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, May 6
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8am Discuss Cryptocurrency Research with MIT's DCI [Breakfast]
12pm Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate [PAOC Colloquium]: Inez Fung (UC Berkeley)
12pm Data, Innovation, & the Future of Criminal Justice
12pm The Value of Electricity Reliability in India
12:15pm The Social Cost of Automobiles and Environment Policies in Asia: A Comparative Study on China and Japan
1pm Solar Grazing 101 Webinar
4pm MIT Solve: Coastal Communities Workshop
4:15pm The Divestment Debate — A Panel Discussion
5pm Valuing Nature in Real-World Decisions — with Gretchen C. Daily
5:30pm Towards Life 3.0 - Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century
6pm SPI May Discussion: The Future of Space Exploration
6:30pm Are We Cleaning Up After Ourselves?: Measuring Progress in the Fight against Water Pollution
7pm FLASH TALKS: Probing The Future
7pm First Man: Science on Screen
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Tuesday, May 7 – Wednesday, May 8
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Amazonia and Our Planetary Futures: A Conference on Climate Change
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Tuesday, May 7
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10am Board of Building Regulation and Standards (BBRS) public hearing about changes in our building codes
11:30am Climate Risk and Finance
12pm The E-Cigarette Dilemma: A Public Health Perspective
12:30pm Solve Transportation + Climate
2pm MLTalk: Perspectives on creativity and failure
3:30pm Nanomaterials and Light: New Opportunities in Energy Research
4pm Solve at MIT 2019 - Opening Plenary
5:30pm How We Win: A Workshop with George Lakey on Nonviolent Direct Action
6pm How Women Saved Rwanda
6pm Sheldon Krimsky: GMOs Decoded
6pm The Green New Deal
6pm Enel Boston Innovation Hub Launch Celebration
6:30pm Stepping Up: Business In The Era of Climate Change Part 4 (The Road Map Of The Future: Transportation)
6:30pm Getting to the Point: The Path to Affordable Housing in Massachusetts
6:30pm Dirt Rich: Discovering the power beneath our feet
7pm The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution
7pm Surrogacy, Labor and the Abolition of the Family
7pm THE BURN ZONE with Renee Linnell
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Wednesday, May 8
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9am Living Building Challenge Roundtable
9am Ocean, Island, Shore: Placing the Global Pacific in the Age of Climate Change
11am SEAS Design & Project Fair
11:45am Human Rights in Hard Places Speaker Series: Digital Control: Modern Censorship and Surveillance in the Kim Jong Un Era
12pm Ecosystem Restoration Camps: How to Heal a Dying Planet
3pm The lowdown on the high seas: What we don’t know about the oceans can kill us
4pm The NASA Psyche mission: Planning science observations of a little-known target
6pm Creative City Boston Information Session
6pm Lessons from the Liver: Uncovering Novel Approaches for Regenerative Medicine
6pm Harvard Science Book Talk: Venki Ramakrishnan, "The Quest for the Structure of the Biological Machine that Reads Our Genes”
6pm The Prescription Drug Cost Dilemma: Perspectives from Harvard Faculty
6:30pm Using Microbes for a Meat-Free Future
7pm The World's Fastest Man
7pm Extinction Rebellion: Heading for extinction talk and how to give it
7pm The Cosma Hypothesis: Implications of the Overview Effect
7pm Cities Resting on Slush: Impacts of Climate Change on Earth’s Frozen Regions
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Thursday, May 9 - Friday, May 10
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Interpreting Energy Dependence in Eurasia
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Thursday, May 9
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9am Minority Health Policy Annual Meeting
12pm 'Plug&Charge' Webinar: Part Two
12pm Opioid Abuse: Warning Signs and Action Steps
12pm Educational Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship Project Showcase
12:15pm Promoting or Preventing Democracy? U.S. Foreign Policy and the Bankruptcy of the Ideals-vs-Interests Distinction
12:30pm Women, Politics, and MA
1pm Reede Scholars 10th Annual Health Equity Symposium “Digital Health: Advancing Health Equity”
4pm Memory for Conversation
6pm Damon Krukowski: Ways of Hearing
6pm Riding the Elephant: A Memoir of Altercations, Humiliations, Hallucinations, and Observations
6pm The World's Fastest Man
6pm Corporate Innovation and the Future of Digital Payments with Sarah McCray (CEO of GasBuddy)
6pm Offshore Wind Panel
6pm Mass Innovation Nights 122
6pm Big Ideas, Short Pitches: Moving the Needle on Sustainability
6:30pm 2.007 Final Robot Competition: MOONSHOT
7pm The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution
7pm Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells
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Friday, May 10
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8:30am My Bionic Hand
9am About Face: The Changing Landscape of Face Recognition
9:30am MassHousing's Resilience in Affordable Housing Forum
9:30am Crypto Music: Decentralized and Open Music Ecosystem
3pm How Change Happens
4pm IMPACT AT SCALE: THE FRICTION BETWEEN PUBLIC HEALTH AND INNOVATION
5pm A Conversation with Herbert Kelman: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict as a Clash of National Identities and a Path to Reconciliation
7pm Film: Cherokee Word For Water
7pm Bacterial Bonanza at the MIT Museum
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Saturday, May 11
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10am Technovation 2019 Showcase & Pitch - MA Region
10am BostonVR Dev Jam
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Monday, May 13
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10am Thesis Defense - Impacts of Emission Policies in China on Air Pollution and Human Health
12pm Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate [PAOC Colloquium]: Kaighin McColl (Harvard University)
4pm xTalk: iSSP: A Dynamic Interactive Textbook
5:30pm Towards Life 3.0 - Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century
5:30pm Launch Clinic: Internet of Things (IoT) Startups
6pm Lee McIntyre: The Scientific Attitude
6:30pm Social Media in Action Training
7pm No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
7pm Inventor Talk: Patricia Nolan-Brown, inventor, author of "Idea to Invention”
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Tuesday, May 14 - Thursday, May 16
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2019 Virtual Summit on AgTech: An Online Conference Expanding Access to Trends and Issues in the Field
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Tuesday, May 14
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12pm Climate Change Clergy
1pm Interconnection Forum
1:30pm EPA Region 1 Soak Up the Rain New England Webinar Series: Reaching Public Consensus: Stormwater Funding in Ashland, MA
3pm Venezuela: How did we get here, and what’s next?
5:30pm A Healthy Problem
6pm Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football
6pm Finding a “Healthy” Problem to Solve
6pm History of Science for the People
6:30pm Getting to the Point with the authors of "The Hill to Die On”
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
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Monday, May 6
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Discuss Cryptocurrency Research with MIT's DCI [Breakfast]
Monday, May 6, 2019
8:00 AM – 10:00 AM EDT
MIT, Building E15, Lower Atrium (Bartos Theater), 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
As part of Boston Blockchain Week, join MIT's Digital Currency Initiative, the academic community, and local cryptocurrency companies to discuss cryptocurrency research.
About this Event
In addition to our research, the DCI is helping steward the burgeoning field of cryptocurrency/blockchain technology. Later this year, we're starting a peer-reviewed journal and hosting an academic conference. As part of that process, we're excited to host this event to build more bridges with the Boston cryptocurrency community. Come here to share your research with like-minded computer scientists, economists, lawyers, and game theorists! In addition to DCI research scientists (Neha Narula, Tadge Dryja, Madars Virza, Rob Ali), we'll have folks from universities like MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, etc. and a variety of "research-based" cryptocurrency companies. Please stop by!
We'll discuss:
Your research! (We'll set aside most of the time for folks to connect, share, and co-explore their research questions.)
How to build blockchain/cryptocurrency technology into an academic field.
The "hot topics" in cryptocurrency research.
How academics and businesses can collaborate on research.
Note: A light breakfast and coffee will be provided. This event will occur in the Lower Atrium of E15.
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Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate [PAOC Colloquium]: Inez Fung (UC Berkeley)
Monday, May 6
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
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Data, Innovation, & the Future of Criminal Justice
WHEN Monday, May 6, 2019, 12 – 1:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Taubman 135, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Law, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
SPEAKER(S) Laurin Leonard and Teresa Hodge, Technology and Human Rights Fellows at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
DETAILS One-in-three Americans, 70 million, currently has an arrest and/or conviction record, and by the year 2030, that number is expected to be 100 million. When we look at the future of technology, we must begin fostering honest conversations regarding the role of innovation and data. Whether this be helping individuals with records move closer to the core of society or keeping them perpetually locked out of opportunity. In this discussion, we will explore the tension between advancing with future trends and maintaining a commitment to ensure that one-third of the population is included in the design of digital products and services. Participants will learn from a mother-and-daughter cofounding team with lived experience. Active dialogue is encouraged.
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The Value of Electricity Reliability in India
Monday, May 6
12:00pm to 1:30pm
Harvard, Weil Hall, 1st Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Speakers: Shefali Khanna, PhD candidate, Harvard Kennedy School, and Kevin Rowe, PhD candidate, Harvard Kennedy School
Lunch will be served.
Energy Policy Seminar
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The Social Cost of Automobiles and Environment Policies in Asia: A Comparative Study on China and Japan
Monday, May 6
12:15pm to 1:30pm
Harvard, K262, Bowie-Vernon Room, CGIS Knafel, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
MATSUTANI Harutoshi
The purpose of this presentation is to analyze the interactive relations between automotive society and urban environment problems from the perspectives of environment policy and historical comparison. In particular, this comparative study will focus on the differences between and similiarities of the industrializations, urbanizations, and environment governance policies of China and Japan.
The automotive industry is currently undergoing significant changes, including some responses to the questions about its social costs, such as air pollutions, traffic congestions, and traffic accidents, etc. The immediate impact can be felt in large Asian cities such as those in China or India, where traffic congestion and air quality are so bad that their industrial potentials are being limited as a consequence.
Unlike the United States, Asian countries such as Japan and China have distinctive differences in their respective sequences of industrialization, urbanization, and development of automotive society. In these countries, the motorization appeared only after the formation of densely-populated large cities and the completion of urban functional layout and road network planning. The motorization and industrialization increase the urban density of population and space, which aggravates a variety of environmental problems, such as PM2.5 and traffic congestions.
This research will analyze the issues of social cost and negative externality and elaborate the necessity of environmental regulation for the traffic congestions and air pollutions caused by excessive use of cars. The fundamental approach for handling this dilemma in densely-populated large cities with heavy traffic should be to develop measures to reduce automotive traffic and develop public rail transit. This presentation is a part of an unpublished book written by the speaker.
Speaker Bio: Matsutani Harutoshi, Fellow, Harvard Asia Center; Professor of Economics, Aichi University, Japan
Chair: Professor Ezra Vogel, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Emeritus
Discussants: Professor Andrew Gordon, Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Harvard University; Acting Director, Harvard-Yenching Institute
Professor Michael B. McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, and Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Chair, Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy and Environment
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Solar Grazing 101 Webinar
Monday, May 6
1pm Eastern
Webinar
Description: FACT and the American Solar Grazing Association are teaming up to offer a free hour-long webinar on Solar Grazing. Solar arrays need vegetation management, and solar grazing is the practice of using livestock (primarily sheep) to manage this vegetation. This webinar will cover the research done to date on this innovative approach, and how sheep producers and solar site operators can put solar grazing system in place. Join us to learn to find out more about the animal welfare, economic, and environmental benefits of this practice!
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MIT Solve: Coastal Communities Workshop
Monday, May 6
4:00 PM – 6:30 PM EDT
Incubator at Sasaki, 64 Pleasant Street, Watertown
MIT Solve is a marketplace connecting innovators with resources to solve Global Challenges. MIT Solve's Coastal Communities challenge asks the provocative question: how can coastal communities mitigate and adapt to climate change while developing and prospering?
We invite you to the Incubator at Sasaki to hear from folks from the challenge's selected solutions and provide feedback. Spots are limited!
ISeeChange – Mobilizing communities to share microdata about climate impacts to better inform adaptation and infrastructure design
GreenStream – Low-cost distributed sensors to monitor and report on flooding to reduce safety risks and prevent property loss
GROW Oyster Reefs – Modular and scalable reef restoration solution to protect coast communities & ecosystems
Caras con Causa - Local community development through coastal ecology, empowerment, and education
CMTAS Yauco - Anaerobic biodigesters for economic development, public health, and food security
Shimmy Upskill – Upskilling garment workers for new jobs in the age of automation through digital pattern making and 3D modeling
The schedule is as follows:
4:00-4:15pm Guests arrive / networking
4:15-4:30pm Welcome by Sasaki Foundation Executive Director Alexandra Lee and intro by MIT Solve's Alexander Dale
4:30-5:00pm Teams pitch
5:00-5:30pm Breakout sessions
5:30-6:00pm Report-backs
6:00-6:30pm Networking
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The Divestment Debate — A Panel Discussion
WHEN Monday, May 6, 2019, 4:15 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sever Hall, Room 213, 29 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Conferences, Education, Humanities, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Universities: Past, Present, and Future
Mahindra Humanities Center
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Valuing Nature in Real-World Decisions — with Gretchen C. Daily
Monday, May 6
5:00pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Livecast available
An Invitation to the 17th Annual Henry W. Kendall Memorial Lecture
Please join us for a thought-provoking evening with Gretchen C. Daily, Stanford University Bing Professor in Environmental Science, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, co-founder and faculty director of the Natural Capital Project, and recipient of the 2017 Blue Planet Prize.
An awakening is underway, to the values of nature and the risks and devastating costs of its loss. Professor Daily will describe a powerful approach to valuing nature in policy and finance – using new forms of science, data, software, and engagement – that is driving change all over the world. The approach – developed by the Natural Capital Project at Stanford, together with many partners – is being deployed by governments, investors, businesses and communities. China and Latin America stand out today for innovation at scale, illuminating pathways toward green, inclusive development.
For more than two decades, Stanford University professor Gretchen Daily has pioneered the concept of natural capital, advancing science and tools together with decision-makers to integrate the values of nature into development plans. There is still a long way to go – but there has been stunning progress toward the transformation toward an “ecological civilization.”
Speaker: Gretchen C. Daily, Stanford University
An ecologist by training, Professor Daily’s research spans biodiversity conservation, agriculture, and livelihoods; the production and value of ecosystem services for human health and well-being; and policy and finance mechanisms for integrating conservation and human development.
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Towards Life 3.0 - Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century
WHEN Monday, May 6, 5:30 – 6:45 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Wexner 102, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Science, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
SPEAKER(S) Sushma Raman, Executive director, Carr Center
DETAILS "Towards Life 3.0: Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century" 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 p.m. 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.
