-1:45 Theda Skocpol Address
2:00 – 3:15 Panel 3: Inclusive Civic Engagement
3:15 – 4:00 Closing Reflections & A Call to Action
Registration (free for students): publicservice2019.eventbrite.com
The event features Richard Blanco and Theda Skocpol, and we are proud to welcome speakers from the City of Boston, Engagement Lab at Emerson College, Boston Police Department, UTEC, Inc., Massachusetts Service Alliance, Massachusetts Communities Action Network, and more!
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Trade and American Leadership: The Paradoxes of Power and Wealth from Hamilton to Trump
WHEN Thursday, April 25, 11:45 a.m. – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Bell Hall (5th Floor Belfer Building),79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government at the Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Craig VanGrasstek, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
CONTACT INFO mrcbg@hks.harvard.edu
DETAILS This seminar will be given by Craig VanGrasstek, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
Lunch will be served. RSVPs are helpful: mrcbg@hks.harvard.edu
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The power of story
Thursday, April 25
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Multi-purpose Room, Curtis Hall, 474 Boston Avenue, Medford
Ari Daniel, Senior Digital Producer, NOVA
People are inundated with news and ideas — screens are constantly funneling content into our brains. So how do you get someone to care about something you care about, like an environmental issue? Ari Daniels argues that storytelling packs one of the most powerful punches, and he will explain how he uses stories — on the radio, in video, and at live shows — to get people to stop and listen.
Ari Daniel has always been drawn to science and the natural world. As a kid, he packed his green Wildlife Treasury box full of species cards. As a graduate student, Ari trained gray seal pups (Halichoerus grypus) for his Master’s degree at the University of St. Andrews, and helped tag wild Norwegian killer whales (Orcinus orca) for his Ph.D. at MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. These days, as Senior Digital Producer for NOVA and an independent science reporter for outlets including public radio, Ari works with a species he’s better equipped to understand – Homo sapiens. He has reported on science topics across five continents. He is a co-recipient of the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Gold Award for his radio stories on glaciers and climate change in Greenland and Iceland. He also co-produces the Boston branch of Story Collider, a live storytelling show about science.
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Computers that Learn to Help
Thursday, April 25
3:00pm to 4:15pm
Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin G115, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Emma Brunskill, Stanford University
My work focuses on the foundations and applications of AI to create computers that learn to help people. Reinforcement learning is a particularly appealing framework for this setting since it considers how an agent can learn to make decisions to maximize cumulative outcomes. Yet despite many exciting advances in reinforcement learning for robotics and other simulated domains, many such approaches are less suitable to support progress in important high stakes people-facing domains like education, consumer marketing and healthcare. I will describe some of our work in tackling these issues which has lead to new theoretical contributions and educational systems that enhance student learning. I will also discuss our ongoing work towards joint human-machine systems that are together, far more than the some of their parts.
Speaker Bio: Emma Brunskill is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University where she leads the AI for Human Impact group. She is the recipient of a multiple early faculty career awards (National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, Microsoft Research) and her group has received several best research paper nominations (CHI, EDMx2) and awards (UAI, RLDM).
Computer Science Colloquium Series
Contact: Gioia Sweetland
Phone: 617-495-2919
Email: gioia@seas.harvard.edu
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Population Palaeogenomics as a Window into the Legacy of the Black Death
Thursday, April 25
3:30PM
Harvard, Room 1080, Biological Labs Lecture Hall, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
Tom Gilbert, Professor, Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, will present "."
Abstract: Human populations have been shaped by past catastrophes, some of which may have left long-lasting signatures in our genomes. Although numerous tools have been developed that enable such signatures to be developed using genomic datasets generated from contemporary materials, an alternative approach that is becoming increasingly feasible is to harness the power of population palaeogenomics - i.e. sequencing of ‘population’ scale datasets using ancient samples, chosen to span relevant locations and periods of interest. We have been exploring the potential of such methods in several systems, including domestic animals and plants, as well as humans in the context of one of the most notable catastrophes in recorded history - the second plague pandemic. In this talk I showcase the power of the population palaeogenomic approach through introducing several of the systems that we have applied such methods to, with a principal focus on the consequences of the second plague pandemic (the Black Death).
OEB Seminar
Contact Name: Christian Flynn
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Designing Contextually Driven AI Systems for Gun Violence Prevention with Chicago Youth
WHEN Thursday, April 25, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Rubenstein 229, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
SPEAKER(S) Desmond Patton, Technology and Human Rights Fellow; Carr Center For Human Rights Policy; Associate Professor of Social Work, Columbia University
DETAILS The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy invites you to a discussion on AI systems and gun violence prevention, facilitated by Technology and Human Rights Fellow, Desmond Patton.
Associate Professor Desmond Upton Patton is a Public Interest Technologist who uses qualitative and computational data collection methods to examine the relationship between youth and gang violence and social media; how and why violence, grief, and identity are expressed on social media; and the real world impact these expressions have on wellbeing for low-income youth of color. Dr. Patton is the founding Director of the SAFE lab, a member of the Data Science Institute, a faculty affiliate of the Social Intervention Group (SIG) and holds a courtesy appointment in the department of Sociology. He is the recipient of the 2018 Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Achievement Award from the Society for Social Work Research (SSWR), and was named a 2017-2018 Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.
Dr. Patton studies the ways in which gang involved youth conceptualize threats on social media, and the extent to which social media shapes and facilitates youth and gang violence. In partnership with the Data Science Institute, he is developing an online tool for detecting aggression in social media posts. Dr. Patton’s research on “internet banging” has been featured in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, NPR, Boston Magazine, ABC News, and Vice. It was cited in an Amici Curae Brief submitted to the United States Supreme Court in Elonis v. United States, which examined the interpretation of threats on social media.
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Time for a Technical Fix? The Science and Ethics of Solar Geoengineering
Thursday, April 25
5:00pm
MIT, Wong Auditorium; Building E51, Wong Auditorium, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speakers: Marion Hourdequin, Professor and Chair, Philosophy, Colorado College
David Keith, Professor, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Kennedy School, Harvard University
Shuchi Talati, Fellow, Union of Concerned Scientists
As the current effects and future threats of climate change grow, we must consider every possible approach to bring our planet back from the brink. Theoretically, we could reduce the impact of climate change through solar geoengineering: introducing substances into the atmosphere that would reflect some of the sun's rays away from the earth. What are the potential risks and benefits of this technology? Who will decide whether and how we can use it?
David Keith has worked near the interface between climate science, energy technology, and public policy for twenty-five years. Best known for his work on the science, technology, and public policy of solar geoengineering, David led the development of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program. He took first prize in Canada's national physics prize exam, won MIT's prize for excellence in experimental physics, and was one of TIME magazine's Heroes of the Environment. David is a Professor at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Harvard Kennedy School, and founder of Carbon Engineering, a company developing technology to capture CO2 from ambient air.
Marion Hourdequin (Associate Professor and Chair, Philosophy Department) specializes in environmental philosophy. Her research and teaching interests also include ethics, comparative philosophy, animal studies, and philosophy of science. Prof. Hourdequin's current research focuses on climate ethics, climate justice, and the social and ethical dimensions of ecological restoration. She is the author of Environmental Ethics: From Theory to Practice (Bloomsbury, 2015) and editor, with David Havlick, of Restoring Layered Landscapes (Oxford, 2015). She serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Environmental Values, and is on the editorial board of Environmental Ethics.
Shuchi Talati works on solar geoengineering research governance and public engagement with the Climate & Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Dr. Talati works to guide sound governance and public engagement on research into proposed solar geoengineering approaches to limit global warming. Prior to joining UCS, Dr. Talati completed a Congressional Science Fellowship in the offices of Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Senator Al Franken (D-MN), where she helped lead responses to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, and also worked on legislation on carbon capture, utilization, and storage, including direct air capture technology.