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SPI May Discussion: The Future of Space Exploration
Monday, May 6
6:00pm to 7:30pm
MIT, Building 66-160, 25 Ames Street, Cambridge
While unmanned space exploration has had numerous successes in recent years, humans have not ventured beyond Earth’s orbit since the 1970s. However, with the development of the NASA Orion crew spacecraft and efforts by private companies like SpaceX, the possibility of humans returning to the Moon and perhaps traveling to Mars seems increasingly likely. But how realistic are plans to establish permanent colonies beyond Earth? What kinds of technological or economic barriers remain in place, and what policies could be put in place to overcome them? Join the Science Policy Initiative for our final monthly meeting of this academic year at 6 pm on Monday, 5/6 in Room 66-160 as we discuss these and other questions over dinner. Sponsored by the GSC.
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Are We Cleaning Up After Ourselves?: Measuring Progress in the Fight against Water Pollution
Monday, May 6
6:30-8:00pm
The Burren, 247 Elm Street, Somerville
Dr. Loretta Fernandez, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University
Human pollution is a problem that sits prominently in the public eye, with many private initiatives and government institutions attempting to combat it. However, understanding how successful (or unsuccessful) our efforts to clean up pollution are is a scientific challenge in and of itself. Through the development of new monitoring tools and analytical methods, Dr. Fernandez and her colleagues work to increase the quality and quantity of data available to understand how anthropogenic chemicals move through and are transformed within water, air, soils, and biota. Their current projects include identifying sources and sinks of chemicals in the coastal ocean, developing and improving remediation techniques for legacy pollutants, and examining chemical mixtures for markers that can be used for forensic identification of pollution events. Please join us for what promises to be an enlightening discussion
More information at http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/science-by-the-pint/
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FLASH TALKS: Probing The Future
Monday, May 6
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Cambridge Innovation Center, Venture Cafe, 1 Broadway, Cambridge
Doors open @ 6pm -- Come early and meet other Long Now thinkers -- Presentation starts @ 7pm
Long Now Boston presents selected
FLASH TALKS by members of the Long Now Boston Community.
FLASH TALK concepts will be original, interesting and designed to provoke discussion on science, technology, society or culture with a very long-term perspective, consistent with the aspiration of “striving to be good ancestors.”
Each FLASH TALK will be followed with a Q&A, and audience members will then be asked to vote for their favorite presentation. All FLASH TALK participants will join the final panel conversation and Q&A, after which the winner will be announced.
FLASH TALK proposals (limited to 100 word BIO and 200 word description) may be submitted by email to ggantz@longnowboston.org until April 11. Presenters will be announced on April 15.
Audience participation is encouraged, so bring your enthusiasm and your questions for a thought-provoking evening focused on the Long Now.
Join the conversation and be part of the solution.
Admission is FREE but tickets are required. Get a ticket HERE for attending the event and listening to talks.
Go to LongNowBoston.Org for details on how to present. We'd love to have you join us.
We’re proud and excited to welcome you to the Long Now Boston community.
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First Man: Science on Screen
Monday, May 6
7pm
Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline
Before the film, former NASA astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman will discuss the legacy of Apollo 11 and share his personal memories of Neil Armstrong.
On the heels of their six-time Academy Award®-winning smash, La La Land, Oscar®-winning director Damien Chazelle and star Ryan Gosling reteamed for First Man, the riveting story behind the first manned mission to the moon, focusing on Neil Armstrong and the decade leading to the historic Apollo 11 flight. A visceral and intimate account told from Armstrong’s perspective, based on the book by James R. Hansen, the film explores the triumphs and the cost—on Armstrong, his family, his colleagues and the nation itself—of one of the most dangerous missions in history.
About the Speaker
Jeffrey Hoffman is an American former NASA astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.
Hoffman made five flights as a space shuttle astronaut, including the first mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993, when the orbiting telescope's flawed optical system was corrected. Trained as an astrophysicist, he also flew on the 1990 Spacelab shuttle mission that featured the Astro-1 ultraviolet astronomical observatory in the shuttle's payload bay. Over the course of his five missions he logged more than 1,211 hours and 21.5 million miles in space. He was also NASA's first Jewish male astronaut, and the second Jewish man in space after Soviet cosmonaut Boris Volynov.
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Tuesday, May 7 – Wednesday, May 8
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Amazonia and Our Planetary Futures: A Conference on Climate Change
Tuesday, May 7, 9:30 AM – Wednesday, May 8, 1:00 PM EDT
Harvard, CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
THIS EVENT WILL LIVE-STREAM ON FACEBOOK
Climate change is one of the most important long-term threats for the future of our societies. Solutions are complex, depending not only on engineering and policy, but also on imagination and public will towards alternative forms of inhabiting the planet. Latin America, home to the largest rainforest areas in the world, is both at risk of environmental catastrophe and a key region in which models for thriving bioeconomies based on rainforests can evolve. This symposium will bring together experts and leaders from the US and Latin America to discuss the past, present and future of Amazonia. We will discuss deforestation trends and their interactions with climate and health; how to move beyond our lack of imagination for viable futures, including the importance and role of indigenous peoples of the Amazon; and ongoing and emerging initiatives towards river-flowing, rainforest-based economies across Amazonia.
TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2019
8:30am - Coffee & Registration
9:30am - Opening remarks by Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor (Emeritus); Museum of Comparative Zoology Professor (Emeritus)
Session 1: Forecasting land use, climate, and their interactions
Tasso Azevedo, General Coordinator, MapBiomas Initiative
Marina Hirota, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Federal University of Santa Catarina
Paulo Artaxo, Professor of Environmental Physics, University of São Paulo
Marcia Castro, Andelot Professor of Demography; Chair, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Moderator: Paul Moorcroft, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
12:00pm - Lunch Break
1:30pm - Remarks by Davi Kopenawa, advocate for the Yanomami people and the Amazon rainforest and author of The Falling Sky
Session 2: Imagining and creating futures
Eliane Brum, Journalist, writer
Luis Gilberto Murillo, former Minister of Environment, Colombia
Augusto Zampini, Theologian, Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development
Moderator: Andrew Revkin, Strategic advisor for Environmental and Science journalism, National Geographic Society
WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2019
9am - Coffee & Registration
10am - Opening Remarks by Carlos Nobre, Senior Researcher, Institute for Advanced Studies, University of São Paulo; Senior Fellow, World Resources Institute
Session 3: Towards a standing-forest, flowing-rivers bioeconomy
Brigitte Baptiste, Director, Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute
Beto VerÃssimo, Senior Researcher, Imazon
Daniela Baccas, Head of the Environmental Department, Brazilian Development Bank
Moderator: Robin Sears, Bullard Fellow, Harvard Forest
ORGANIZED BY:
Bruno de Medeiros, Postdoctoral Fellow, Climate Change Solutions Fund
Bruno Carvalho, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African American Studies; Affiliated Professor in Urban Planning and Design at the GSD; Faculty Associate, Harvard University Center for the Environment and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Brian D. Farrell, Lehner Professor for the Study of Latin America in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology; Director, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
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Tuesday, May 7
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Board of Building Regulation and Standards (BBRS) public hearing about changes in our building codes
Tuesday, May 7
10:00 - 1:00 pm
1000 Washington Street, Boston
This is a great opportunity to speak up to support the development of a net zero stretch code for the Commonwealth. While the base energy code in Massachusetts, the IECC, is updated every three years, the stretch code which allows communities to go above and beyond the base code has not been updated since it was first adopted in 2009. This means that the stretch code is not a stretch any more.
Buildings are responsible for over half of all the energy consumption in Massachusetts and 46% of carbon pollution. Giving communities the option to adopt a net zero stretch code will help in net zero planning, reduce energy use, save consumers money on their energy bills and help us meet our climate goals.
We hope you will join us on May 7th to testify about why a net zero stretch code is important for YOUR community.
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Climate Risk and Finance
Tuesday, May 7
11:30 AM – 1:00 PM EDT
MIT, Building E62-250, 100 Main Street, Cambridge
Join us for this timely presentation and panel discussion on climate change risk and finance, featuring Dr. Blair Feltmate of the University of Waterloo and MIT Sloan’s Robert Pindyck (Finance and Economics) and Jason Jay (Sustainability Initiative).
Climate Risk and Finance
A warming climate and associated extreme weather risks (e.g., flood/drought, fire, hail, wind, extreme heat/cold, storm surge/sea level rise, etc.) can impact the operations and cash flow of companies spanning many, if not all, industry sectors. In some cases, these impacts could be material to the point of affecting the share price of a publicly traded issuer (e.g., through supply chain disruption), or the capacity of a borrower to repay a loan. Under these circumstances, it could be prudent for a portfolio manager to make adjustments to the weighting or inclusion of equities in a portfolio, or for a credit manager to adjust the credit rating of a borrower.
The fiduciary responsibility of institutional investors and credit rating agencies to account for material climate change and extreme weather risk impacts (“climate risk”) is not in question. However, despite the inclination that portfolio and credit managers may have to incorporate climate risk into investment/risk analysis, what is missing is a prioritization framework that identifies material climate risks that are specific to industry sectors.
This presentation will focus on how to develop an industry-specific climate-risk framework that will provide practical guidance to institutional managers and credit rating agencies.
Dr. Blair Feltmate
Blair is Head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at University of Waterloo. The Intact Centre is an incubator for research and knowledge mobilization, with an aim to limit the negative impacts associated with climate change and extreme weather events in Canada. The Intact Centre was made possible through the generosity of Intact Financial Corporation.
Previous positions Blair has held include Vice President, Sustainable Development, Bank of Montreal; Director, Sustainable Development, OPG; Partner, Sustainable Investment Group/YMG Capital Management; and President, Sustainable Systems Associates. His early career began by developing the sustainable development programs for such companies as Noranda, Falconbridge, Placer Dome, Barrick Gold, Consumers Gas and the American Chemistry Council (Washington).
He is Chair of theFederal Government of Canada Expert Panel on Climate Adaptation and Resilience Results, and he is Chair of the Adaptation, Canadian Climate and Clean Growth Institute. He is also Chair of the Electricity Transmission and Distribution Adaptation Standard, Canadian Standards Association (CSA); he serves on other flood mitigation Standards committees for CSA. He was Chair/Founder of the Sustainable Electricity Program, Canadian Electricity Association. Blair is also on the Advisory Board of the Global Risk Institute, which is a primary advisor to Canada’s major pension funds.
Blair has written textbooks on Sustainable Banking (University of Toronto Press), and Aquatic Ecology (CAB International). He is generally interviewed by TV/radio/newspapers 100-150 times per year, primarily on the subject of how to address climate change. He speaks regularly to governments (nationally / internationally) and industry sectors on the need and means to adjust to a changing climate.
Blair was an NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellow (University of Waterloo); he holds a Ph.D, Theoretical and Applied Ecology (University of Toronto); M.Sc., Zoology (U of T); M.A., Sustainable Development (Wilfrid Laurier University); Hon. B.Sc., Geography.
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The E-Cigarette Dilemma: A Public Health Perspective
WHEN Tuesday, May 7, 2019, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, The Leadership Studio, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Forum at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
SPEAKER(S) Howard Koh, Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Robin Koval, CEO and president, Truth Initiative
Vaughan Rees, Director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Mitch Zeller, Director of the Center for Tobacco Products, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Moderator: Chris Kirkham, Enterprise Reporter, Reuters
COST Free webcast
TICKET WEB LINK https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4TOUj2RVNqsbbb7
CONTACT INFO theforum@hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS Since their introduction, e-cigarettes have triggered controversy. Often touted as safer alternatives to regular cigarettes, e-cigarettes come with their own risks, including possible nicotine addiction. Use among youth in particular has increased dramatically, and the FDA has proposed tighter regulations in an effort to reduce teen use. In this Forum, experts will explore the perceived risks and benefits of e-cigarettes, asking how best to move forward while preserving past tobacco control successes.
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Solve Transportation + Climate
Tuesday, May 7
12:30pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 9-255, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
DUSP Climate is a student-led, cross-cutting group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, dedicated to climate eduction, advocacy, and action.
DUSP Climate's lecture series 'What Should Cities Do?' is a series of events designed to explore how DUSP can change the way we work, research, and learn to further sustainable development goals and address our carbon impact.
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MLTalk: Perspectives on creativity and failure
Tuesday, May 7
2:00pm to 3:00pm
MIT, Building E14: Media Lab, 300LA, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Colleen Macklin and John Sharp in conversation with Joi Ito
All talks at the Media Lab, unless otherwise noted, are free and open to the public. No registration is required.
This talk will be webcast. Join the conversation on Twitter: #MLTalks
Have you ever failed? Well, if so, you have something in common with the most creative people in the world. Over the last seven years, John Sharp and Director’s Fellow alum Colleen Macklin have interviewed creative practitioners to see how they manage the inevitable failures involved in their work. Their secret? Iteration. Or in the words of Samuel Beckett, learning to "fail better.”
In this conversation hosted by Joi Ito, Macklin and Sharp will share what they’ve discovered from the case studies featured in their new book, Iterate: Ten Lessons in Design and Failure. Join them in mapping the different ways practitioners iterate, based on case studies that include winemaker Allison Tauziet, artist Miranda July, comedian Baratunde Thurston, pro skater Amelia Brodka, Radiolab hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, architect/game design collaborators Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman, and more.
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Nanomaterials and Light: New Opportunities in Energy Research
Tuesday, May 7
3:30pm to 4:30pm
MIT, Building 6-104, Chipman Room, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
The Materials Science and Engineering Seminar Series presents Prof. Matthew Sheldon of Texas A&M University who will give a talk on "Nanomaterials and Light: New Opportunities in Energy Research".
Abstract
The central focus of research in the Sheldon Laboratory is to understand how the structural properties of nanoscale semiconductor and metallic materials can impart unique optical and electronic behavior, and to employ these attributes when they are advantageous for applications in solar energy conversion and more general optoelectronic and photoelectrochemical processes. More fundamentally, a unifying theme of the Sheldon Laboratory's work is the deep insights provided by analyzing the opportunities for nanoscale materials in terms of underlying thermodynamic concepts. In this seminar, Prof. Sheldon will discuss some of his recent breakthroughs in defining nanocrystal optical response, and plasmonic optoelectronic device design that exemplify how these materials enable new avenues for circumventing assumed thermodynamic limitations in optical energy conversion.