The program will be moderated by Suzanne Jacobs, a physics PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin. She completed her bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Michigan in 2011 and then stayed for a brief stint to study the mechanics of glacier calving under Dr. Jeremy Bassis before coming to MIT for a master's degree in science writing. After interning at MIT Technology Review, she switched coasts to write for the Seattle-based environmental news website Grist. In 2016, she moved yet again to Austin, TX, where she studies the physics of swarming bacteria. She occasionally writes about her experiences in graduate school on her blog, f of Q.
This program is a J. Herbert Hollomon Memorial Symposium, a memorial instituted by friends and family of the late J. Herbert Hollomon. Herb Hollomon was a distinguished scientist, public servant and MIT faculty member. This endowed memorial symposium has been held every few years for almost 25 years with topics that have included:
Humans Need Not Apply? AI and the Future of Work
Green Technology: What? How? Why?
The Atomic Bomb: Myth, Memory,
History, Food Scarcity: Fact of Fiction?
Forging Sustainable Communities
Energy and Climate: What Role for Conservation Policy?
Weapons of Mass Confusion
The Ceaseless Society
Pioneering Solutions to Global Challenges
Gene Patenting: Balancing Access and Information
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Rural Promise: Innovating to Support Rural Students
WHEN Thursday, April 25, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Graduate School of Education, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
TYPE OF EVENT Community Programming, Forum, Question & Answer Session
PROGRAM/DEPARTMENT Askwith Forum
BUILDING/ROOM Askwith Hall
CONTACT NAME Roger Falcon
CONTACT EMAIL askwith@gse.harvard.edu
CONTACT PHONE 617-384-9968
SPONSORING ORGANIZATION/DEPARTMENT Harvard Graduate School of Education
REGISTRATION REQUIRED No
ADMISSION FEE This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP REQUIRED No
FEATURED EVENT Askwith Forums
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Special Events
DETAILS Moderator: Paul Reville, Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration and founding director, Education Redesign Lab, HGSE; former Secretary of Education, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Panelists :
Sanford Johnson, deputy director of advocacy, Mississippi First
Thomas Kane, Walter H. Gale Professor of Education and Economics, HGSE; faculty director, Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) and principal investigator, National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCERN), Harvard
Geoff Marietta, Ed.M.’13, Ed.D,’15, entrepreneur-in-residence, University of the Cumberlands; former executive director, Pine Mountain Settlement School, Kentucky
Mara Tieken, Ed.M,’06, Ed.D.’11, associate professor of education, Bates College; author, Why Rural Schools Matter
This forum will shine a spotlight on the collaborative innovations — in classrooms, communities, and state and district leadership — driving bold new approaches to rural education and student success.
PLEASE NOTE: Seating for this forum will be available on a first come, first seated basis.
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Learn About Solar For Your Home and Go 100% Renewable!
Thursday, April 25
6:30 PM – 8 PM
Cambridge Public Library - Central Square Branch, 45 Pearl Street, Cambridge
Now is a great time to consider solar for your roof! Come find out why! You can also learn how you can easily go 100% renewable no matter if you rent or own through a City program.
Please join us for an informative presentation on the benefits of installing solar and participation in 100% renewable electricity.
Sponsored by Green Cambridge, Mothers Out Front, 350.org and Neighborhood Solar. We working to leverage group buying to make solar power more affordable and have more people getting their energy from 100% renewable sources.
Together with SunBug Solar, you can learn how Cambridge residents, businesses, and nonprofits can save 20% on installation, receive a 30% federal tax credit and apply for a zero interest loan to get the work done!
Lewis Room: This room is located on the second floor of the Central Square Branch of the library, located at 45 Pearl Street.
If you'd like childcare, please email Kristine Jelstrup at kejelstrup@gmail.com.
more information at https://www.facebook.com/events/297243241211419/
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Aerial Futures: The Third Dimension
Thursday, April 25
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
swissnex Boston and AERIAL FUTURES are partnering to look forward towards the future of Urban Air Mobility (UAM). Thanks to the support of Swiss Touch, we will bring to Boston the next event in our Aerial Futures: The Drone Frontier series – AERIAL FUTURES: The Third Dimension
A public event at Harvard GSD examines the lower sky as a site of mobility
Increasing congestion and advances in autonomous technology are set to transform how we move around our cities. Many are now looking to the sky — the third dimension — as an expansive space for new kinds of mobility. Autonomous flying vehicles, such as cargo drones and flying taxis, have the capacity to disrupt how we move goods and passengers around urban space. Responding to these real-world changes, AERIAL FUTURES: The Third Dimension examines Urban Air Mobility (UAM), asking how scalable and on- demand UAM models could reduce road traffic, pollution, accidents and the strain on existing public transport networks. Within these opportunities are also challenges to overcome: noise, community acceptance, safety, cyber security and seamless integration with existing aircraft operations.
Boston and Switzerland have long understood the importance of connectivity and mobility. As world centers for tech research and design excellence, both locations are at the vanguard of urban mobility design. The presentations and panel will discuss Design Interfaces, the UAM Marketplace and Regulatory Frameworks.
About the Organizers
swissnex Boston, with offices in Cambridge, MA and New York City, creates meaningful cross-disciplinary connections in education, research, innovation, and in the arts between Switzerland and North America. Our mission is to support the outreach and active engagement of our partners in the global exchange of knowledge, ideas and talent.
AERIAL FUTURES is a non-profit organization exploring innovation in the architecture of flight, technology, and the broader urban mobility ecosystem. They curate and provokes timely considerations of our aerial age, and imagine its emerging futures in a connected, multimodal world.
Swiss Touch is an event series and social media campaign pushing Swiss innovation and creative ideas forward, through the participation of prominent Swiss and American stakeholders, a selection of compelling topics and unusual locations. Follow their journey throughout the US at www.swisstouchusa.org.
Program
6:20 pm Doors open
6:30 pm Program starts
8:00 pm Doors close
Speakers
Olivier de Weck, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems, MIT
In his research, Olivier de Weck focuses on the evolution and design properties of a wide range of complex man-made systems, such as air- and spacecraft, automobiles, and critical infrastructures. De Weck is a former Swiss Air Force officer and holds degrees from both ETH Zurich (1993) and MIT (2001). From 1993 to 1997, he was liaison engineer and later engineer program manager at McDonnell Douglas’ F/A-18 aircraft program. The last two years, he held the role of Senior Vice President for Technology Planning and Roadmapping at Airbus.
Jaron Lubin, Design Principal, Safdie Architects
Jaron Lubin’s extensive body of work includes a portfolio of architectural design proposals, competition entries and projects in a broad variety of geographical contexts, scales and programs. Among many other well-renowned projects, Lubin functioned as the Project Architect in the iconic Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort and Jewel Changi Airport in Singapore. He joined Safdie Architects in 2004 and was named a Principal in 2012. Lubin studied Architecture at the University of Michigan and obtained his Master’s Degree at UCLA.
Vassilis Agouridas, Senior Manager, Strategic Innovation, Airbus (Helicopters)
As a member of the Strategy, Company Development and Business Ambition Directorate at Airbus, Vassilis Agouridas is working on growth strategy and new business ecosystems assignments. In the context of ever-growing urbanization and widespread diffusion of digital business enablers, he has been developing expertise in nurturing systemic mobility solutions featuring the 3rd dimension. Vassilis is the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Initiative Leader, on behalf of Airbus, within the Sustainable Urban Mobility Action Cluster, launched in October 2017 by the European Commission.
Lorenzo Murzilli, Manager, Innovation and Advanced Technologies, Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA)
Lorenzo Murzilli is an aerospace engineer, innovation manager and specialist in aviation, system safety and drones. As the leader of the Joint Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Systems WG-6 and Deputy Chair of the Swiss FOCA RPAS Working Group, he oversees the policies and risk management processes for all critical drones’ operations in Switzerland and works to improve the perception of unmanned aerial vehicles worldwide. As a guest lecturer at the Zürich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) Lorenzo has developed a striking ability to boost innovation in safety-critical environments and enjoys exploring the intersection of safety and disruptive technologies that can advance the human race forward.
Moderator
Sonja Dümpelmann, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD)
Sonja Dümpelmann is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) where she teaches history and theory courses. She was previously an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland (2007-2012), and Auburn University (2005-2007) where she taught design studios and history and theory classes. She holds a Ph.D. in Landscape Architecture from the University of the Arts, Berlin, and an MLA from Leibniz Universität Hannover. Dümpelmann has curated exhibitions on landscape history in Germany and has worked as a landscape designer in Studio Paolo Bürgi, Switzerland. She has held research fellowships at the German Historical Institute, and at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC.
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Augmented and Virtual Reality Expo
Thursday, April 25
6:30 – 8:30 pm EDT
GA Boston, 125 Summer Street 13th Floor, Boston
Join us at GA to see innovative and exciting local AR & VR technology demos, presented by startup founders and industry experts. Network with 100+ attendees from the Boston-area startup/tech community.
If you would like to showcase your products or company at this event, please contact bospartnerships@generalassemb.ly
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Around the World in 80 Trees
Thursday, April 25
7 to 8:15pm
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Building, 1300 Centre Street, Roslindale
RSVP at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu
Cost: $0 - $5
Jonathan Drori wrote a book with that title about human interactions with trees. Just two of many: streets in 19th-c London were paved with Australian jarrah wood; monks used the sap of the Japanese Lacquer tree to mummify themselves while still alive.
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The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865
Thursday, April 25
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
The Harvard Coop, 1400 Massachusetts Avenue, 3rd floor, Cambridge
A groundbreaking history of early America that shows how Boston built and sustained an independent city-state in New England before being folded into the United States
In the vaunted annals of America’s founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary “city upon a hill” and the “cradle of liberty” for an independent United States. Wresting this iconic urban center from these misleading, tired clichés, The City-State of Boston highlights Boston’s overlooked past as an autonomous city-state, and in doing so, offers a pathbreaking and brilliant new history of early America. Following Boston’s development over three centuries, Mark Peterson discusses how this self-governing Atlantic trading center began as a refuge from Britain’s Stuart monarchs and how—through its bargain with slavery and ratification of the Constitution—it would tragically lose integrity and autonomy as it became incorporated into the greater United States.
About the Author: Mark Peterson is the Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England.
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Thought Leadership for Climate Emergency with Varshini Prakash of Sunrise
Thursday, AprIl 25
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM EDT
Webinar
We’re psyched to be hosting a conversation between Varshini Prakash, founder of the Sunrise Movement, and Margaret Klein Salamon. They will talk about Varshini’s personal path with climate crisis, the tremendous momentum of the youth movement, the Green New Deal, and how different organizations within the Climate Emergency Movement can best collaborate. We’d love for you to invite your networks to join this exciting discussion.
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Friday, April 26 - Monday, April 29
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City Nature Challenge
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Friday, April 26
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MIT Sustainability Summit: Sustainable Mobility - What Can'(t) Tech Fix?
Friday, April 26
8:00 AM – 6:00 PM EDT
MIT, Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Cost: $45 - $170
MIT is hosting the eleventh annual Sustainability Summit. This year's theme is Sustainable Mobility: What Can’(t) Tech Fix? Speakers and panelists will explore the limitations to technology in an increasingly technology-centric field, and pinpoint key sustainability priorities in the policy and investment realms that are under-considered--and ripe for innovation. Participants will have the opportunity to think about technology and its strengths in a different way, and leave with an understanding what criteria they should apply when evaluating mobility innovations and solutions for environmental, social, and economic sustainability.
Join the discussion!
The MIT Sustainability Summit is an annual student-led event. Now in its 11th year, the Summit features discussions with academia, industry leaders, and expert practitioners. The day's unique focus and depth of content has led to the Summit's growing prominence, and it routinely sells out its 350-seat capacity.
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The Smart, Connected Commonwealth: Data-Driven Research and Policy Across the Region
Friday, April 26
9:00 AM – 5:00 PM EDT
Massachusetts State House, 24 Beacon Street, Boston
Much has been made of how digital data and technology will transform major metropolises such as Boston. But the challenges and opportunities facing society in the 21st century are not isolated to urban cores. They instead operate at a regional scale—inequality and segregation, transportation, the opioid epidemic, housing, climate change, and gentrification, to name a few.
The Smart, Connected Commonwealth: Data-Driven Research and Policy across the Region will explore how researchers and practitioners can move beyond the individual municipality, supporting governments across the region working to solve problems collaboratively. BARI’s 2019 Spring Conference will bring together academics, policy makers, and practitioners to highlight work being conducted throughout Greater Boston as a way to share insights and methods, catalyzing inter-disciplinary, intercity collaboration in the use of data and technology.
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Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar: Dr. Christine Wiedinmyer, NOAA/CU Boulder
Friday, April 26
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard, Pierce 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Contact: Kelvin Bates
Email: kelvin_bates@fas.harvard.edu
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Asian History at Water’s Edge: Environment and Society in the Long Twentieth Century
Friday, April 26
12:15pm - 2:00pm
Harvard, S250, Porté Room, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Panelist: Xiaofei Gao, Fung Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University Asia Center
Panelist: Anthony Medrano, Ziff Environmental Fellow, Harvard University Center for the Environment
Discussant: Prasannan Parthasarathi, History Department, Boston College
Moderator: Arunabh Ghosh, Assistant Professor of History, Department of History, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
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Flood Harvard
Friday, April 26
2 PM – 5 PM
Harvard Yard, Cambridge
Join student activists from Divest Harvard on Friday, April 26th at 2pm to call on Harvard University to divest its nearly $40 billion endowment from the fossil fuel industry!
Flood Harvard will be the final, largest political action of this year's Harvard Heat Week. For this event, we are calling on our peers and adult allies from around the nation to stand with us in our fight for climate justice and a more sustainable and equitable future for all. We are demanding that, through immediate divestment, Harvard show the leadership that our campus, the greater Boston community, and our world expect.
More information at https://www.facebook.com/events/347126895944173/
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Imaging a Black Hole with the Event Horizon Telescope
Friday, April 26
3:00pm to 4:00pm
Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin G125, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Katie Bouman, California Institute of Technology
This talk will present the methods and procedures used to produce the first results from the Event Horizon Telescope. It is theorized that a black hole will leave a "shadow" on a background of hot gas. Taking a picture of this black hole shadow could help to address a number of important scientific questions, both on the nature of black holes and the validity of general relativity. Unfortunately, due to its small size, traditional imaging approaches require an Earth-sized radio telescope. In this talk, I discuss techniques we have developed to photograph a black hole using the Event Horizon Telescope, a network of telescopes scattered across the globe. Imaging a black hole’s structure with this computational telescope requires us to reconstruct images from sparse measurements, heavily corrupted by atmospheric error.
Speaker Bio: Katie Bouman is starting as an assistant professor in the Computing and Mathematical Sciences Department at the California Institute of Technology. She has been a postdoctoral fellow with the Event Horizon Telescope in the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She received her Ph.D. in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT in EECS. Before going to MIT, she received her bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan. The focus of her research is on using emerging computational methods to push the boundaries of interdisciplinary imaging.
Electrical Engineering Seminar Series
Contact: Gioia Sweetland
Phone: 617-495-2919
Email: gioia@seas.harvard.edu
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Democratic Discord in Schools: Cases and Commentaries in Educational Ethics
Friday, April 26
3:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
Harvard Book Store and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics welcome education professors MEIRA LEVINSON and JACOB FAY for a discussion of their new book, Democratic Discord in Schools: Cases and Commentaries in Educational Ethics.
About Democratic Discord in Schools
Teaching in a democracy is challenging and filled with dilemmas that have no easy answers. For example, how do educators meet their responsibilities of teaching civic norms and dispositions while remaining nonpartisan? Democratic Discord in Schools features eight normative cases of complex dilemmas drawn from real events designed to help educators practice the type of collaborative problem solving and civil discourse needed to meet these challenges of democratic education. Each of the cases also features a set of six commentaries written by a diverse array of scholars, educators, policy makers, students, and activists with a range of political views to spark reflection and conversation.