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Solve at MIT 2019 - Opening Plenary: Tech for Equality
WHEN Tuesday, May 7, 2019, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE MIT, Kresge Auditorium, 48 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Conferences, Education, Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences, Information Technology, Science, Social Sciences, Sustainability, Volunteer Opportunities
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR MIT Solve
SPEAKER(S)Alaa Murabit, High-Level Commissioner on Health Employment & Economic Growth, United Nations; Sustainable Development Goals Advocate
Joichi "Joi” Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab, Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences
L. Rafael Reif, President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Luis Alberto Moreno, President, Inter-American Development Bank
Lyla June, Poet, Musician, Human Ecologist, Community Organizer
Mark Reuss, President, General Motors
COST Free
CONTACT INFO For inquiries, contact Jenny Zhao:
DETAILS The world has made great strides over the last decade in reducing extreme poverty and expanding access to education and health care for millions, yet income inequality continues to increase between and within countries. A person’s zip code, gender, race, and nationality — rather than their talents — overly determine their opportunities. Technology holds great potential to speed progress; how can we design and deploy tech to reduce global inequality gaps — not exacerbate them?
LINK http://solve.mit.edu
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How We Win: A Workshop with George Lakey on Nonviolent Direct Action
Tuesday, May 7
5:30 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Beacon Hill Friends House, 6-8 Chestnut Street, Boston
Cost: $10 – $100
This is a repeat of the sold-out March 30 workshop. This workshop is capped at 50 participants. We recommend purchasing tickets early as we expect this event to sell out as well.
In this participatory workshop led by social movement veteran George Lakey, participants will explore how to use direct action campaigns strategically, including:
choosing the right target
designing a creative campaign
avoiding burnout within your group
building a movement of movements to achieve real progressive victories.
Workshop participants who have read How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning will get the most out of the workshop, but it is by no means a prerequisite. Copies of the book will be available for sale and can be ordered at https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/how-we-win/ .
Bring a bag supper and eat in community together at 5:30pm, or arrive by 6pm for the workshop. Light snacks will be provided.
This event is cosponsored by Beacon Hill Friends House and the Boston Democratic Socialists of America.
Admission
Admission is on a sliding scale. Recommended range $10-$100; all donations gratefully accepted. Scholarships are available: please email program@bhfh.org. Advance registration is required.
About George Lakey and How We Win
“If you want to be a soldier, you can go to West Point. If you want to be a nonviolent change-maker-- well, this is an awfully good place to start. George Lakey has been near the center of American resistance for decades, and so he has both remarkable stories and remarkable insights—not to mention some remarkable colleagues who add their perspective to this necessary manual.”
-- Bill McKibben, co-founder 350.org
George Lakey, author of How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning, has led over 1500 workshops on five continents. He was first arrested in the civil rights movement and was a trainer for 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. In 2018 he was arrested campaigning for Power Local Green Jobs. In between he gave leadership to campaigns on neighborhood, city-wide, state, national, and international levels, including cross-race, cross-class coalitions and the LGBTQ movement. He co-led strategy workshops with César Chavez. He’s worked with labor unions, Mohawks, high school students, environmentalists, and the Puerto Rican independence movement. He also taught conflict studies at colleges and universities, most recently Swarthmore College, and authored ten books on how to bring about change.
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How Women Saved Rwanda
WHEN Tuesday, May 7, 2019, 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) Ambassador Swanee Hunt, Founder of the Women and Public Policy Program and Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
CONTACT INFO IOP Forum Office, 617-495-1380
DETAILS Twenty-five years ago, the African nation of Rwanda was ripped apart by a genocide that left nearly a million dead. The untold story is that when the bloodshed ended, women not only buried the dead and cared for orphaned children, they drove a recovery that laid a foundation for their current political and economic power. Join our conversation with the visionary pioneers who carved out unlikely new roles for themselves, creating stability and reconciliation in genocide’s wake.
Editorial Comment: The women of Liberia were also instrumental in saving their country from civil war and endemic violence.
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Sheldon Krimsky: GMOs Decoded
Tuesday, May 7
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
The MIT Press Bookstore, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Cost: $0 – $19.96
Please join the MIT Press Bookstore in welcoming Professor Sheldon Krimsky to discuss his book, GMOs Decoded.
Since they were introduced to the market in the late 1990s, GMOs (genetically modified organisms, including genetically modified crops), have been subject to a barrage of criticism. Agriculture has welcomed this new technology, but public opposition has been loud and scientific opinion mixed. In GMOs Decoded, Sheldon Krimsky examines the controversies over GMOs—health and safety concerns, environmental issues, the implications for world hunger, and the scientific consensus (or lack of one). He explores the viewpoints of a range of GMO skeptics, from public advocacy groups and nongovernmental organizations to scientists with differing views on risk and environmental impact.
Sheldon Krimsky is Lenore Stern Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences and Adjunct Professor in Public Health and Community Medicine in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of fourteen books, including Science in the Private Interest and Stem Cell Dialogues.
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The Green New Deal
Tuesday, May 7
6:00 PM EDT
Venture Cafe Cambridge, One Broadway, Cambridge
Cst: $8 – $12 (free if you use coupon code imin - as in "I’m in!”)
Join us on May 7th to talk about a big idea with high stakes - The Green New Deal. On Feb. 7th, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced H. Res. 109 to the House of Representatives and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced companion resolution S. Res. 59 in the Senate. There are now 103 congresspeople and counting co-sponsoring the resolution.
In the time since, there has been a lot of excitement and growing attention for the ambitious 10-year goals of the Green New Deal. Three months post-introduction, we gather at BASG to cover what's in the proposed program and how to get involved. How do we go from wave of enthusiasm to wave of action to address the economy, infrastructure, agriculture, transportation, energy, equity, workforce readiness, and much more with a green lens?
There's a big gap between the goals and how to make them happen. Leading the charge in trying to see what a Massachusetts Green New Deal would look like is the volunteer network 350 Mass and their supporting nonprofit, Better Future Project. Using the same principles underlying the federal GND, they are trying to figure out what GND would look like at the state level. And they're coming to BASG to share their progress and hear ideas from us on how we might move things forward. BASG is a remarkable brain trust of folks actively trying to solve problems that should likely be part of the Green New Deal. The GND is built to inspire big ideas and solution, and in that spirit, our evening's format will be a highly interactive visioning session. We need you here this month even if it's the only BASG event you can get to this year!
We've also invited Representative Majorie Decker (D-25th Middlesex) and The Sunrise Movement Boston Hub to join the discussion. The Sunrise Movement is a grassroots organization of youth with a focus to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the influence of fossil fuel executives on politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people.
Register early to join us for this evening. This will be the last BASG event before our summer break.
See you there!
Carol, Holly, Tilly, Eric, and Amy
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Enel Boston Innovation Hub Launch Celebration
Tuesday, May 7
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Greentown Labs, 444 Somerville Avenue, Somerville
Join us May 7, 2019 for the launch of Enel’s Boston Innovation Hub at Greentown Labs.
This Hub opens doors to new possibilities in Enel’s mission to discover the brightest minds and develop collaborations with the most promising startups in the world. Through the Hub, Enel will offer startups expertise, access to Enel facilities, as well as resources to develop and scale their solutions at a global level.
Enel is committed to transforming the energy sector in order to build a more sustainable future. Enel is driving this change by continually growing their network of Innovation Hubs in the most innovative ecosystems around the world, and now, they are proud to announce the launch of the latest Hub in Boston, at Greentown Labs.
Don’t miss this opportunity to meet Enel X CEO Francesco Venturini, Enel Chief Innovability Officer Ernesto Ciorra, the Head of New Technology and Innovation of Global Infrastructures and Network division Marina Lombardi, the Head of Innovability of the Thermal Generation division Nicola Rossi, the Head of Innovability of Enel Green Power Giovanni Tula, and the Head of Innovability of Enel X Marco Gazzino.
If you already want to introduce us your solution or technology, you can! If it is in line with our challenges, we will discuss opportunities of collaboration.
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Stepping Up: Business In The Era of Climate Change Part 4 (The Road Map Of The Future: Transportation)
Tuesday, May 7
6:30 pm
WBUR CitySpace, 890 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://www.wbur.org/events/446272/stepping-up-the-road-map-of-the-future-transportation-part-4
Cost: $15.00
A five-part WBUR series in collaboration with Harvard Business School and Boston University Questrom School of Business
Business is the main source of the greenhouse gases that are causing the Earth’s climate to change. Business is also the main source of new products, services and business models that may save us from wholesale climate calamity. This 5-part series, featuring leading thinkers from business, environmental advocacy groups and area universities, will explore what businesses are doing, can do and should do to confront climate change.
In Massachusetts, the transportation sector generated more greenhouse gas emissions than any other sector, and the pressure is on to make improvements. The specter of climate change is shaking up the business strategies of traditional automakers and giving a big boost to alternatives like peer-to-peer car sharing, biking, and scooters. What will the transportation system of the future look like? What are the barriers and how are upstart companies tackling them? How are big car companies responding?
Panelists:
Adam Gromis, Public Policy Manager, Sustainability & Environmental Impact, Uber
Kevin Butt, General Manager - Regional Environmental Sustainability Director, Toyota North America
Caroline Samponaro, Head of Bike, Scooter & Pedestrian Policy at Lyft
Moderator, WBUR Environmental Reporter Bruce Gellerman
Click the links below to purchase tickets to other events in this series.
Part 1: Open for Business?, March 5, 2019
Part 2: Food, Diet, and Climate, April 2, 2019
Part 3: Climate Politics and Business, April 22, 2019
Part 5: Energy Transitions, June 4, 2019
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Getting to the Point: The Path to Affordable Housing in Massachusetts
Tuesday, May 7
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, 210 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston
State and local leaders will discuss the housing challenges facing Massachusetts. How does the lack of affordable housing in the Commonwealth affect diverse communities? How does the housing crunch impact quality of life and economic growth in our region? How can the state work with cities and towns across the Commonwealth to create a sustainable housing market? Leaders will share how government and other stakeholders are working to address the need for affordable housing in our state.
Featuring:
Adam Chapdelaine, Town Manager, Town of Arlington, @AdamWChap
Rachel Heller, CEO, Citizens’ Housing & Planning Association (CHAPA), @CHAPAdotorg
Mike Kennealy, Secretary of Housing and Economic Development, Commonwealth of Massachusetts,@MassEOHED
Chrystal Kornegay, Executive Director, MassHousing, @MassHousing
Moderator:
Adrian Walker, Columnist, The Boston Globe, @Adrian_Walker
REGISTRATION & SEATING
Registration opens no earlier than 5:30 PM. Registration and doors close 15 minutes after the start of the program. Some seats have obstructed views. If needed, an overflow room will provide guests with a live stream of the program.
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Dirt Rich: Discovering the power beneath our feet
Tuesday, May 7
6:30-9:00 pm
The Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Square, Somerville
Cost: $10
Farmers To You, along with cosponsors CitySprouts and Mothers Out Front, will host a screening of the film Dirt Rich at the Somerville Theatre. This provocative and moving documentary shifts the focus from greenhouse gas emissions to carbon drawdown as a clear and viable solution for reversing the effects of runaway global warming.
Immediately following the movie will be a panel discussion and Q&A with Greg Georgaklis of Farmers To You, Jane Hirschi from CitySprouts and Steve Keleti regarding MA Healthy Soils Bill.
Editorial Comment: There is a Soil Health Demonstration Trial authorized in Section 2307 (c) (7) of the 2018 Farm Bill. Contact Leslie.Deavers@wdc.usda.gov to request prompt implementation and full funding, at least the $15 million that was specifically appropriated for the Soil Health Demonstration Trail by the Senate.
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The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution
Tuesday, May 7
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes New Yorker staff writer PETER HESSLER—acclaimed author of River Town and Oracle Bones—for a discussion of his latest book, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution. He will be joined in conversation by MATTHEW BELL, correspondent for The World at WGBH Boston.
About The Buried
Drawn by a fascination with Egypt's rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo's neighborhoods, and visit the legendary archaeological digs of Upper Egypt. After his years of covering China for the New Yorker, friends warned him Egypt would be a much quieter place. But not long before he arrived, the Egyptian Arab Spring had begun, and now the country was in chaos.
In the midst of the revolution, Hessler often traveled to digs at Amarna and Abydos, where locals live beside the tombs of kings and courtiers, a landscape that they call simply al-Madfuna: "the Buried." He and his wife set out to master Arabic, striking up a friendship with their instructor, a cynical political sophisticate. They also befriended Peter's translator, a gay man struggling to find happiness in Egypt's homophobic culture. A different kind of friendship was formed with the neighborhood garbage collector, an illiterate but highly perceptive man named Sayyid, whose access to the trash of Cairo would be its own kind of archaeological excavation. Hessler also met a family of Chinese small-business owners in the lingerie trade; their view of the country proved a bracing counterpoint to the West's conventional wisdom.
Through the lives of these and other ordinary people in a time of tragedy and heartache, and through connections between contemporary Egypt and its ancient past, Hessler creates an astonishing portrait of a country and its people. What emerges is a book of uncompromising intelligence and humanity—the story of a land in which a weak state has collapsed but its underlying society remains in many ways painfully the same. A worthy successor to works like Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, The Buried bids fair to be recognized as one of the great books of our time.
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Surrogacy, Labor and the Abolition of the Family
Tuesday, May 7
7:00pm
Trident Books Cafe, 338 Newbury Street, Boston
Join Sophie Lewis and Moira Weigel for a wide-ranging conversation on the oppressive nature of the nuclear family, the contradictions of commercial surrogacy, and what to learn from the struggle for sex worker rights when fighting for the rights of all pregnant people, paid or unpaid.
About Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family by Sophie Lewis:
The surrogacy industry is worth an estimated 1 billion dollars a year, and many of its surrogates work in terrible conditions, while many gestate babies for no pay at all. Should it be illegal to pay someone to gestate a baby for you? Full Surrogacy Now brings a fresh and unique perspective to the debate. Rather than making surrogacy illegal or allowing it to continue as is, Sophie Lewis argues we should be looking to radically transform it. Surrogates should be put front and center, and their rights to the babies they gestate should be expanded to acknowledge that they are more than mere vessels. In doing so we can break down our assumptions that children necessarily belong to those whose genetics they share.
This might sound like a radical proposal but expanding our idea of who children belong to would be a good thing. Taking collective responsibility for children, rather than only caring for the ones we share DNA with, would radically transform notions of kinship. Adopting this expanded concept of surrogacy helps us to see that it always, as the saying goes, takes a village to raise a child.
About the Author
Sophie Lewis is a theorist, critic and translator living in Philadelphia. She publishes her work – on topics ranging from dating to Donna Haraway – on both scholarly and non-academic platforms including Boston Review, Viewpoint, Signs, Science as Culture, Jacobin, The New Inquiry, Mute, and Salvage Quarterly. Her translations include Communism for Kids by Bini Adamczak (MIT, 2016, with Jacob Blumenfeld), A Brief History of Feminism by Antje Schrupp (MIT, 2017), and Other and Rule by Sabine Hark and Paula Villa (Verso, forthcoming). A feminist committed to cyborg ecology and queer communism, she is a member of the Out of the Woods collective and an editor at Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry.