Drawing on research and methods developed in the Justice in Schools project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), Democratic Discord in Schools provides the tools that allow educators and others to practice the deliberative skills they need in order to find reasonable solutions to common ethical dilemmas in politically fraught times.
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TEDxBU
Friday, April 26
6:00 PM EDT
BU, Burke Room, Agganis Arena, 925 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Cost: $0 – $13
In a community brimming with intellectual promise, this independently organized TEDx event will be a confluence of innovation and revolutionary ideas. The theme being Avant Garde emphasizes pushing boundaries and breaking the status quo. We plan on inspiring attendees to take a risk, big or small, and provide a diverse perspective. We have invited experts in all industries, from business to art, to show that Avant Garde is not “one size fits all”. It is applicable to all aspects of one's life. This is the motivation behind TEDxBU.
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How Can Unitarian Universalists Respond to Populism?: "A Tale of Two Kingdoms"
Friday, April 26
6:30 pm
King's Chapel Parish House, 64 Beacon Street, Boston
lecture by Rev. Carl Scovel, minister emeritus of King's Chapel, in memory of Charles Perry, late member of King's Chapel and the Minns Lectureship Committee
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Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age
Friday, April 26
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome classicist DONNA ZUCKERBERG—founder and Editor-in-Chief of Eidolon, a prize-winning online Classics magazine—for a discussion of her latest book, Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age.
About Not All Dead White Men
A virulent strain of antifeminism is thriving online that treats women’s empowerment as a mortal threat to men and to the integrity of Western civilization. Its proponents cite ancient Greek and Latin texts to support their claims―arguing that they articulate a model of masculinity that sustained generations but is now under siege.
Donna Zuckerberg dives deep into the virtual communities of the far right, where men lament their loss of power and privilege and strategize about how to reclaim them. She finds, mixed in with weightlifting tips and misogynistic vitriol, the words of the Stoics deployed to support an ideal vision of masculine life. On other sites, pickup artists quote Ovid’s Ars Amatoria to justify ignoring women’s boundaries. By appropriating the Classics, these men lend a veneer of intellectual authority and ancient wisdom to their project of patriarchal white supremacy. In defense or retaliation, feminists have also taken up the Classics online, to counter the sanctioning of violence against women.
Not All Dead White Men reveals that some of the most controversial and consequential debates about the legacy of the ancients are raging not in universities but online.
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Saturday, April 27 - Saturday, May 4
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Sustainaville Week
See http://somervillema.gov/sustainavilleweek for the full event lineup
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Saturday, April 27
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Imagination in Action @ MIT
Saturday, April 27
8:00 AM EDT
MIT Media Lab, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Something unusual happened at Davos this year: new ideas coming not from the usual collection of rich and famous, their symbiotic journalists, or even from political activists. This was the voice of creation rooted outside of the wealthy world and put into action by hands-on builders empowered by tools such as blockchain and AI, centered on human needs, and creating a new realities outside of traditional hierarchy and authority. It was imagination in action, curated by MIT’s Alex Pentland and John Werner.
On April 27 on the top floor of MIT's Media Lab we will bring the best of Davos to Cambridge, Massachusetts and in addition focus on ideas such as distributed finance that are converting efforts such as the Belt and Road Initiative to much more than the original Chinese vision. Come and join us to help imagine and invent the future.
More details on the Imagination in Action Website: http://imaginationinaction.xyz
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Local Environmental Action Conference
Saturday, April 27
9:00 AM - 5:30 PM (Local Time)
Worcester State University, 486 Chandler Street, Worcester
For the past 32 years, MCAN and Toxics Action Center have brought together hundreds of community leaders and activists for a day to learn, share skills, and build our movement. This is the biggest gathering of environmental and public health activists in our region, and you don’t want to miss it.
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SURVIVAL BOSTON 1630-35
Saturday, April 27
10:00 AM EDT
Massachusetts State House (front steps), State House, 24 Beacon Street, Boston
In late summer 1630, hundreds of people landed in New England and stepped off their boats into a new world. They were forced to live in shacks, tents, or English wigwams. Then food began to run out. Disease began to take its toll. Any hope of replenishment by sea was dashed as Boston harbor froze solid and remained so for two months.
Survival: Boston 1630-35 explores the story of the first, dangerous year, when nearly half the original Puritans either died or fled back to England. We will then explore how they managed to combine their collective skills to succeed against incredibly daunting odds. Our walking tour immerses you in their world and shows you how they survived in the place that became the city of Boston. We will visit the sites where they lived, cooked their meals, drew their water, and began to establish what would become a thriving community.
We are an all-volunteer organization. As always, our tours are free because we want to tell you about early Boston. At the same time we welcome any and all donations to defray our expenses.
FAQs
What is the cost for the Survival Tour?
The tour is Free. We are an all-volunteer organization whose sole mission is providing the public with accurate history of 17th-century Puritan Boston. Donations are gratefully accepted, and you can become a Member of the Partnership with a donation of $35 or more.
What are my transport/parking options getting to the event?
Parking in Boston is always difficult. Public transportation to Park Street is recommended. Walk up the hill toward the State House.
What should I bring?
Be sure to wear comfortable clothing and sturdy shoes. April is a tough time for planning how warmly to dress. The downtown area does tend to be very windy at this time of year so you may want to add a windbreaker to your wardrobe. Regardless bring along some bottled water to make sure you stay hydrated.
Where can I contact the organizer with any questions?
Write to phbostons@gmail.com or call (781) 608-0252
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Hull Wind 1 tour
Saturday April 27
10am - 3pm
100 Main Street, Hull (https://goo.gl/maps/r4xAevU3mQM)
Tour is free and lasts about 1 hr with time allotted for Q&A.
one hour slot
contact Andrew Stern
10a MIT
11a BU
12p Northeastern University
1p Harvard HESEC
2p Tufts
3p Union of Concerned Scientists
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High-yield gardening
Saturday, April 27
11 to 12:30
110 Williams Street, Jamaica Plain
How to get the most out of your space, through intensive spacing, succession planting, interplanting, vertical growing, trellising, season extension. You might even get your hands dirty. FREE. Reservation appreciated, not essential.
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Growing in the City: Arbor Day and Urban Gardening Festival
Saturday, April 27
11:00 AM to 2:00 PM
Somerville Public Library, 79 Highland Avenue, Somerville
Celebrate spring and SustainaVille week by helping Somerville grow! Drop in for a kid's craft, learn about gardening in raised beds , plant trees, and visit with local organizations working on gardening and sustainability in Somerville. This event will be rain or shine.
11 AM: Join local gardening and environmental organizations for tabling and kid's crafts at the Central Library.
12 PM: Raised bed gardening workshop with Green City Growers at the Central Library: A GCG farmer will lead the hand-on workshop during which you'll learn when and what to plant, how to maintain, fertilize, and harvest successful crops. Wear comfortable clothes and get ready to get your hands dirty!
1 PM: We’ll head down the hill to Ed Leathers Park to plant trees with the Somerville Urban Forestry Division in honor of Arbor Day.
This event is part of Food for Thought, a community gardening and cooking initiative, thanks in large part to a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant. All programs in this initiative are free and open to the public.
Please contact Lilly Sundell-Thomas at (617) 623-5000 x2961
or lsundell-thomas@minlib.net for more information.
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MIT IDEAS Innovation Showcase + Awards 2019
Saturday, April 27
12:30 PM EDT
MIT, Samberg Conference Center, 7th Floor, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Come join the MIT IDEAS Global Challenge for a celebration of the spirit of innovation, entrepreneurship, and public service!
Join us on Saturday, April 27th to meet the teams competing in the final round, celebrate their work, check out prototypes, and hear which teams will be awarded up to $15,000 to make their ideas a reality. This is where ideas come to life!
This is one of the best chances to hear many ideas that have the potential to make substantial impact around the world. We'll have light snacks to enjoy as you peruse, discover and learn.