Moira Weigel is a postdoctoral scholar at the Harvard Society of Fellows, the author of Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating and a founding editor of Logic magazine.
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THE BURN ZONE with Renee Linnell
Tuesday, May 7
7:00pm
Trident Books Cafe, 338 Newbury Street, Boston
After seven years of faithfully following her spiritual teacher, Renee Linnell realized she was in a Buddhist cult and had been severely brainwashed. She had graduated magna cum laude with a double degree. She had traveled to nearly 50 countries alone before she turned 35. She was a surf model and a professional tango dancer. She had started five different companies and was getting an MBA from NYU. How does someone like her end up brainwashed in a cult?
Renee Linnell's The Burn Zone is an exploration of how we give away our power to others when we feel alone, lost, seeking, or doubtful of our self-worth--and a guide on how we can ultimately emerge from intense trauma stronger than ever. Part inspirational story, part cautionary tale, this is a memoir for spiritual seekers and those who feel lost in a world that makes them feel like they don't belong.
A cult survivor's story, The Burn Zone is filled with inspiration and encouragement for anyone struggling to find a sense of purpose, spiritual fulfillment, or the answers to their problems.
About the Author:
Renee Linnell is a serial entrepreneur who has founded or cofounded five companies and has an Executive Masters in Business Administration from New York University. Currently, she is working on starting a publishing company to give people from diverse walks of life an opportunity to tell their stories. She divides her time between Colorado and Southern California.
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Wednesday, May 8
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Living Building Challenge Roundtable
Wednesday, May 8
9:00 AM – 10:30 AM EDT
Hummingbird, Floor 12, 50 Milk Street, Boston
Cost: $35
USGBC MA’s mission is to drive sustainable and regenerative design, construction, and operation of the built environment. The only way to accomplish our mission is to collaborate with community members. To that end, join us for our Living Building Challenge (LBC) Roundtable.
The LBC Roundtable will enable like-minded professionals to gather and explore specific issues, define actions, develop strategies and explore solutions related to LBC in the green building industry. Join us in moving the needle towards a net positive environment, society, and economy.
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Ocean, Island, Shore: Placing the Global Pacific in the Age of Climate Change
Wednesday, May 8
9:00-5:30pm
Harvard, HUCE 440, 4th floor, Museum of Comparative Zoology, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
9:00-9:05 opening remarks by organizers
Chair: Xiaofei Gao (Fung Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University Asia Center)
9:05-9:50 John Huth (Donner Professor of Science, Department of Physics, Harvard University)
Reading the Waves: Toward an Understanding of the Tradition of Wave Piloting in the Marshall Islands
Discussant: Christina Thompson (Editor, Harvard Review, Harvard University)
9:50-10:35 John Hayashi (Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Harvard University)
Writing the History of Japanese Transoceanic Migration and Disease Prevention
Discussant: Warwick Anderson (Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Visiting Professor of Australian Studies, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University)
COFFEE BREAK
Chair: Sugata Bose (Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Department of History, Harvard University)
10:50-11:35 Jonas Ruegg (Ph.D. Candidate, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University)
Mapping the Kuroshio Frontier: Japan's Discovery of the Black Current
Discussant: Helen Rozwadowski (Director of the Maritime Studies Program and Associate Professor of History, Department of History, University of Connecticut, Avery Point)
11:35-12:20 Michaela Thompson (Preceptor of Environmental Science and Public Policy and Giorgio Ruffolo Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Sustainability Science, Kennedy School of Goverment, Harvard University)
Red Fish, Green Fish: A History of the Bristol Bay Sockeye Fishery
Discussant: Alexis Dudden (Professor of History, Department of History, University of Connecticut)
LUNCH BREAK
Chair: Stefan Huebner (SSRC Transregional Research Fellow and Visiting Scholar, Harvard University Asia Center)
1:10-1:55 Jason O. Chang (Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies, Department of History, University of Connecticut)
The Maritime Racial Form of the Indo-Pacific: Lascar and Danjia Sailors in the Long Nineteenth Century
Discussant: Anthony D. Medrano (Ziff Environmental Fellow, Harvard University Center for the Environment)
1:55-2:40 Edward (Ted) Melillo (Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Department of Environmental Studies, Amherst College)
'Oiwi (Native) History of Kona Coffee in a Global Perspective
Discussant: Ian J. Miller (Professor of History, Department of History, Harvard University)
COFFEE BREAK
Chair: Anthony D. Medrano (Ziff Environmental Fellow, Harvard University Center for the Environment)
3:00-3:45 Bathsheba Demuth (Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society, Departments of Environmental Studies and History, Brown University)
Writing North Pacific History Through its Ecosystems: Russia, the United States, and Trophic Change
Discussant: Stefan Huebner (SSRC Transregional Research Fellow and Visiting Scholar, Harvard University Asia Center)
3:45-4:30 Wenjiao Cai (Ph.D. Candidate, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University)
At the Littoral Edge: Tideland Reclamation and Borderland Development in Late Choson Korea, 1600-1910
Discussant: Peter C. Perdue (Professor of History, Department of History, Yale University)
4:30-5:30 Closing Session
Moderators: Stefan Huebner (SSRC Transregional Research Fellow and Visiting Scholar, Harvard University Asia Center); Anthony D. Medrano (Ziff Environmental Fellow, Harvard University Center for the Environment); Jonas Ruegg (Ph.D. Candidate, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University)
This workshop is supported by: Harvard University Center for the Environment, Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, and the Pacific Circle.
For more information, please contact the organizers: Xiaofei Gao (xiaofei_gao@fas.harvard.edu), Stefan Huebner (arihust@nus.edu.sg), Anthony Medrano (anthony_medrano@fas.harvard.edu), and Jonas Ruegg (jonasruegg@g.harvard.edu)
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SEAS Design & Project Fair
WHEN Wednesday, May 8, 2019, 11 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Science Center Plaza Tent, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Science, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
CONTACT INFO events@seas.harvard.edu
DETAILS The SEAS Design & Project Fair is a showcase of undergraduate and graduate work through student demonstrations, presentations, and prototypes. Areas represented include engineering (biomedical, mechanical, electrical, environmental), applied mathematics, applied physics (materials science), computer science, and computation.
The educational focus at SEAS allows students to address open-ended problems with real-world constraints. They engage in these concepts throughout the academic year, working towards applications of their classroom learning, which culminates in a dynamic, innovative and exciting showcase at our fair each spring.
Student inventors/creators are present at the fair to describe their work and the process they engaged in to arrive at their solution or prototype. This public exhibit is also an opportunity for students to receive feedback from peers and potential users. The fair is open to the public and attracts an audience from across Harvard, as well as the Cambridge/Boston community. We hope you can attend!
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Human Rights in Hard Places Speaker Series: Digital Control: Modern Censorship and Surveillance in the Kim Jong Un Era
WHEN Wednesday, May 8, 2019, 11:45 a.m. – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Taubman 135, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
SPEAKER(S) Nat Kretchun, Deputy Director of Open Tech Fund
DETAILS The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy is excited to announce its 2019 Speaker Series: Human Rights in Hard Places, facilitated by Carr Center Executive Director, Sushma Raman.
The Human Rights in Hard Places Speaker Series was formed to underscore that despite the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, vast human rights abuses are still occurring 7 decades later.
We hope for this to serve as a platform for individuals to hear from the world's leading practitioners and academics in the human rights field, and to listen, question and engage.
Nat Kretchun, Deputy Director of Open Tech Fund, will give a talk titled, "Digital Control: Modern Censorship and Surveillance in the Kim Jong Un Era.”
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Ecosystem Restoration Camps: How to Heal a Dying Planet
Wednesday, May 8
12pm EST
Webinar
John D Liu, Founder of Ecosystem Restoration Camps
Description: Ecosystem Restoration Camps founder, environmental filmmaker, and soil scientist John D. Liu documents large-scale ecosystem restoration projects in China, Africa, South America and the Middle East, highlighting the enormous benefits for people and planet of undertaking these efforts globally.
Over the past 150 years, poor land management practices, driven by industrial agriculture, has resulted in the loss of half of the earth’s topsoil. Soil is becoming so degraded that some scientists are predicting that in some parts of the world, such as the UK, we only have 60 harvests left. More carbon has been emitted from degraded soil than from the entire transportation industry.
Without immediate, large scale action, many parts of the world will become uninhabitable in the next 50 years. Conflict over resources such as water and farmable land will become common. Millions of people will either starve or, if they’re lucky, migrate, causing rising tensions in areas where land is still safe to live on.
These changes are having a major impact on the living systems that we need to survive. Healthy ecosystems are essential to regulate our climate system, ensuring that there is enough water and nutrients for all of the creatures that depend on them. Sequestering the excess carbon in our atmosphere on a massive scale is one of the last remaining solutions to staving off the worst effects of climate change. By rehabilitating degraded ecosystems and helping farmers convert from industrial to regenerative agriculture, we can sequester enough carbon to create a safe level in the atmosphere (350ppm).
Ecosystem Restoration Camps Interactive Webinar with John D Liu
Example of a Camp design with sustainable food gardens, eco-accommodation for volunteers and landscape restoration activities.
Ecosystem Restoration Camps will help to create action towards this solution by teaching large numbers of people how to restore degraded land, whilst giving them the opportunity to work with local farmers who need support in transitioning to regenerative agriculture. At the camps, people will acquire the knowledge and information they need in order to put theory into practice. This gives farmers who are struggling financially the ability to try regenerative techniques, thanks to the voluntary manual labour, and gives people valuable experience in landscape restoration. Ecosystem Restoration Camps has the potential to give millions of people around the world the chance to reconnect with the natural world, causing ripple effects as they bring this knowledge and connection back into towns and cities across the globe.
Join us for this interactive webinar as John shares his vision and experiences of these pioneering camps and what he sees for the future. You will have an opportunity to comment and ask questions with one of the world’s greatest thinkers on restoration and regeneration!
John D Liu Ecosystem Restoration CampsHost Bio: John D Liu is the founder and Chair of Ecosystem Restoration Camps, a visiting Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO), and an Ecosystem Ambassador at the Commonland Foundation.
After 15 years as a Television Producer and Cameraman for CBS News, RAI and ZDF John began to study ecology. In the mid-1990’s he began a participatory process with a number of media and broadcasting colleagues in Beijing that led to the creation of the Environmental Education Media Project for China (EEMPC). He has directed the EEMPC (now the EEMP) from its beginning. The EEMPC has distributed over 1000 environmental films in China since then. The EEMPC also helped found the “China Environment and Sustainable Development Reference and Research Center (CESDRRC) and the China HIV/AIDS Information Center (CHAIN). Over the years their activities have broadened beyond China to include the entire world and to include the production of environmental and ecological films. From 2003 – 2006 John was a visiting fellow with the Faculty of Natural Sciences and the Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of the West of England, In 2006 he was named the Rothamsted International Fellow for the Communication of Science, and from 2010 – 2013 John was a Senior Research Fellow for IUCN.
In 2013 he received the Communications Award from the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) for his film “Green Gold” about the restoration of Loess Plateau; a film about his work produced by the VPRO won a Prix Italia award. “Hope in a Changing Climate” was named the best ecosystem film by the International Wildlife Film Festival and won several other honors.
Links: ecosystemrestorationcamps.org
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The lowdown on the high seas: What we don’t know about the oceans can kill us
Wednesday, May 8
3:00pm — 4:00pm
MIT Media Lab, E14, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
MLTalks with Wendy Schmidt, hosted by Katy Croff Bell
"We are standing on the edge of a frontier in terms of our ability to see, understand, and share information about the oceans.”—Wendy Schmidt
All talks at the Media Lab, unless otherwise noted, are free and open to the public. No registration is required.
This talk will be webcast. Join the conversation on Twitter: #MLTalks
Wendy Schmidt brings an optimistic approach to addressing critical ocean issues, and provides a framework for viewing the ocean as part of an interactive living system that is crucial to life on land. Join us at the MIT Media Lab as Wendy Schmidt describes how her investment in innovative solutions and support for scientific and technological breakthroughs is creating momentum for ocean health, leading to the restoration of this vital planetary resource. To understand the ocean is to know with certainty why we need to care about it, no matter where we live.
About Wendy Schmidt
Wendy Schmidt is president of The Schmidt Family Foundation, which supports programs in renewable energy, healthy food and agriculture, and human rights.
The foundation supports more than 150 nonprofit organizations around the world, using traditional philanthropic grants as well as the tools of impact investing. Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, an additional foundation program, supports the development of new ocean technologies with applications for conservation and research in areas such as habitat health, marine plastic pollution, and sustainable fisheries.
Wendy and her husband Eric are also co-founders of the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which operates the research vessel Falkor, a mobile platform to advance ocean exploration and discovery using open source data to catalyze the sharing of information about the oceans. Since 2013, more than 500 scientists from 165 institutions and 30 countries have conducted research on R/V Falkor.
Wendy has sponsored two XPRIZE Challenge Prizes focused on ocean health, and currently serves as the lead philanthropic partner of the New Plastics Economy Initiative, driven by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Wendy has extended her oceans-focused work to the sporting world through 11th Hour Racing, partnering with the 2017-2018 Volvo Ocean Race and the Vestas 11th Hour Racing team to put sustainability at the core of their operations, empowering race managers and athletes to become leaders and spokespeople on restoring ocean health.
In 2017, Wendy and Eric launched the Schmidt Science Fellows program, a post-doctoral fellowship that provides the next generation of leaders and innovators with the tools and opportunities to drive world-changing advances across the sciences and society. With an initial commitment from Schmidt Futures of at least $25 million for the first three years, the effort is the beginning of a broader $100 million commitment to promote scientific leadership and interdisciplinary research.
Wendy earned an MJ in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley, and a BA magna cum laude from Smith College.
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The NASA Psyche mission: Planning science observations of a little-known target
Wednesday, May 8
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 54, 915/923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
EAPS Department Lecture Series - Linda Elkins-Tanton (Arizona State University)
The NASA Psyche mission was selected in January 2017 as the 14th in the Discovery program. The spacecraft is scheduled to launch in August 2022, rendezvous with the asteroid Psyche in January 2026, and orbit for 21 months. The leading hypothesis for the formation of asteroid (16) Psyche is the metal core of a tiny planet that had its rocky exterior removed by some number of hit-and-run collisions, all in the first few millions of years after solids began to form in our solar system. We believe Psyche is composed primarily of nickel and iron metal, but we have only spectral and radar measurements from Earth; we have no optical images of Psyche larger than two pixels. Humankind has never visited a metal object before, and Psyche is the largest example by far in our solar system. The mission therefore has the challenge of planning a spacecraft and its payload to visit and measure a largely unknown object.
In this talk I’ll present the state of knowledge about Psyche, our hypotheses for what we might discover, and how we have designed a robust instrument suite to make the measurements once we arrive.
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Creative City Boston Information Session
WHEN Wednesday, May 8, 2019, 6 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Ed Portal, 224 Western Avenue, Allston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Classes/Workshops, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Ed Portal
COST Free
DETAILS Artists! Interested in applying to Creative City Boston? Come to an information session to learn more about the program and new application process. Creative City Boston Artist Grants provide project-specific funding to artists to create work that sparks public imagination, inspires community members to share in civic experience, and seizes opportunities to creatively engage important conversations taking place in Boston’s communities.
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Lessons from the Liver: Uncovering Novel Approaches for Regenerative Medicine
Wednesday, May 8
6:00pm to 7:00pm
Whitehead Institute, 455 Main Street, Cambridge
Whitehead Institute will be hosting Spring into Science, an evening lecture series for the Cambridge community featuring the latest in biomedical research. Please register in advance.
Kristin Knouse, Scott Cook and Signe Ostby Fellow, Whitehead Institute
The inability of organs to renew themselves and the loss of differentiated cells underlies numerous diseases across organ systems, including heart attack, stroke, and neurodegeneration. However, the liver, in contrast to most organs, has a remarkable ability to regenerate itself after various forms of injury. While the liver’s regenerative ability has been appreciated for decades, it is still unclear why the liver can do this while other organs cannot. Kristin Knouse, a Fellow at Whitehead Institute, will be discussing the work in her laboratory aimed at understanding what endows the liver with this unique regenerative ability with the ultimate goal of one day conferring this capacity to other organs in the setting of injury or disease.
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Harvard Science Book Talk: Venki Ramakrishnan, "The Quest for the Structure of the Biological Machine that Reads Our Genes”
WHEN Wednesday, May 8, 2019, 6 – 7:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Science Center Hall C, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR FAS Division of Science, Cabot Science Library, Harvard Book Store
SPEAKER(S) Dr.Venki Ramakrishnan, Senior Scientist, the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (UK); President of the Royal Society (UK); 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
COST Free
CONTACT INFO science_lectures@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Everyone has heard of DNA but it is the ribosome that makes DNA come to life by turning our genetic code into proteins and therefore into us. In this talk, Dr. Ramakrishnan, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist, whose many scientific contributions include his work on the atomic structure of the ribosome, will discuss his new book, "Gene Machine." The book is a frank insider account of the race for the structure of the ribosome, a fundamental discovery in molecular biology.
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The Prescription Drug Cost Dilemma: Perspectives from Harvard Faculty
Wednesday, May 8
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Harvard Ed Portal, 224 Western Avenue, Allston
What is the reason behind the rising costs of pharmaceuticals and prescription drugs? How does drug approval and pricing differ internationally? The new HarvardX course, "The FDA and Prescription Drugs", explores the rules and regulations that govern the pricing, marketing, and safety monitoring of approved prescription drugs.
Join the Harvard Ed Portal and the Harvard faculty behind the HarvardX course, Jonathan Darrow and Ameet Sarpatwari, as well as Harvard Business School Professor Ariel Stern, for an engaging panel discussion about the prescription drug market. The panel will be moderated by Michael Sinha.
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Using Microbes for a Meat-Free Future
Wednesday, May 8
6:30 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
ArtScience Culture Lab & Café, 650 East Kendall Street, Cambridge
Can trading in meat for microbes be the key to an environmentally sustainable future? Jonathan McIntyre, the CEO of new Boston alternative-protein startup Motif Ingredients, will sit down with editor and food writer Leah Mennies to discuss the role of synthetic biology in creating meat substitutes as well as the current plant-based culinary landscape.
Dr. Jonathan McIntyre, PhD
Formerly Head of R&D at Indigo Agriculture, SVP R&D at PepsiCo, and SVP at Dupont-Solae, Jon has over 25 years in life sciences and consumer products. He’s an accomplished executive with broad experience leading technology teams, discovery & development scientists, culinary chefs, and commercial leaders. He has a passion for servant leadership, a track record of developing talent, and believes that biotechnology will propel the next food revolution through affordable, sustainable and accessible ingredients.
Leah Mennies
Leah Mennies is the Group Editor at John Brown Media, where she oversees the content agency's U.S.’s editorial programs, with a specialty in food content strategy. Previously, she was the Senior Food Editor at Bostonmagazine, where she oversaw the publication's print and digital restaurant verticals. Her food writing has appeared in regional and national publications including Bon Appetit, The Washington Post, Coastal Living,PUNCH, Food & Wine, Gather Journal, Lucky Peach, and The Boston Globe.
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The World's Fastest Man
Wednesday, May 8
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
In the tradition of The Boys in the Boat and Seabiscuit, a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking but forgotten figure--the remarkable Major Taylor, the black man who broke racial barriers by becoming the world’s fastest and most famous bicyclist at the height of the Jim Crow era.
In the 1890s, the nation’s promise of equality had failed spectacularly. While slavery had ended with the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws still separated blacks from whites, and the excesses of the Gilded Age created an elite upper class. Amidst this world arrived Major Taylor, a young black man who wanted to compete in the nation’s most popular and mostly white man’s sport, cycling. Birdie Munger, a white cyclist who once was the world’s fastest man, declared that he could help turn the young black athlete into a champion.
Twelve years before boxer Jack Johnson and fifty years before baseball player Jackie Robinson, Taylor faced racism at nearly every turn--especially by whites who feared he would disprove their stereotypes of blacks. In The World’s Fastest Man, years in the writing, investigative journalist Michael Kranish reveals new information about Major Taylor based on a rare interview with his daughter and other never-before-uncovered details from Taylor’s life. Kranish shows how Taylor indeed became a world champion, traveled the world, was the toast of Paris, and was one of the most chronicled black men of his day.
From a moment in time just before the arrival of the automobile when bicycles were king, the populace was booming with immigrants, and enormous societal changes were about to take place, The World’s Fastest Man shines a light on a dramatic moment in American history--the gateway to the twentieth century.
Michael Kranish is an investigative political reporter for The Washington Post. He is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Trump Revealed, John F. Kerry, The Real Romney, and the author of The World’s Fastest Man and Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War. He was the recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists Award for Washington Correspondence in 2016. Visit http://MichaelKranish.com
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Extinction Rebellion: Heading for extinction talk and how to give it
Wednesday, May 8
7 p.m.
First Church in Cambridge, Harter Room, 11 Garden Street, Cambridge
Please join us for a presentation on how to give the Heading for Extinction talk. This will cover the overall themes of the presentation as well as tips for good delivery.
If you haven't seen it yet there are a few great versions of it online:
Gail Bradbook version: https://youtu.be/b2VkC4SnwY0
XR Bristol version: https://youtu.be/VPzme6Zk8cY
This training session will last about one hour.
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The Cosma Hypothesis: Implications of the Overview Effect
Wednesday, May 8
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
The Harvard Coop, 1400 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
In 1986, Frank White was working on his groundbreaking book, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution, when he heard the late Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff, say, "The country has never had a philosophy of space exploration." This began a continuing quest to develop a deep understanding of why (and how) humans should explore the universe. The Cosma Hypothesis represents the culmination of White's effort to develop a space philosophy. Following the pattern set in The Overview Effect, the book draws on interviews with astronauts about the ways in which spaceflight shifted their understanding of our relationship with the universe. The Cosma Hypothesis suggests that our purpose in exploring space should transcend focusing on how it will benefit humanity. We should ask how to create a symbiotic relationship with the universe, giving back as much as we take, and spreading life, intelligence, and self-awareness throughout the solar system and beyond.
In The Cosma Hypothesis, White argues that developing a philosophy of space exploration and settlement is more than an intellectual exercise: it will powerfully influence policy and practices that are unfolding now, as governments and corporations talk about space tourism, asteroid mining, and cities on Mars. The Cosma Hypothesis is White's contribution to a dialogue that will, it is hoped, become global in scope.
About the author: Frank White is an author with special interest in space exploration and its impact on human thought and civilization. He enjoys writing both fiction and non-fiction, and has authored or co-authored 10 books to date. He is now working on the fourth edition of his book, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution. Apogee Prime has just published a groundbreaking sequel, The New Camelot: The Quest for the Overview Effect.
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Cities Resting on Slush: Impacts of Climate Change on Earth’s Frozen Regions
Wednesday, May 8
7:00-9:00 p.m.,
Harvard, Pfizer Hall, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Speakers: Jordan Wilkerson
The Arctic Circle has been getting slushier over the past century. The culprit is climate change. From Russia to Canada to Alaska, roads and buildings are beginning to collapse under the melting soil on which they rest. But humans aren’t the only ones affected. Acres of Arctic trees tilt, teeter, and often tumble because of the unstable, thawing ground beneath. When the soil thaws, the meltwater flows through the ground, transporting ancient nutrients to the burgeoning communities of microscopic life. They breathe out carbon dioxide and other potent greenhouse gases that may further bump up our planet’s temperatures. The frozen ground, where all of these changes are taking place, spans a quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere. In this lecture, we’ll discuss how the rapid changes to our climate have altered the landscape of Earth’s colder regions – and how the millions of people living there are affected.
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Thursday, May 9 - Friday, May 10
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Interpreting Energy Dependence in Eurasia
WHEN Thursday, May 9, 9 a.m. – Friday, May 10, 2019, 12:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South Building, Belfer Case Study Room (S020), 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Conferences, Environmental Sciences, Science, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Cosponsored by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
COST Free with registration
TICKET WEB LINK https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/attendee-registration-interpreting-energy-dependence-eurasia-conference-may-9-10-2019
CONTACT INFO For more information, please call 617-495-4037.
DETAILS Energy dependence is the leitmotif of Eurasian political economy. The concept recurs in official speeches and is often invoked to imply a threat. The higher the level of dependence on hydrocarbon imports, especially oil and natural gas, the higher the energy security risk. This stems usually from political instability in hydrocarbon-producing countries, concerns about price volatility, the fact that some state-owned oil companies are hand-in-glove with authoritarian regimes, or increased carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming. More than anywhere else, member states and associated member states of the International Energy Agency have sought to make sustainable development (including further development of domestic resources) and energy security a top priority. It is perceived as a means towards decreasing dependence. It turns out that the interests of consuming and producing countries are, however, more and more divergent, and finding common ground is challenging, although increasingly important.
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Thursday, May 9
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Minority Health Policy Annual Meeting
WHEN Thursday, May 9, 2019, 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Medical School, Joseph B. Martin Conference Center Rotunda, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR HMS Office for Diversity Inclusion and Community Partnership and HMS affiliated hospitals offices of diversity and faculty development
SPEAKER(S) HMS DICP/Harvard Catalyst Faculty Fellows; Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Minority Health Policy Fellows
COST No registration fee
CONTACT INFO christine_colacino@hms.harvard.edu
617-432-2922
DETAILS The Minority Health Policy Annual Meeting provides participants with information related to minority health and health policy related to vulnerable populations.
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'Plug&Charge' Webinar: Part Two
Thursday, May 9
12pm
Webinar
This webinar will feature Barton Sidles, Director of Corporate and Business Development (and Plug&Charge expert) at Hubject, in conversation with Zachary Shahan, Director of CleanTechnica.
This is a followup webinar to our discussion in March. In this webinar Barton will dive deeper into the implementation of Plug&Charge and ISO 15118 features.
Plug&Charge simplifies the EV charging experience by eliminating the need for apps, RFID cards and credit cards to authenticate and begin charging. It also is the first step in smart charging and vehicle to grid capabilities. Attendees of the webinar will learn what it takes to make your product or service ISO 15118 capable and the numerous features that will be unlocked making your organization more competitive.
Hubject is a consulting partner to automakers, charging providers and other EV-related businesses looking to launch eMobility services or implement Plug&Charge using ISO 15118.
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Opioid Abuse: Warning Signs and Action Steps
Thursday, May 9
12:00pm to 1:30pm
MIT, Building 76-156, 500 Main Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/opioid-abuse-warning-signs-and-action-steps-registration-54421372791
Presenter: Joanne Peterson; Founder and Executive Director, Learn to Cope Inc.
Due to the sheer number of people struggling to overcome dangerous addictions to heroin and prescription painkillers in the United States, many of us have been (or will be) touched by the growing opioid epidemic in one way or another. Accordingly, the MIT community has seen an uptick in cases involving opioid use, including parents worried about their children, managers and HR professionals concerned about their employees, and individuals seeking support. And we want to help. In this seminar, participants will learn:
The current state of the opioid and drug overdose epidemic in the United States
How to spot the warning signs of opioid misuse and addiction
The range of available treatment options
How to promote a recovery-friendly home and workplace
About the MIT and community resources that can help
Presented in collaboration with MIT Medical and Community Wellness
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Educational Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship Project Showcase
WHEN Thursday, May 9, 2019, 12 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Harvard i-lab, Batten Hall, 125 Western Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Graduate School of Education
CONTACT INFO Lee Marmor
DETAILS Engage with student innovators as they pitch their bold ideas to vexing educational challenges.
Developed in Professor Fernando Reimers' course A132: Educational Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship in Comparative Perspective.
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Promoting or Preventing Democracy? U.S. Foreign Policy and the Bankruptcy of the Ideals-vs-Interests Distinction
WHEN Thursday, May 9, 2019, 12:15 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, One Brattle Square, Room 350, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR International Security Program
SPEAKER(S) Payam Ghalehdar, Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program
CONTACT INFO susan_lynch@harvard.edu
DETAILS Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first-come, first-served basis.
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Women, Politics, and MA
Thursday, May 9
12:30-3pm
Harvard, WAPPP Cason Room 102, 15 Eliot Street (Taubman building), Cambridge
Please join us for a showcase of our research on why MA lags behind other states when it comes to female political representation.
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Reede Scholars 10th Annual Health Equity Symposium “Digital Health: Advancing Health Equity”
WHEN Thursday, May 9, 2019, 1 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, Harvard Medical School Rotunda, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences, Information Technology
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR HMS Office for Diversity Inclusion and Community Partnership; Reede Scholars alumni organization
SPEAKER(S) Jonathan Woodson MD, Institute for Health System Innovation & Policy, Boston University
COST No registration fee
CONTACT INFO christine_colacino@hms.harvard.edu
617-432-2922
DETAILS Digital technologies have transformed how people globally
communicate, socialize, learn, work, and increasingly intersect with the healthcare system. During our Annual Health Equity Symposium, the keynote speaker and panelists will share how innovative digital tools can improve health, health care, and a rapidly changing healthcare system. Additionally, we will elaborate ways in which providers, payers, and policymakers engage individuals, families, and communities to maximize opportunities to close disparity gaps and influence health equity with digital health technologies.