Schedule:
12:30 – 2:30pm Innovation Showcase
2:30 – 3:30pm Awards Ceremony
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Growing Food Without A Garden
Saturday, April 27
1 PM – 4 PM
Urban Farming Institute of Boston, 487 Norfolk Street, Mattapan
RSVP to ldpalm4@gmail.com or 617-959-9920
Suggest donation $20
Do you have a balcony, porch or some bit of outdoor space? Why not get growing on some salad greens, herbs, and for some even mushrooms. There is a lot you can grow in a pot, bucket, or containers. The workshop will include hands on growing techniques and intro to growing mushrooms.
Community educator, activists, politician, innovator Mel King, says we should be growing everywhere. Bring the family to learn about ways you can create a garden in or around your home without much space.
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The Populist Imagination: A White Man’s Republic?
Saturday, April 27
6:30 pm
First Church Boston, 66 Marlborough Street, Boston
opening lecture by Rev. Dr. Colin Bossen, with responses by Rev. Danielle DiBona and Dr. Wendy Salkin
Please visit http://www.minnslectures.org for more information
There is no charge to attend this event.
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Sunday, April 28
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Applied Permaculture 5: Soil improvement and tree planting
Sunday, April 28
Mass Audubon Boston Nature Center, 500 Walk Hill Street, Mattapan
RSVP at https://bostonfoodforest.org/product/applied-permaculture-5-soil-improvement-and-tree-planting/
Cost: $40.00 – $80.00
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE
Learn how to create the best soil ever with materials you have already!
Learn how to plant your new trees in your food forest so they will thrive!
Morning: The basis of your food forest is your soil. Healthy soil means healthy, beautiful plants and a bounty of good food to harvest. In this workshop we will analyze the soil of our host site, and take steps to amend and improve it. Our instructor is a geologist with a speciality in soil science and permaculture.
Afternoon: Ensuring the long-term survival of your food forest trees begins from the moment you plant them. Proper planting technique increases survival rates of your new plants, and gives them a head start to grow quickly. In this workshop, we will plant trees at our host site. Our instructor is the owner of a decades-old private food forest and steward of one of the Boston Food Forest gardens.
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Somerville Sustainability Tour
Sunday, April 28
11:00 AM EDT
This tour is citywide! Somerville
11am - 2pm: Sustainability Tour (Self-guided! City-wide!)
1pm- 5pm: Post-tour & Bike Kick-off Party at Aeronaut Brewery (overlaps with tour end)
Curious how you can be a part of Somerville’s sustainable future? Not sure where to start or how to sustain the journey?
Join the Somerville Sustainability Tour on April 28, and learn from Somervillians who are opening up their homes and sharing how they are living more sustainably (and you can, too!):
Hear how residents have renovated their homes and are saving money on heat.
Visit homes that are replacing fossil fuels with 100% renewable energy by “electrifying” their heating, cooking, hot water and cars.
Gather renter-friendly ideas for reducing waste and carbon footprint, from indoor composting to zero-waste grocery shopping.
Learn how “de-paved” yards and rooftop gardens have made properties more resilient.
Visit with car-free households.
See how solar panels are flourishing on Somerville rooftops, lowering homeowners’ electric bills.
Experience gardens filled with native plants that help restore our ecosystems.
Glimpse how Somervillians are contributing to our city-wide Climate Forward sustainability goals, and get to know your neighbors better at the same time.
And much more!
This is a self-guided tour, and is on, RAIN OR SHINE!
A map will be published closer to the event.
RSVP so you can be notified when the map is available.
After your tour, come celebrate kick off of Bike Month! Join hundreds of cyclists, biking and sustainability advocates, bike businesses and your neighbors at Aeronaut Brewery (14 Tyler Street) for a kid-friendly afternoon of activities, live music, a panel discussion about car-free cities and of course, great beer!
The kick-off starts at 1pm, with the car-free cities talk at 3pm to accommodate a 2pm tour end and any tour-goers traveling by foot to Aeronaut. Climate Coalition of Somerville will have tables set up and experts present, too, to engage in more discussion about your tour experience and answer questions.
Check out Somerville Bike Committee's Facebook event page for more info -- https://www.facebook.com/events/2349743608589555/
And, fill out the following survey about your own transit lifestyle, which will help us shape the most engaging, collaborative car-free cities discussion possible. Thanks! https://forms.gle/spYnHAs8jKAmKNKC6.
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Lee McIntyre on 'The Scientific Attitude'
Sunday, April 28
1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Harvard, Phillips Brooks House, 1 Harvard Yard, Cambridge
We are pleased to welcome Lee McIntyre back on the eve of his latest book on the challenges of the post-modern age. "The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience” is the title of this upcoming MIT Press book.
"As part of -- or perhaps the culmination of -- an on-going campaign of fact and truth denial that has been going on in Western democracies for the last several decades, science is currently under attack. On topics such as evolution, vaccines, and climate change, the forces of ideology, cognitive bias, media confusion, and outright ignorance have conspired to spread disinformation and legitimize doubt about even the most well-settled empirical questions. This contrasts sharply with the attitude that scientists take toward empirical beliefs, which is based on respect for evidence and the flexibility of mind to change one's beliefs based on new evidence.
"Why then -- when they set out to defend science -- are scientists and philosophers of science so often at a loss to explain what is so special about science?
"The elusive search for some logical criteria that may demarcate science from non-science, or ill-advised scientific pronouncements about proof and certainty, only give aid and comfort to some of the myths that are exploited by science deniers. Instead, I believe that what is most distinctive about science is not its method or logic, but instead its values. In this talk I will explore how the scientific attitude can be used to fight back against the sorts of criticisms made by science deniers (and pseudoscientists), who do not understand that the heart of scientific thought is based on its critical values, and community spirit of criticism, such that skepticism and doubt are a strength rather than a weakness of scientific theory."
Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and an Instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. His previous publications include, Post-Truth (2018) and Respecting Truth: Willful Ignorance in the Internet Age (2015).
Snacks will follow the talk.
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Bike Month Kick-Off
Sunday, April 28
1PM-5PM
Aeronaut Brewing Company, 14 Tyler Street, Somerville
Join MAPC staff, Somerville Bicycle Committee, and the Climate Coalition of Somerville’s at the 2019 Bike Month Kick-off event at Aeronaut Brewery in Somerville! Staff will be tabling and talking with attendees about our work in improving bicycle infrastructure in the region through MetroCommon 2050!
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TEDxBrooklineLive
Sunday, April 28
6:00 PM EDT
The Makery - Makerspace and STEM Programs for kids and adults, 2 Sewall Avenue, Brookline
Innovation Nation is hosting the 2019 TEDxBrooklineLive event at The Makery
The TEDxBrooklineLive event is a great way for innovators to get together and enjoy a broadcast of the official 2019 TED Conference. Get ready to immerse yourself in new ideas, challenging topics, and probing questions.
Why TEDxLive events are so fun ?
A worldwide movement: When you watch a TEDxLive event, you join others across the globe tuning in to the same broadcast.
A ticket inside TED: With TEDxLive no big travel plans or hotels are necessary to get a first-hand look at TED Talks before they even make it to TED.com.
Location, location, location: This TEDxLive viewing party is hosted at The Makery, a creative maker space in the heart of Coolidge Corner.