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Memory for Conversation
Thursday, May 9
4:00pm - 5:00pm
MIT, Building 46-3002, Singleton Auditorium, 43 Vassar Street, Cambridge
In conversation, the discourse history, including past referents and how they were described, shapes future language use. While it is widely known that interlocutors form representations of the discourse history, the veracity and similarity of these representations among interlocutors has not been widely explored. Through the study of referential form in conversation, combined with explicit measures of memory for past referents, I show that interlocutors are likely to walk away from a conversation with distinct memories for the contents, and in some cases the context of conversation. In general, speakers tend to remember what was said better than listeners do. Studies of conversational language use in persons with anterograde amnesia offer insights into the biological memory systems involved. The findings have implications for how common ground is formed in conversation, and suggest that there are limits on the degree to which interlocutors can achieve coordinated representations of the discourse history. More generally, this work demonstrates that the successful exchange of meaning in conversation involves imperfect, asymmetric representations of the jointly experienced past.
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Damon Krukowski: Ways of Hearing
Thursday, May 9
6:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building N50, MIT Press Bookstore, 301 Massachusetts, Cambridge
Please join the MIT Press Bookstore in welcoming Damon Krukowski to discuss his upcoming book, Ways of Hearing.
In this book, Damon Krukowski examines how the switch from analog to digital audio is changing our perceptions of time, space, love, money, and power. In Ways of Hearing—modeled on Ways of Seeing, John Berger's influential 1972 book on visual culture—Krukowski offers readers a set of tools for critical listening in the digital age. Just as Ways of Seeing began as a BBC television series, Ways of Hearing is based on a six-part podcast produced for the groundbreaking public radio podcast network Radiotopia.
Damon Krukowski is a writer and musician. Author of The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World, he has taught writing and sound (and writing about sound) at Harvard University. He was in the indie rock band Galaxie 500 and is currently one half of the folk-rock duo Damon & Naomi.
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Riding the Elephant: A Memoir of Altercations, Humiliations, Hallucinations, and Observations
Thursday, May 9, 2019
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline
Cost: $28
Craig Ferguson will appear at Coolidge Corner Theatre in conversation with Mark Shanahan from 6:00-7:00pm (ticket required) to discuss his new book, Riding the Elephant: A Memoir of Altercations, Humiliations, Hallucinations, and Observations. Each ticket includes a signed copy of Riding the Elephant.
Please read the following information carefully before making your purchase:
TICKETS
Every attendee must have a ticket.
Present your on-screen or printed ticket at the Coolidge for entry.
Tickets are valid until 5:55pm at which point unfilled seats may go to the standby line, so arrive early!
In the case of a sold out event, a standby line will form at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Standby tickets will be available for purchase on a first-come, first-served basis while supplies last.
You will receive your autographed book at the event. Event books cannot be claimed early.
Craig's talk will begin at 6:00pm and last one hour.
There will be no public signing or meet & greet for this event.
All tickets are nonreturnable and nonrefundable.
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The World's Fastest Man
Thursday, May 9
6:00pm
Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street, Boston
In the tradition of The Boys in the Boatand Seabiscuit, a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking but forgotten figure—the remarkable Major Taylor, the black man who broke racial barriers by becoming the world’s fastest and most famous bicyclist at the height of the Jim Crow era. This is the story of the book by Michael Kranish, "The World's Fastest Man: The Extraordinary LIfe of Cyclist Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero."
In the 1890s, the nation’s promise of equality had failed spectacularly. While slavery had ended with the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws still separated blacks from whites, and the excesses of the Gilded Age created an elite upper class. Amidst this world arrived Major Taylor, a young black man who wanted to compete in the nation’s most popular and mostly white man’s sport, cycling. Birdie Munger, a white cyclist who once was the world’s fastest man, declared that he could help turn the young black athlete into a champion. As a young man Taylor moved to Worcester, Mass. from the midwest and there is now a memorial to him outside the Worcester Public Library.
Twelve years before boxer Jack Johnson and fifty years before baseball player Jackie Robinson, Taylor faced racism at nearly every turn—especially by whites who feared he would disprove their stereotypes of blacks. In The World’s Fastest Man, years in the writing, investigative journalist Michael Kranish reveals new information about Major Taylor based on a rare interview with his daughter and other never-before-uncovered details from Taylor’s life. Kranish shows how Taylor indeed became a world champion, traveled the world, was the toast of Paris, and was one of the most chronicled black men of his day.
From a moment in time just before the arrival of the automobile when bicycles were king, the populace was booming with immigrants, and enormous societal changes were about to take place, The World’s Fastest Manshines a light on a dramatic moment in American history—the gateway to the twentieth century.
Michael Kranish is an investigative political reporter for The Washington Post. He is the coauthor of the New York Times bestsellerTrump Revealed, John F. Kerry, The Real Romney, and the author of The World’s Fastest Man and Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War. He was the recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists Award for Washington Correspondence in 2016.
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Corporate Innovation and the Future of Digital Payments with Sarah McCray (CEO of GasBuddy)
Boston
Thursday, May 9
6 P.M.
GSV LABS 2 Avenue de Lafayette, Boston
Cost: $11.58 - $22.13
Fireside Chat, Dinner, Drinks and Networking with Sarah McCrary of GasBuddy
Sarah McCrary is the CEO of GasBuddy, the only smartphone app connecting drivers to their Perfect Pit Stop. As the company has grown, she has lead the transformation of GasBuddy from a platform to find gas prices into a sophisticated market-intelligence data and payments company. GasBuddy launched industry-leading Software-as-a-Service, GasBuddy Business Pages in 2016, and Pay with GasBuddy in 2017, the first-of-its-kind fuel savings program that gives drivers a discount on virtually every gallon of gas they will ever pump. GasBuddy has 12 million monthly unique users. Sarah has 18 years of experience in technology product development and prior to GasBuddy served as COO, subsequently CEO, of Boston ePOS start-up, Leaf (a Heartland Payments Systems acquisition).
Speaker
Sarah McCrary, CEO - GASBUDDY
Sarah McCrary is the CEO of GasBuddy, the smartphone app connecting drivers to the Perfect Pit Stop. She has lead the transformation of GasBuddy from a platform to find gas prices into a sophisticated data and payments company. GasBuddy launched GasBuddy Business Pages in 2016 and Pay with GasBuddy in 2017, the fuel savings program that gives drivers a discount on every gallon they will ever pump.
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Offshore Wind Panel
Thursday, May 9
6:00 - 8:00 PM
WilmerHale, 60 State Street, Boston
Max Cohen, Associate Director, IHS Markit's North American
Peter Allen, Head of Finance, North America Orsted
Professor Eric Hines, Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor, Tufts
Raya Treiser, Energy and Environmental Attorney, WilmerHale
Jason Folsom, National Director of Sales, MHI Vestas Offshore Wind
Join Young Professionals in Energy Boston on May 9th for a panel discussion on offshore wind to learn about this rapidly growing industry in the US, and why Boston has been one of its major beneficiaries. Our panelists offer a diverse array of perspectives on the industry, including development/financing, manufacturing, policy, and engineering, and will moderated by Max Cohen, who leads IHS Markit's North American onshore and offshore wind market research. We're excited to have such a talented group of stakeholders guide us through this topic, and hope to see you there!
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Mass Innovation Nights 122
Thursday, May 9
6:00pm
Thelma D. Burns Building, 575 Warren Street, Boston
Mass Innovation Nights will be returning to Greater Grove Hall for the third time! African and African American founders will showcase over ten products at the ABCD's Thelma D. Burns building on THURSDAY, May 9th from 6-8:30pm!
Check out the new PRODUCTS and
VOTE for your favorites - click on the words VOTE HERE (found on this page to the immediate left) and once on the product voting page, click LOVE IT (only four times)!
RSVP to attend the event on Thursday May 9th (free to attend and open to all)
See who else is planning on attending (click the ATTENDEES tab)
Help spread the word - blog, tweet (using the #MIN122 hashtag), like and post!
Support local innovation -- network and have fun at the same time!
Don't miss it -- THURSDAY, May 9th 6pm-8:30pm for Mass Innovation Nights #122!
Follow us on Instagram! @MassInnovationNights
(617) 458-0226
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Big Ideas, Short Pitches: Moving the Needle on Sustainability
Thursday, May 9
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Roxbury Innovation Center, 2300 Washington Street, #2nd Floor, Boston
Small pitch, big impact. Hear from thought leaders on how they believe we can push sustainability forward in the absence of regulation.
Join SustainServ and Net Impact Boston for this refreshingly unique event meant to inspire and engage our community of professionals, students and anyone interested in sustainability!
Event Timeline:
6:00pm - 6:30 pm - Registration & Networking
6:30pm - 8:30pm - 5 minute pitches followed by lively Q&A, moderated by local comedian, Steve Calechman!
Confirmed Speakers (more to follow):
Julie Whipple, Global Head of Corporate Responsibility at Qlik
Katie Schindall, Senior Manager and Lead for Circular Economy at Cisco
Matthew Gardner, Managing Partner at Sustainserv
Josh Ostroff, Partnerships Director at Transportation for Massachusetts
Shannon Fellows, Senior Associate at Sustainalytics
SustainServ will kindly provide drinks and lots of delicious snacks.
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2.007 Final Robot Competition: MOONSHOT
Thursday May 9
6:30pm-10:30pm
MIT, Building W34, Johnson Ice Rink , 120 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Using only the kit of tools and materials provided, students have been challenged to build a robot that can collect moon rocks, unobtanium, plant the flag on a rock and repair the lunar module's communication system to return on Earth!
Can’t attend in person? Tune into Webcast here, where we will be live-streaming the festivities at http://web.mit.edu/webcast/2.007/sp19/
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The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution
Thursday, May 9
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes renowned neuroscientist and MIT president emerita SUSAN HOCKFIELD for a discussion of her new book, The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution.
About The Age of Living Machines
A century ago, discoveries in physics came together with engineering to produce an array of astonishing new technologies: radios, telephones, televisions, aircraft, radar, nuclear power, computers, the Internet, and a host of still-evolving digital tools. These technologies so radically reshaped our world that we can no longer conceive of life without them.
Today, the world’s population is projected to rise to well over 9.5 billion by 2050, and we are currently faced with the consequences of producing the energy that fuels, heats, and cools us. With temperatures and sea levels rising, and large portions of the globe plagued with drought, famine, and drug-resistant diseases, we need new technologies to tackle these problems.
But we are on the cusp of a new convergence, argues world-renowned neuroscientist Susan Hockfield, with discoveries in biology coming together with engineering to produce another array of almost inconceivable technologies―next-generation products that have the potential to be every bit as paradigm-shifting as the twentieth century’s digital wonders.
The Age of Living Machines describes some of the most exciting new developments and the scientists and engineers who helped create them. Virus-built batteries. Protein-based water filters. Cancer-detecting nanoparticles. Mind-reading bionic limbs. Computer-engineered crops. Together they highlight the promise of the technology revolution of the twenty-first century to overcome some of the greatest humanitarian, medical, and environmental challenges of our time.
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Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells
Thursday May 9
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith
From one of our most astute observers of human nature, a far-reaching exploration of Japanese history and culture and a moving meditation on impermanence, mortality, and grief. Iyer leads us through the year following his father-in-law’s death, and as the maple leaves begin to redden and the heat begins to soften, Iyer offers us a singular view of Japan, in the season that reminds us to take nothing for granted.
Pico Iyer is the author of eight works of nonfiction and two novels. A writer for Timesince 1982, he is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, and many other magazines and newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific. He splits his time between Nara, Japan, and the United States.
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Friday, May 10
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My Bionic Hand
Friday, May 10
8:30 AM to 10:00 AM
Optum, 1325 Boylston Street, Boston
What we'll do
Design Museum Mornings is a monthly event series brought to you by Design Museum Boston. This event is meant to inspire you before your day begins and bring you closer to the Design Museum Boston community.
Design Museum Mornings with Mike Benning, Hanger Clinic , Inc.
This march we invite Mike Benning as our guest speaker, he was the first person in the US be fitted with the most advanced technology of its time, the i-limb quantum. Mike will share his prosthetic journey and explain how prosthetic design has not only improved his functionality, but also how public perception has changed with the evolution of his prosthetic devices. In addition to breakfast, March’s Design Museum Mornings will also include demonstrator devices, available for attendees to try.
Members of the Design Museum attend the event for FREE! Become a member to enjoy many more Museum Mornings starting at just $5/month. Hope to see you there!
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About Face: The Changing Landscape of Face Recognition
Friday, May 10
9:00 AM – 12:30 PM EDT
Northeastern, 115 Forsyth Street, Room 105 Shillman, Boston
The Center for Law, Innovation and Creativity invites you to About Face: The Changing Landscape of Face Recognition.
As enthusiasm for technological advancement has ushered in an exciting era of unprecedented innovation, technologists, scholars, privacy rights advocates and members of public are raising concerns about the efficacy of face recognition software and its uses in the future. Increasingly, the media news cycle is full of stories about the ways tech companies and government institutions are deploying face recognition technology to the detriment of the public’s constitutional rights and statutory rights to privacy. In an era of unprecedented digital innovation, has the emergence of face recognition technology proven that surveillance technology has finally gone too far?
This conference will explore the encompassing regulatory, legal and human implications in face recognition technology.
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MassHousing's Resilience in Affordable Housing Forum
Friday, May 10
9:30 - 11:30 AM
MassHousing, 4th Floor, 1 Beacon Street, Boston
Reply to RSVP@masshousing.com by Friday, May 3 (but you can always ask)
Hear from national and local resiliency experts and multifamily affordable
housing developers about how they are preparing buildings and communities for extreme weather events, sea level rise, power outages, and other climate change-related disasters.
Learn how we can collectively plan for and implement building improvements and emergency management systems that ensure safer, healthy, and affordable homes for all.