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Monday, April 29
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How Norms Change: New Evidence from Data and Experiments
Monday, April 29
11:00 am
Northeastern, 177 Huntington Avenue, 11th floor, Boston
ANDREA BARONCHELLI, City University of London
Researchers and policy makersagree that new social norms could help solve large-scale problems, from climatechange to antibiotic resistance. However, our understanding of how norms changehas been limited so far by the lack of suitable data. In this talk, I willdiscuss two recent studies that shed light on this process. In the first [PNAS115, 8260 (2018)], we examined linguistic norm shifts in English and Spanish.We identified three main drivers of norm change that leave markedly differentsignatures in the data, namely (i) authority, (ii) informal institutions and(iii) a bottom-up process triggered by a small number of committed users (akinto a 'critical mass' phenomenon). We proposed a simple model that reproducesthe empirical observations. In the second study [Science 360, 1116 (2018)], wefocused on critical mass theory and tested it experimentally in artificialsocial networks. We let a group of individuals evolve their own socialconvention. Then, once the agreement was reached, we introduced fewconfederates pushing for a different norm. As their number crossed a tippingpoint - roughly 25% of the group size – the whole population would follow themand adopt the new norm. This is the first empirical evidence for the widelyadopted theory of critical mass. These results will help better understand bothhow norms change spontaneously in our societies and how to design effectivepolicies to foster collective behavioral change.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Andrea Baronchelli is a Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at City University of London, a fellow at the ISI Foundation in Turin, and a research fellow at the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies. Prior to joining City University of London in 2013, he was at MOBS Lab (Northeastern University) and at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) in Barcelona. He received his BS and MS in Theoretical Physics from the Sapienza University of Rome and his PhD in Physics from the same university. Andrea is an Associate Editor at EPJ Data Science, PLoS ONE and Frontiers in Blockchain. His research is on the dynamics of social and cognitive systems using mathematical modelling, network and data science, and experiments with human subjects. Homepage: https://sites.google.com/site/andreabaronchelli/.
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BU AR/VR Festival
Monday, April 29
12:00 PM to 5:00 PM
BU, George Sherman Union, 775 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
The AR/VR Festival is Boston University’s second AR/VR exposition event. Our event aims to connect heads of the AR/VR industry, startups, scholars, and students at BU’s newest innovation hub, the BUild Lab.
Each company will get their own room where they can showcase to attendees, as well as receiving stage time to do presentations, while attendees can demo different AR/VR technology.
The exhibitors include PTC, Wayfair, Simmetri, AugmentX, Hoverlay, Arrowstreet, STYLY VR and EmotiVR.
Big thanks to our sponsors PTC, Wayfair, BU Spark!, Boston University Computer Science Department, and Innovate@BU for supporting this event.
This event is part of Innovation Week at BU! April 20-26 is an entire week dedicated to recognizing and celebrating novel ideas and endeavors across Boston University and the community! Celebrate with us and check for the full schedule here: http://www.bu.edu/innovate/innovationweek/
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Agency and Automation: Digital Disobedience and Its Infrastructure
Monday, April 29
12:15PM
Harvard, CGIS South S050, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Robin Celikates, University of Amsterdam, Philosophy
Please RSVP via the online form by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
STS Circle at Harvard
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Community Voices: Responses to Violence in Boston - Slomoff Symposium 2019
Monday, April 29
4:30 PM EDT
UMass Boston, Integrated Science Complex, 1st Floor Atrium, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston
4:30 pm—Reception | Integrated Science Complex, 1st Floor Atrium
6:00 pm—Lectureship | Integrated Science Complex, 1st Floor Atrium
Boston in 2016 and 2017 saw a jump in violent crimes and murders after years of low rates. 2018 saw lower rates, but violence remains a concern in many neighborhoods across the city. What is responsible for this violence, and what can the peace, conflict resolution, and nonviolence fields do to help our communities roll back the violence and address its root causes?
Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins will give the keynote address on this subject, followed by a panel of community activists including Pastor Ray Hammond. The audience will then be invited to join the discussion through a participatory conversation through which we generate some further ideas on addressing violence in Boston.
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Towards Life 3.0 - Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century: David Eaves (Faculty Director, DigitalHKS)
Monday, April 29
5:30pm to 6:45pm
Harvard, Wexner Room 102, 79 JFK Street Cambridge
Towards Life 3.0: Ethics and Technology in the 21stCentury is a new talk series organized and facilitated by Mathias Risse, Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Administration. Drawing inspiration from the title of Max Tegmark’s book, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, the series draws upon a range of scholars, technology leaders, and public interest technologists to address the ethical aspects of the long-term impact of artificial intelligence on society and human life.
Held on select Monday evenings at 5:30 – 6:45 in Wexner 102, and occasionally on other weekdays, the series will also be shared on Facebook Live and on the Carr Center website. A light dinner will be served.
David Eaves, Faculty Director of Digital HKS, will be giving a talk.
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Medium Design
Monday, April 29
6:00pm to 7:30pm
MIT, ACT Cube, E15-001, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Medium Design finds expanded means to generate change on the flip side of some dominant cultural habits. Inverting the authority given to declarations, master plans, standards or laws, Medium Design discovers extra political and aesthetic capacities in, activity, latency, indeterminacy, entanglement, heavy information, failure, temperament, and discrepancy. Instead of seeking solutions alone, problems can be addressed with responses that do not always work. Multiplying problems can be helpful. Messiness is smarter than newness. Obligations are more empowering than freedom. Histories can expand to include non-events. And discrepancy tutors sly forms of political activism that might more successfully outwit the world’s cunning forms of stupidity.
Keller Easterling is an architect, writer and professor at Yale. Her most recent book, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), examines global infrastructure as a medium of polity. A recently published e-book essay titled Medium Design (Strelka Press, 2017) previews a forthcoming book of the same title. Another recent book, Subtraction (Sternberg, 2014), considers building removal or how to put the development machine into reverse. Other books include: Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005) and Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America (MIT, 1999). Easterling is also the co-author (with Richard Prelinger) of Call it Home: The House that Private Enterprise Built, a laserdisc/DVD history of US suburbia from 1934-1960. She has published web installations including: Extrastatecraft, Wildcards: a Game of Orgman and Highline: Plotting NYC. Her research and writing was included in the 2014 Venice Biennale, and will be included in the 2018 Biennale. She lectures and exhibits internationally.
Respondent: Rania Ghosn is Associate Professor of architecture and urbanism at MIT and founding partner of DESIGN EARTH. Her research engages the geographies of technological systems to address the aesthetics and politics of the environment. The work of DESIGN EARTH has been exhibited internationally, including Venice Biennale (2018, 2016), Oslo Triennale (2017), Seoul Biennale (2017), Sharjah Biennale (2016), and MAAT (Lisbon, 2018), Sursock Museum (Beirut, 2016), Times Museum (Guangzhou, 2018) and collected by MoMA. Rania is co-author of Geographies of Trash (2015) and Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment (2018), which has received support from the Graham Foundation. She is founding editor of the New Geographies journal and editor-in-chief of NG 2: Landscapes of Energy (Harvard GSD, 2010). Rania holds a Bachelor of Architecture from American University of Beirut, a Master in Geography from University College London, and Doctor of Design from Harvard GSD.
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VR in energy and aerospace by Packet 39
Monday, April 29
6:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Venture Cafe Cambridge, 1 Broadway, Cambridge
In this presentation, Packet 39 CEO, Vice will go over a few VR projects and applications they developed for nuclear power, aerospace and medical industries in the past 3 years.
Highlights:
Creating stress in VR to reduce stress in real life
The importance of muscle memory and designing effective VR training
A show of hands - camera based Mixed Reality to bring user's hands into VR
VR-less VR - the power of VR 3D tracking without the bulky headset
Avoiding spacetime collisions with 4D visualizations and work scheduling
A power plant in your cubicle - Cost effective 3D scanning of industrial spaces for walkdowns and work planning
SCHEDULE:
6:00pm - Doors open, demos begin, snacks are served.
7:00pm -Announcements and Community information
7:15pm - CEO of Packet 39 "Vice" talk begins
8:15pm - 9:45 Demofest!!
9:45 - After party at TBD
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Community Conversation: What is a Progressive Housing Position?
Monday, April 29
7:15 PM EDT
First Baptist Church, 633 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain
Join JP Progressives for a community conversation with housing and policy experts on What is a Progressive Housing Policy
The City of Boston is rapidly becoming more unequal and segregated than at any time in its recent history. Boston is one of the least affordable major housing markets in the world, and Massachusetts is one of the most unequal states in the country. Our community in Jamaica Plain is at the forefront of this crisis. In JPP’s first community conversation dedicated to housing we will bring together policymakers, local activists, and housing researchers to address some of the basic problems in housing policy and discuss possible solutions. We hope that this conversation will be one of many that are dedicated to better defining: "what is a progressive housing policy?