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Crypto Music: Decentralized and Open Music Ecosystem
Friday, May 10
9:30 AM – 1:00 PM EDT
MIT, 20 Ames Street, Room E15-070 (Bartos Room, Lower Ground Floor, Wiesner Building), Cambridge
Today’s digital music industry has placed technological demands on all stakeholders that have proven to be problematic in managing data, rights ownership, licensing and royalty settlement and distribution. The problems are multi-faceted across businesses, technologies, partnerships and data management processes. Furthermore, the next generation of artists, composers and entrepreneurs will face a global market that has user experiences we cannot even contemplate today. Very likely the underlying future infrastructure will based on blockchain technology and decentralized peer-to-peer networks. Music compositions will increasingly include mashups shared across social media or remixes experienced within Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality environments. Decentralized and shared global tracking will provide true scaling capabilities of matching services to global participants. New economic incentive models need to be devised and explored in order to empower artists to reach their creative best.
List of speakers:
Sandy Pentland (MIT)
Panos Panay / George Howard (Berklee & Open Music Initiative)
Thomas Hardjono (MIT)
Ken Umezaki (dotBC)
Tamir Koch (eMusic)
Phil Barry (Blokur)
Amy/Devon James (Alexandria.io)
Andrew Pinkham (TrueTickets)
Eric Scace / Stephen Moore (MIT)
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How Change Happens
Friday, May 10
3:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes Harvard Law School professor CASS R. SUNSTEIN—former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration—for a discussion of his latest book, How Change Happens.
About How Change Happens
How does social change happen? When do social movements take off? Sexual harassment was once something that women had to endure; now a movement has risen up against it. White nationalist sentiments, on the other hand, were largely kept out of mainstream discourse; now there is no shortage of media outlets for them. In this book, with the help of behavioral economics, psychology, and other fields, Cass Sunstein casts a bright new light on how change happens.
Sunstein focuses on the crucial role of social norms―and on their frequent collapse. When norms lead people to silence themselves, even an unpopular status quo can persist. Then one day, someone challenges the norm―a child who exclaims that the emperor has no clothes; a woman who says “me too.” Sometimes suppressed outrage is unleashed, and long-standing practices fall.
Sometimes change is more gradual, as “nudges” help produce new and different decisions―apps that count calories; texted reminders of deadlines; automatic enrollment in green energy or pension plans. Sunstein explores what kinds of nudges are effective and shows why nudges sometimes give way to bans and mandates. Finally, he considers social divisions, social cascades, and “partyism,” when identification with a political party creates a strong bias against all members of an opposing party―which can both fuel and block social change.
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IMPACT AT SCALE: THE FRICTION BETWEEN PUBLIC HEALTH AND INNOVATION
Friday, May 10
4 PM
MIT, Building E51-325, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Please join the Humanitarian and Disaster Relief Working Group at MIT for an afternoon seminar with our distinguished speaker will be Megan Rhodes, Deputy Chief of Health, Africa Region, USAID. Food will be provided.
Advances in science and technology offer exciting opportunities to improve the health status of millions in both humanitarian and resource-poor settings. While innovation is alluring, many global health challenges faced today have had solutions available for decades that have not been implemented – or are not accessible – at scale.
Ms. Rhodes will draw on her 15 years as a public health specialist at USAID to explore the contrasts between need for basic public health services and the challenge of scale in applying new technologies and interventions. Ms. Rhodes will cover a wide range of health issues, from vaccines to family planning, and the systems issues that facilitate or prevent a promising intervention from having impact at scale. She will discuss the role of government, non-government, and private sector entities in tackling these challenges in both traditional development as well as humanitarian response settings.
Following the presentation, there will be an opportunity for Q&A with the audience.
Afterward we will host a happy hour for all of us interested in topics of emergency management, humanitarian aid, and disaster response. Food will be available, but attendees will have to purchase their own libations.
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A Conversation with Herbert Kelman: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict as a Clash of National Identities and a Path to Reconciliation
WHEN Friday, May 10, 2019, 5 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Barker Center, Thompson Room, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR CMES Hilda B. Silverman Memorial Lecture Series
SPEAKER(S) Herbert C. Kelman, Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics 'Emeritus', Harvard University
CONTACT INFO elizabethflanagan@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Herbert C. Kelman is the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics 'Emeritus', at Harvard University and was (from 1993 to 2003) Director of the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Yale University in 1951. He is past president of the International Studies Association, the International Society of Political Psychology, the Interamerican Society of Psychology, and several other professional associations.
He is recipient of many awards, including the Socio-Psychological Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1956), the Kurt Lewin Memorial award (1973), the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest (1981), the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order (1997), the Austrian Medal of Honor for Science and Art (1998), and the Gold Medal of Honor of the Federal Capital of Vienna (2012).
His major publications include International Behavior: "A Social-Psychological Analysis" (editor; 1965), "A Time to Speak: On Human Values and Social Research" (1968), and "Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility" (with V. Lee Hamilton; 1989).
Kelman has been engaged for many years in the development of interactive problem solving, an unofficial third party approach to the resolution of international and intercommunal conflicts, and in its application to the Arab-Israeli conflict, with special emphasis on its Israeli-Palestinian component.
Unless otherwise noted in the event description, CMES events are open to the public (no registration required), and off the record. Please note that events may be filmed and photographed by CMES for record-keeping and for use on the CMES website and publications.
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Film: Cherokee Word For Water
Friday, May 10
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
First Church JP, 6 Eliot Street, Jamaica Plain
As part of our second year of the Dismantling White Supremacy Film series this movie tells the story of the work that led Wilma Mankiller to become the first modern female Chief of the Cherokee Nation.
For more information: Jom45@aol.com
Free & Open to All.
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Bacterial Bonanza at the MIT Museum
Friday, May 10
7:00 PM – 9:30 PM EDT
MIT Museum, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
A stimulating, microbe-filled night at the MIT Museum with talks from four guest speakers from all microbial walks of life!
Join MIT's Microbiome Club for a microbe-tastic night at the MIT Museum! Guest speakers include Ameet Pinto (Northeastern University), Emily Mevers (Harvard Medical School), Mehmet Berkmen (Bacterial Art), and Ida Lister (DermBiont). All four talks will be held simultaneously multiple times throughout the night, with the audience free to explore both the galleries and speakers of interest. Audience members will have a chance to meet our speakers at the end of the night.
Talks Include:
"Whats in your water?" Ameet Pinto, Northeastern University
"Bacterial Symbionts of Insects: discovering new antibiotics by understanding chemical ecology" Emily Mevers, Harvard Medical School
"Bacterial Art: making living art with bacteria" Mehmet Berkmen, Bacterial Art
"Skintastic: microbes as topical therapeutics" Ida Lister, DermBiont Inc.
Doors open at 6.45 PM!
Light refreshments will be served.
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Saturday, May 11
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Technovation 2019 Showcase & Pitch - MA Region
Saturday, May 11
10:00 AM – 3:00 PM EDT
Wentworth, 550 Huntington Avenue, Watson Auditorium, Boston
Celebrate all the locally-made apps submitted for the Technovation Challenge!
AGENDA
9:30am - Team Arrivals (setup time, teams only)
10:00am-11:45pm - Posterboard Session
11:45pm-12:15pm - Lunch
12:30pm-3:00pm - Live Pitch & Presentation Award
Starting at 10:00am, the designated posterboard judges will meet with their respective teams. Having reviewed all materials online prior to the TechnovationMA Showcase, judges will finalize and submit their scores onsite. These final posterboard scores will be used by global Technovation team to determine which teams go on to the global semifinals. Technovation will select teams from the semifinal round to compete at the World Pitch Event in August.
Top scorers at the posterboard session will pitch to the entire audience during the live pitch portion of the day. The team with the winning live pitch will receive the Presentation Award and prize. The Presentation Award is a #technovationMA prize only and does not influence the scores or the semifinal teams.
If a team cannot attend the posterboard session, judges will finalize their scores based on the team's online submissions, and conversely, if a posterboard judge is not able to attend the posterboard session, they will have finalized and submitted their scores online prior to the Showcase.
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BostonVR Dev Jam
Saturday, May 11
10:00 AM to 6:00 PM
Brookline Interactive Group, 46 Tappan Street, Brookline
Cost: $8.00 /per person
Come join us for a whole day of techno-frolic with the other AR & VR devs at Brookline Interactive Group (BIG) (http://brooklineinteractive.org/) under the auspices of their Public VR Lab (http://publicvrlab.com/), a truly excellent resource for the community.
Bring your own gear or play with the loaner equipment belonging to BostonVR and BIG. We will have at least one hololens, several Vives, an oculus rift, loaner machines, a GearVR, and tons of peripherals. Dr. Jacobson and BIG staff will be available to help you get started, if you are new.
Click here (http://brooklineinteractive.org/location-and-hours/) for directions, parking is free. Check out this awesome pano tour to help you find us! https://vizor.io/draft/YQG2b2wPny9r
Bring your own equipment if you have it, but mainly bring yourself! The $8 charge will pay for pizza, snacks, soda, and tons of coffee.
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Monday, May 13
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Thesis Defense - Impacts of Emission Policies in China on Air Pollution and Human Health
Monday, May 13
10:00am to 11:00am
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
A public presentation of the thesis will be given by the candidate, Saied Mighani
DEFENSE CHAIR:
Prof. Andrew Babbin, MIT
THESIS COMMITTEE:
Prof. Noelle Selin, MIT, Advisor
Prof. Susan Solomon, MIT
Prof. Valerie Karplus, MIT
Copies of the thesis may be obtained from the EAPS Education Office (54-912). All interested faculty, staff and students are invited to attend.
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Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate [PAOC Colloquium]: Kaighin McColl (Harvard University)
Monday, May 13
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
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xTalk: iSSP: A Dynamic Interactive Textbook
Monday, May 13
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 3-133, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
In this xTalk, Ian (Ted) Young will speak on iSSP, his newly published interactive textbook.
The “classic” textbook is printed on paper and admits no possibility for displaying dynamic effects such as filtered music, cross-correlated images, or molecular motion. eBooks, particularly those in pdf format, do not significantly change this description. The modern digital tablet and digital smartphone offer the opportunity to not only display dynamic effects but to interact with the them to perform experiments. We have developed an app for both iOS and Android that exploits these possibilities. The theme of the textbook is an introduction to stochastic signal processing (iSSP).
Speech, music, seismic vibrations, oil prices, and climate measurements are all examples of stochastic (random) signals. In this introductory textbook—intended for individuals with prior training in introductory signal processing and introductory probability theory—we develop techniques to process such signals to extract useful information. We present case studies ranging from music to photographic images to oil prices to climate data to the motion of individual biomolecules. This textbook in an app format makes use of your device's ability to display dynamic information through films and animations and to hear the results of the techniques applied to music. At the end of every chapter there are homework problems ranging from easy to "olympic".
A new and exciting aspect is that we make use of the tablet's interactive capabilities to present laboratory experiments in signal processing. The experiments use the graphic interface, the microphone, the speakers, the camera, and the display to provide both input and output. These experiments are not simulations; they are examples of real digital processing of signals in the device.
The iOS version of the app is currently available on the Apple App Store and it is, for now, free. Search for “stochastic signal processing”.
Ian (Ted) Young is an MIT graduate and was Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering from 1969-1979.
At Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands (1981 to present), Dr. Young has been Chairman of the departments of Applied Physics, Imaging Science & Technology, and (as interim) Bionanoscience, all in the Faculty of Applied Sciences.
Dr. Young also co-authored the textbook Signals and Systems and has authored over 200 scientific publications. In 2006 he was made Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw, (Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion).
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Towards Life 3.0 - Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century
WHEN Monday, May 13, 2019, 5:30 – 6:45 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Wexner 102, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Science, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
SPEAKER(S) Sarah Newman, Fellow, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society
DETAILS "Towards Life 3.0: Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century" 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 p.m. 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.
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Launch Clinic: Internet of Things (IoT) Startups
Monday, May 13
5:30pm to 8:30pm
Cambridge Innovation Center, 5th Floor Havana Room One Broadway
Cost: $10 for Members; $30 Non-members: $10 for students; $5 for student members
At the Internet of Things Themed Launch Smart Clinic, startups present a 20-minute pitch for feedback from our panel of experts + the audience.
Launch Smart Clinics are a great place for startups to get constructive feedback on their pitch from a board-of-directors-level panel of experts and thoughtful audience members. The focus on early-stage ventures encourages a sympathetic and supportive atmosphere. Audience and panel feedback often helps presenters understand their problems and offers useful tips and solutions.
Even if you’re not quite ready to present, we encourage entrepreneurs to attend the clinics to see what our panel of experts (investors and others) are looking for in a pitch, what kind of questions they ask and their suggestions for refining the business plan.
Presenter
Jamshed Dubash, Business Development, Enterprise Retail, DeepMagic
Moderators
Nadia Shalaby, CEO, ITE Fund
Nikhil T. Pradhan, Associate, Foley & Lardner LLP
Launch Smart Schedule
5:30-6:00 pm – Networking + Pizza
6:00 -6:15 pm – Industry Overview (Expert Presentation)
6:20-6:40 pm – Startup 1 Presents
6:40-7:00 pm – Small Breakouts: Audience + Experts
7:00-7:15 pm – Experts Share Consolidated Feedback From Breakouts
7:15-7:30 pm – Networking Break
7:30-7:50 pm – Startup 2 Presents
7:50-8:10 pm – Small Breakouts: Audience + Experts
8:10-8:25 pm – Experts Share Consolidated Feedback From Breakouts
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Lee McIntyre: The Scientific Attitude
Monday, May 13
6:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building N50, MIT Press Bookstore, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Please join the MIT Press Bookstore in welcoming philosopher Lee McIntyre to discuss his upcoming book, The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience.
Attacks on science have become commonplace. In this book, Lee McIntyre argues that what distinguishes science from its rivals is what he calls “the scientific attitude”—caring about evidence and being willing to change theories on the basis of new evidence. McIntyre argues that the scientific attitude—the grounding of science in evidence—offers a uniquely powerful tool in the defense of science.
Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. Formerly Executive Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, he has also served as a policy advisor to the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and as Associate Editor in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He is the author of Dark Ages: The Case for a Science of Human Behavior and Post-Truth, both published by the MIT Press.
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Social Media in Action Training
Monday, May 13
6:30 PM – 9:30 PM EDT
The Democracy Center, 45 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge
Cost: $5 – $80
The Democracy Center is launching a series of skills and professional development trainings! We aim to make convenient, more affordable opportunities available to Cambridge and Greater Boston nonprofits and grassroots organizations.
Our first partnership is with FANG Collective, a community based organization working at the meeting point between racial and environmental justice, who will bring their expertise in creating powerful social media campaigns to you!
In this 3 hour training, the FANG Collective will use interactive activities and their experience at the forefront of online storytelling to train participants in key social media concepts, how to tell your story of an event or action, and how to make effective graphics for your social media campaigns.
We will only host the training if 15 participants register. Registration is capped at 30. Refreshments provided.