Panelists:
Lydia Edwards
Nathalie Janson
Lisa Owens
Barry Bluestone
Moderated by: qainat khan, WBUR/GroundTruth Journalist who has reported extensively on housing in Boston
Post your questions at www.slido.com - Event #Q133****
***PLEASE NOTE: TICKETS DO NOT GUARANTEE ENTRANCE BUT TICKET HOLDERS WILL BE GIVEN PRIORITY*****
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Tuesday, April 30
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Modeling Opinion Dynamics in the Age of Algorithmic Personalization
Tuesday, April 30
11:00 am
Northeastern, 177 Huntington Avenue, 11th floor, Boston
Modern technology hasdrastically changed the way we interact and consume information. For example,online social platforms allow for seamless communication exchanges at anunprecedented scale. However, we are still bounded by cognitive and temporalconstraints. Our attention is limited and extremely valuable. Algorithmicpersonalization has become a standard approach to tackle the informationoverload problem. As result, the exposure to our friends’ opinions and ourperception about important issues might be distorted. However, the effects ofalgorithmic gatekeeping on our hyper-connected society are poorly understood.During the talk, I will discuss a model of opinion dynamics where individualsare connected through a social network and adopt opinions as function of theview points they are exposed to. I will consider various filtering algorithmsthat select the opinions shown to each user i) at random ii) considering timeordering or iii) her current opinion. Furthermore, I will analyze the interplaybetween such mechanisms and crucial features of real networks.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Nicola Perra serves as Associate Professor in Network Science in Business School of Greenwich University in London, UK. He received his PhD in Physics from the University of Cagliari, Italy in 2011. In 2009 he joined the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research at Indiana University as a Research Associate. From September 2011 until August 2014 he was a Post-Doctoral Research Scientist at the Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Technical Systems at Northeastern University. From September 2014 until July 2015 he served as Associate Research Scientist at Northeastern University in Boston, USA. His research focuses on human dynamics, dynamical processes on complex networks, big-data analytics, and mathematical/digital epidemiology. He is the co-organizer of Databeers London, and of the Computational Social Science Initiative London.
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What the Quaternary paleobiological record can tell us about vegetation turnover and climate change?
Tuesday, April 30
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard, 22 Divinity Avenue, HUH Seminar Room 125, Cambridge
Israel Loera, Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow, Davis Lab, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
Tropical forests house the vast majority of plant species. Unfortunately, very little is known about most of these species and specifically about how they are being affected by climate change. In his presentation, Dr. Kenneth Feeley describes a suite of studies documenting changes in the composition of tree species in forests throughout the tropical Andes (and beyond) and how these changes are being driven by upslope shifts in species' ranges due to rising temperatures. Dr. Feeley also discusses how ecotone barriers, for example at the timberline and cloud base, may be preventing some species from migrating upslope and thereby hastening extinctions and species loss in these vital ecosystems.
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Arctic Shipping and the Northern Sea Route, Shipping Trends, and The New Polar Code Regulations: The Concerns and Contributions of The International Insurance Industry
WHEN Tuesday, April 30, 12 – 1:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South Building, Room S354, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Environmental Sciences, Humanities, Law, Lecture, Research study, Science, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
SPEAKER(S) Michael Kingston, Managing Director, Michael Kingston Associates; Special Advisor, Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) Working Group, Arctic Council
Moderator: George Soroka, Lecturer, Harvard University; Center Associate, Davis Center
COST Free and open to the public.
CONTACT INFO Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617-495-4037
Fax: 617-495-8319
daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS In this talk Michael will look at the increasing trends in Arctic Shipping and Northern Sea Route transits, in the context of the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the Costa Concordia Disaster in Italy in 2012, which caused significant concern in the London Insurance Market. Michael worked as legal advisor on leading reports by Lloyd’s of London into the incidents. Michael also worked on Lloyd’s of London’s leading report into Arctic risk in the shadow of these disaster, which resulted in significant recommendations with far-reaching affect in both the development of the International Maritime Organization’s Polar Code for Shipping, and in the development of the Arctic Council’s Arctic Shipping Best Practice Information Forum and its web portal www.arcticshippingforum.is established by the 8 Arctic States at the end of the United States Arctic Council Chairmanship in Fairbanks Alaska in May 2017 to assist with the harmonized implementation of the Polar Code. The aim of this work is to ensure that the Arctic is protected by focusing on increased safety and environmental protection both in the planning of operations and in their actual real time operation. The aim is to ensure all decision makers in the process — operators, Flag States, the Insurance Industry and Port State Control understand the regulations, and UpToDate information about best practice to create the correct behavioral atmosphere so that those who are operating correctly can go about their business, and those who are not are stopped. The Arctic Shipping Best Practice Information Forum is a ground breaking development bringing together the who’s who of Arctic Stakeholders who then provide information available on a publicly accessible Web Portal so that it is all in one place creating a harmonised approach to the regulations. This includes State Administrations providing important information for industry, such as the Russian Federation. It is a truly collaborative approach to the implementation of regulation. For further reading see ‘Rules are one thing. Implementation another’. This concept will be presented by Iceland, incoming chair of the Arctic Council, with Michael’s assistance, on behalf of the 8 Arctic States to the World Delegations at the International Maritime Organization in June 2019 as an example for the implementation of other world regulation.
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Tuesday Seminar Series: Resistance and Repression: One Year on from Nicaragua's Civil Uprising
WHEN Tuesday, April 30, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, Room S250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
SPEAKER(S) Kai Thaler, Assistant professor in the Department of Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Moderator: Steven Levitsky, Professor of government, Harvard University
COST Free and Open to the Public
CONTACT INFO drclas@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS How did Nicaragua's protest movement grow so quickly in 2018, and how has President Daniel Ortega's regime survived the most serious threat yet to its rule? With activists in prison, exiled, or killed, what options remain for the opposition? One year on, we look at the roots and trajectory of Nicaraguan civil resistance campaign.
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BU URBAN Spring Symposium
Tuesday, April 30
12:30 – 3:00pm
BU, Center for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering, 610 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
The BU URBAN Spring Symposium acts as a forum where program partners, students, and faculty of the Graduate Program in Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health come together to share successes in tackling urban environmental challenges. These presentations are meant to highlight the current work that has been done as part of this program and inspire additional partnerships, projects, and ideas that focus on urban environmental challenges.
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Are Today's Frontiers In Cities? A Lecture by Saskia Sassen
Tuesday, April 30
4pm-5pm
BU, Myles Standish Hall, English Room, 610 Beacon Street, Boston
A reception will follow at the IOC
Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Member, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University. Her new book, Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy, has been released in 15 languages.
She is the recipient of diverse awards and mentions, including multiple doctor honoris causa, named lectures, and being selected as one of the top global thinkers on diverse lists. Most recently she was awarded the Principe de Asturias 2013 Prize in the Social Sciences and made a member of the Royal Academy of the Sciences of Netherland.
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Fireside Chat with Ed Catmull, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios
WHEN Tuesday, April 30, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Business School, Aldrich 107, Soldiers Field Road, Allston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Business School Leadership Initiative
SPEAKER(S) Ed Catmull, Co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and Former president of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation
Moderated by: Linda Hill, Faculty Chair
COST Free
TICKET WEB LINK https://secure.hbs.edu/hbsPoll/taker/open/1,143782
CONTACT INFO connects@hbs.edu
DETAILS Join us for a Fireside Chat with Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and former president of Pixar animation and Disney animation, moderated by Linda Hill, Faculty Chair, HBS Leadership Initiative
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Our Extravagant Universe: The Undiscovery of Cosmic Deceleration
Tuesday, April 30
5 PM
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
Lecture by Robert P. Kirshner, Clowes Professor of Science, emeritus, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of over 200 research papers dealing with supernovae and observational cosmology. His work with the “High-Z Supernova Team” on the acceleration of the universe was dubbed the “Science Breakthrough of the Year” by Science Magazine. Kirshner is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, and American Astronomical Society.
Astronomers have known about the expansion of the universe for nearly a hundred years. Twenty years ago, we set out to use exploding stars to measure gravity’s predicted effect: the slowing down of cosmic expansion. Amazingly, when we actually made the measurement, the expansion of the universe turned out to be speeding up! The astonishing (un)discovery of cosmic acceleration has now been confirmed from many directions. We attribute it to a “dark energy” that dominates the universe, whose nature is a deep mystery at the heart of physics.
For program information, visit www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2019-robert-kirshner-lecture. This event is part of The Undiscovered Science Lecture Series.
The event is free and open to the public. We encourage you to share this invitation with friends.
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Youth on Climate Justice: Why should we care?* An interactive, workshop developed and led by the Green Team.
Tuesday, April 30
5:30-7:30 pm
Mystic Activity Center, 530 Mystic Avenue, Somerville
This workshop is part of the City of Somerville's SustainaVille Week
*What is climate justice? How does it connect to racism? Why should Somerville residents care about climate change? How are young people experiencing, dealing with, and fighting climate change? How does and will it affect us, from the food we eat to the health inequities we face? What can we do about it?*
*If you've ever asked yourself any of these questions, this workshop is for
YOU!*
FREE and snacks will be provided.*
More information at: bit.ly/gtclimate19
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Cleantech Startups: Navigating the Mass Cleantech Landscape
Tuesday, April 30
5:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Foley Hoag LLP, 155 Seaport Boulevard, Boston
Pre-registration is required at https://mitefcamb.z2systems.com/np/clients/mitefcamb/eventRegistration.jsp?event=3383&%20&_ga=2.61727532.1084245857.1554942113-1895775866.1458499108
Cost: $10 Members; $30 Non-Members; $5 Student Members, $10 Non Member Students, $10 Startup Founders - Member or Non-Member
Meet the Organizations Creating an Enduring Ecosystem for Cleantech Innovation
Over 200 institutions in New England provide support for Cleantech research, innovation and entrepreneurship. Many of these organizations offer help to startups at all stages of development and provide critical resources like business and marketing support, mentorship, and more.
We are lucky to have so many support organizations in the area, but we know it can be hard for an entrepreneur in Cleantech to navigate all of them.
That's why we're bringing together concept/early stage startup founders and startup support organizations specializing in Cleantech for this special event where we'll help founders:
CONNECT with experts who can guide you in your journey from idea to commercialization
DISCUSS ideas and challenges with other entrepreneurs and learn from their experiences
ACCESS a guide showcasing resources at the inflection points along the path to entrepreneurial success
Hear from people who have participated in these startup support organizations, prepare your questions regarding where you are in your journey. They will be there to help you succeed.
Agenda
5:30 - 6:00 pm: Registration
6:00 - 6:15 pm: MITEF intro, event overview, and purpose
6:15 - 7:50 pm: Startup and supporting organizations presentations
7:50 - 8:50 pm: Networking and tabletop discussions between entrepreneurs and Supporting organizations
8:50 - 9:00 pm: Wrap Up
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Boston Green Drinks - April 2019 Happy Hour
Tuesday, April 30
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (EDT)
Warehouse Bar & Grille, 40 Broad Street, Boston
This month we are joined by Nicolle Fagan of the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium! Nicolle will be sharing a bit of information about the First Stepcampaign. Our tremendous and sustainably-active restaurant host, The Warehouse Bar & Grille, has recently signed on to be the first Boston-area restaurant partner to join this exciting new national campaign to pledge to skip the straw, as a first step. And it is just that...a first step on the march towards a more sustainable community. A march that we all know must happen. And it's a march full of opportunity!
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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Be the Change: Emily Bazelon & Juliette Kayyem
Tuesday, April 30
7:00pm
Peabody School Auditorium, 70 Rindge Avenue, Cambridge
Cost: $28
Tickets are required for this event. Each ticket includes a copy of CHARGED: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration.
This event will be held at the Peabody School Auditorium in Cambridge, MA.
Renowned journalist and legal commentator Emily Bazelon exposes the unchecked power of the prosecutor as a driving force in America’s mass incarceration crisis—and charts a way out. She is joined in conversation by national security and crisis management expert Juliette Kayyem.
The American criminal justice system is supposed to be a contest between two equal adversaries, the prosecution and the defense, with judges ensuring a fair fight. That image of the law does not match the reality in the courtroom, however. Much of the time, it is prosecutors more than judges who control the outcome of a case, from choosing the charge to setting bail to determining the plea bargain. They often decide who goes free and who goes to prison, even who lives and who dies. In Charged, Emily Bazelon reveals how this kind of unchecked power is the underreported cause of enormous injustice—and the missing piece in the mass incarceration puzzle.
Charged follows the story of two young people caught up in the criminal justice system: Kevin, a twenty-year-old in Brooklyn who picked up his friend’s gun as the cops burst in and was charged with a serious violent felony, and Noura, a teenage girl in Memphis indicted for the murder of her mother. Bazelon tracks both cases—from arrest and charging to trial and sentencing—and, with her trademark blend of deeply reported narrative, legal analysis, and investigative journalism, illustrates just how criminal prosecutions can go wrong and, more important, why they don’t have to.
Bazelon also details the second chances they prosecutors can extend, if they choose, to Kevin and Noura and so many others. She follows a wave of reform-minded D.A.s who have been elected in some of our biggest cities, as well as in rural areas in every region of the country, put in office to do nothing less than reinvent how their job is done. If they succeed, they can point the country toward a different and profoundly better future.
“Bazelon, cogent and clear-eyed as ever, lays out a welcome double-barreled argument: A prosecutorial shift toward mercy and fairness is crucial to healing our busted criminal justice system, and it’s already happening.”—Sarah Koenig, host of Serial
Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law, and a lecturer at Yale Law School. Her previous book is the national bestseller Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy. She’s also a co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest, a popular weekly podcast. Before joining the Times Magazine, Bazelon was a writer and editor at Slate, where she co-founded the women’s section “DoubleX.” She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
Juliette Kayyem is one of the nation’s leading experts in homeland security. A former member of the National Commission on Terrorism, and the state of Massachusetts’ first homeland security advisor, Kayyem served as President Obama’s Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security where she handled crises from the H1N1 pandemic to the BP Oil Spill. Presently a faculty member at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, she also is the founder of Kayyem Solutions, LLC, one of the nation’s only female-owned security advising companies, and CEO and co-founder of Grip Mobility. Kayyem is a security analyst for CNN, a weekly show contributor on WGBH, Boston’s NPR station, and the host of the podcast Security Mom, also produced by WGBH. In 2013, she was the Pulitzer Prize finalist for her columns in The Boston Globe. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Kayyem lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and three children.
Be the Change is PSB's civic engagement program to provide the resources to those who want to make change at all levels of government and in society in general. Click here for more information about Be the Change.
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Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi
Tuesday, April 30
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Joshua Hammerman
The Talmud states, “In a world that lacks humanity, be human.” In a world as untethered as ours has become, simply being human, a good person, is a measure of heroism. At a time when norms of civility are being routinely overwhelmed, it may be the only measure that matters. Mensch-Marks represents Rabbi Joshua Hammerman’s personal Torah scroll–the sacred text of his experiences, the life lessons he has learned along his winding, circuitous journey.
Mirroring 42 steps Israel wandered in the Wilderness, Hammerman offers 42 brief essays, several of which first appeared in The New York Times Magazine, organized into categories of character, or “mensch-marks,” each one a stepping stone toward spiritual maturation. These essays span most of Rabbi Hammerman’s life, revealing how he has striven to be a “mensch,” a human of character, through every challenge.
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White Nationalism, Community Response & the Rule of Law
Tuesday, April 30
7:00 PM EDT
The Center for Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Avenue, #1c, Somerville
Forum with two renowned experts on white nationalist hate groups and strategies to combat hate. ELden Rosenthal is a civil rights attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center and Steven Gardner is a research analyst with Political Research Associates. Doors open at 6:30 pm for registrants to sign in.
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