Sliding scale:
Full organization rate: $80
Subsidized organization rate: $40
Full individual rate: $30
Low income rate: $10
Mobility Aid User rate: $5
More about the rates:
for the organizational rates, we intend these for people who are sending their employees, staff, or volunteers from an organization who is partially or wholly covering the cost
individual rates are for individuals who are not receiving financial support from an organization
since our space is not fully accessible to people who use mobility aids such as wheelchairs, scooters, etc, we are offering discounted tickets to those people.
If these rates are prohibitive, please email info@democracycenter.org, subject line "Social Media in Action Training Cost" and we can negotiate a scholarship for you or your organization.
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No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
Monday, May 13
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning journalist RACHEL LOUISE SNYDER for a discussion of her latest book, No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us. She will be joined in conversation by SUZANNE DUBUS, the CEO of the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center.
About No Visible Bruises
We call it domestic violence. We call it private violence. Sometimes we call it intimate terrorism. But whatever we call it, we generally do not believe it has anything at all to do with us, despite the World Health Organization deeming it a “global epidemic.” In America, domestic violence accounts for 15 percent of all violent crime, and yet it remains locked in silence, even as its tendrils reach unseen into so many of our most pressing national issues, from our economy to our education system, from mass shootings to mass incarceration to #MeToo. We still have not taken the true measure of this problem.
In No Visible Bruises, journalist Rachel Louise Snyder gives context for what we don't know we're seeing. She frames this urgent and immersive account of the scale of domestic violence in our country around key stories that explode the common myths—that if things were bad enough, victims would just leave; that a violent person cannot become nonviolent; that shelter is an adequate response; and most insidiously that violence inside the home is a private matter, sealed from the public sphere and disconnected from other forms of violence. Through the stories of victims, perpetrators, law enforcement, and reform movements from across the country, Snyder explores the real roots of private violence, its far-reaching consequences for society, and what it will take to truly address it.
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Inventor Talk: Patricia Nolan-Brown, inventor, author of "Idea to Invention"
Monday, May 13
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
MIT, Building 4 - 231, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
The Inventors Association of New England presents Patricia Nolan-Brown, inventor, author of "Idea to Invention" http://www.patricianolanbrown.commore details to come.
Show up as early as 6:30pm for networking. Come get your invention questions answers no matter what stage you are in the invention process.
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Tuesday, May 14 - Thursday, May 16
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2019 Virtual Summit on AgTech: An Online Conference Expanding Access to Trends and Issues in the Field
Tuesday, May 14 - Thursday, May 16
12pm each day
Webinar
RSVP at https://www.agtechsummit.org
Cost: $5 - whatever you wish to pay
The Tuck Business School at Dartmouth Is organizing an agriculture technology conference. Thought you all might be interested in participating! It will be held virtually May 14-16 (no travel required, just logging in via laptop), and all proceeds of the registration will be given to charity.
To register, visit: http://www.agtechsummit.org
Tuesday, May 14
Rethinking the Farm - Inputs, Automation, and Use-of-Space
Wednesday, May 15
Precision Agriculture and Analytics: Data, Machine Learning, and AI
Thursday, May 16
Cellular Agriculture and Biotech Innovation in Food
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Tuesday, May 14
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Climate Change Clergy
Tuesday, May 14
noon-1pm
Webinar
RSVP at jcan.intern@gmail.com
We are at an especially critical moment in the climate crisis. How do we grapple with the reality that humanity's actions and inactions now and in the next few years will be sealing the fate of Creation? The JCANetwork already includes many of your concerned members. This webinar supports Rabbinic leadership. In this webinar, Jewish Climate Action Network will offer two perspectives: Rabbi Katy Allen will lead a discussion of Support for Rabbis in This Time of Climate Crisis. And then Fred Davis will invite you to participate in Rabbis Rally for Radical Reduction.
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Interconnection Forum
Tuesday, May 14
1:00 PM – 5:30 PM EDT
Foley Hoag, 155 Seaport Boulevard, #1600, Boston
Cost: $95 – $135
For those interested, there will be a networking lunch beginning at 12 for a small added cost. BE SURE TO SELECT OPTIONAL LUNCH AT REGISTRATION IF YOU PLAN ON ATTENDING LUNCH 12-1PM.
Solar developers and installers in Massachusetts are well aware that the interconnection process has become increasingly protracted and costly. Improving this process will be critical for the health of the State’s solar industry in the years ahead.
Featuring a keynote from TUE House Chair Tom Golden, join us for a series of panels and town hall discussions featuring John Abe of Sunwealth, Melissa Kemp of Cypress Creek, Courtney Feeley Karp of Klavens Law Group, Eric Graber-Lopez of BlueWave Solar, Jamie Dickerson of NECEC, Nathan Phelps of Vote Solar, Paul Renaud of Eversource, and Will Kern of National Grid. Find the full agenda here.
This forum, targeted at solar executives, development managers, and others involved in interconnection, will provide important background information and a critical opportunity to engage with colleagues on which issues are most urgent and what solutions might be put forward. The event will be facilitated by Dr. Jonathan Raab, who mediated the original development and subsequent revisions of the Massachusetts DG Interconnection standards & tariffs. Through presentations, interactive discussions and breakouts, the forum will seek to answer the following questions:
How did we get here?
The interconnection process has evolved considerably over the past decade; this event will provide a brief history of the DG interconnection tariffs, outline how they’ve changed and the process through which they’ve been modified.
What is the state of the grid in Massachusetts?
Most developers have encountered areas of grid saturation, often resulting in interconnection delay and the need for expensive area studies and system modifications; this event will provide a look at some of the technical challenges the grid is now facing and offer some insight into how the utilities are responding.
What are the key issues that must be addressed?
A core set of issues that currently inhibit solar interconnection will be presented, and all attendees will be invited to engage in a vigorous discussion on what the solar industry’s top interconnection-related priorities should be.
How do we solve the problems at hand?
The event will conclude with an interactive workshop for all attendees, intended to identify possible solutions for overcoming the key interconnection challenges we now face.
The issues and solutions referenced above will form the foundation for SEBANE’s advocacy efforts over the coming year. As such, this forum is a critical opportunity to provide input into the industry’s strategy for resolving interconnection issues, and an event you will not want to miss.
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EPA Region 1 Soak Up the Rain New England Webinar Series: Reaching Public Consensus: Stormwater Funding in Ashland, MA
Tuesday, May 14
1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Webinar
One of the greatest challenges for New England municipalities with a Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) is reaching consensus on stormwater program funding to support implementation of permit requirements. During this webinar, three Town of Ashland officials will describe their experiences establishing a stormwater enterprise fund for their community. Presenters will discuss the drivers and key steps; their strategies and lessons learned; and their recommendations for program implementation and operation. The webinar will also explain the critical roles of stakeholder involvement, creative partnerships, and meaningful public outreach to generate support for funding solutions.
Presenters
Maeghan Dos Anjos, Conservation Agent/Director, Town of Ashland, Massachusetts
Rob St. Germain, Chair, Stormwater Advisory Committee, Town of Ashland, Massachusetts
Evan White, Project Engineer, Department of Public Works, Town of Ashland, Massachusetts
For more on Soak up the Rain: http://www.epa.gov/soakuptherain
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Venezuela: How did we get here, and what’s next?
Tuesday, May 14
3:00PM – 4:00PM ET
MIT, Building 3-270, Cambridge and broadcast live at https://www.povertyactionlab.org/d2p2
Roberto Rigobon, Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management and Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management
The third constitution—ever—was written in Venezuela. Additionally, use of the term “social security” as a responsibility of the state was first introduced in Venezuela in 1818. Between 1945 and 1965, Venezuela had the second fastest growth rate in per capita GDP (after Japan), the second lowest inflation rate (after Germany), and the lowest interest rate, not to mention good weather (which clearly defines paradise). So what happened?
On May 14, Professor Roberto Rigobon of MIT Sloan will deliver the next talk in J-PAL’s Data, Decisions, Public Policy (D2P2) lecture series. Roberto will speak about the modern history of Venezuela, starting from when the country had little oil all to way up to the turmoil of today. He will discuss the current humanitarian crisis and possible alternatives moving forward.
Roberto Rigobon is the Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management and Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is a Venezuelan economist with research interests in international economics, monetary economics, and development economics. His work focuses on the causes of balance-of-payments crises, financial crises, and the propagation of them across countries—the phenomenon that has been identified in the literature as contagion. He is one of the two founding members of the Billion Prices Project and a co-founder of PriceStats. Roberto is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Census Bureau’s Scientific Advisory Committee, and a visiting professor at IESA School of Management in Venezuela.
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A Healthy Problem
Tuesday, May 14
5:30pm to 8:00pm
MIT EG&G Education Center, 34-101, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
What motivates an entrepreneur is passion, but what keeps them focused and makes them successful is having a true understanding of the problem or unmet need they are addressing. Hear two digital health entrepreneurs at different stages of their journey share their story. Learn to better understand when a passion is a real problem that can lead to a great start up. Our experts will also share their two different approaches to starting a company in healthcare.
You will learn:
How to engage hospitals and healthcare systems to help solve meaningful problems.
How an accelerator can benefit your team/product.
How patient satisfaction and health outcomes can drive success and scale.
What it takes to successfully integrate with larger digital health products.
Paola Abello, Director of Innovation at the Center for Primary Care, Harvard Medical School will chat with Sterling Lanier, CEO, Tonic Health, which is a is a real-time mobile data collection and payments platform that provides a seamless, easy and engaging way for patients to fill out any survey, sign any consent form or make any payment when and where it’s most convenient for them, and Akshaya Shanmugam, Co-founder & CEO, Lumme Labs is developing a cutting-edge addiction treatment platform by combining wearable technology, machine learning, and behavioral psychology.
Speakers
MODERATOR: Paola Abello, Director of Innovation at the Center for Primary Care, Harvard Medical School
SPEAKER: Sterling Lanier, CEO, Tonic Health
SPEAKER: Akshaya Shanmugam, Co-founder & CEO, Lumme Labs
Event Schedule
Registration & Networking: 5:30 - 6:00 PM
Welcome and Panel Discussion: 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Networking hour after the event: 8:00 - 9:00 PM
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Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football
Tuesday, May 14
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Boston Public Library, Rabb Hall, 700 Boylston Street, Boston
Join John Urschel and Louisa Thomas for a night of rich discussion about John's career and the couple's new book, Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football. This event is being held at the Boston Public Library, in Rabb Hall. 100 seats are ticketed, and each ticket comes with a copy of Mind and Matter that John will sign. To secure a ticketed seat, please visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mind-and-matter-book-launch-with-john-urschel-and-louisa-thomas-tickets-59124895153. Books can be picked up right outside Rabb Hall before or after the talk. Additional books will be available for purchase that night as well.
About the Book
For John Urschel, what began as an insatiable appetite for puzzles as a child quickly evolved into mastery of the elegant systems and rules of mathematics. By the time he was thirteen, Urschel was auditing college-level calculus courses. But when he joined his high school football team, a new interest began to eclipse the thrill he once felt in the classroom. Football challenged Urschel in an entirely different way, and he became addicted to the physical contact of the sport. Accepting a scholarship to play football at Penn State, Urschel refused to sacrifice one passion for another, and simultaneously pursued his bachelor's and then master's degrees in mathematics. Against the odds, Urschel found a way to manage his double life as a scholar and an athlete, and so when he was drafted to the Baltimore Ravens, he enrolled in his PhD at MIT.
Weaving together two separate yet bound narratives, Urschel relives for us the most pivotal moments of his bifurcated life. He explains why, after Penn State was sanctioned for the acts of former coach Jerry Sandusky, he turned his back on offers from Ivy League universities and refused to abandon his team, and contends with his mother's repeated request, at the end of every season, that he quit the sport and pursue a career in rocket science. Perhaps most personally, he opens up about the correlation between football and CTE, and the risks he took for the game he loves. Equally at home with both Bernard Riemann's notion of infinity and Bill Belichick's playbook, Urschel reveals how each challenge - whether on the field or in the classroom - has brought him closer to understanding the two different halves of his own life, and how reason and emotion, the mind and the body, are always working together. He asks why, "So often, people want to divide the world into two. Matter and energy. Wave and particle. Athlete and mathematician. Why can't something be both?"
About the authors
John Urschel is a former offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens and a PhD candidate at MIT. He has a bachelor's and master's degree in mathematics from Penn State, and in 2013, he won the Sullivan Award, given to "the most outstanding amateur athlete in the United States," and the Campbell Trophy, awarded to the country's top scholar-athlete in college football.
Louisa Thomas is the author of Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams and Conscience: Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family--a Test of Will and Faith in World War I. She is a contributor to the New Yorker's website and a former writer and editor for Grantland. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Times, Vogue, and other places.
For John Urschel, what began as an insatiable appetite for puzzles as a child quickly evolved into mastery of the elegant systems and rules of mathematics. By the time he was thirteen, Urschel was auditing college-level calculus courses. But when he joined his high school football team, a new interest began to eclipse the thrill he once felt in the classroom. Football challenged Urschel in an entirely different way, and he became addicted to the physical contact of the sport. Accepting a scholarship to play football at Penn State, Urschel refused to sacrifice one passion for another, and simultaneously pursued his bachelor's and then master's degrees in mathematics. Against the odds, Urschel found a way to manage his double life as a scholar and an athlete, and so when he was drafted to the Baltimore Ravens, he enrolled in his PhD at MIT.
Weaving together two separate yet bound narratives, Urschel relives for us the most pivotal moments of his bifurcated life. He explains why, after Penn State was sanctioned for the acts of former coach Jerry Sandusky, he turned his back on offers from Ivy League universities and refused to abandon his team, and contends with his mother's repeated request, at the end of every season, that he quit the sport and pursue a career in rocket science. Perhaps most personally, he opens up about the correlation between football and CTE, and the risks he took for the game he loves. Equally at home with both Bernard Riemann's notion of infinity and Bill Belichick's playbook, Urschel reveals how each challenge - whether on the field or in the classroom - has brought him closer to understanding the two different halves of his own life, and how reason and emotion, the mind and the body, are always working together. He asks why, "So often, people want to divide the world into two. Matter and energy. Wave and particle. Athlete and mathematician. Why can't something be both?"
John Urschel is a former offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens and a PhD candidate at MIT. He has a bachelor's and master's degree in mathematics from Penn State, and in 2013, he won the Sullivan Award, given to "the most outstanding amateur athlete in the United States," and the Campbell Trophy, awarded to the country's top scholar-athlete in college football.
Louisa Thomas is the author of Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams and Conscience: Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family--a Test of Will and Faith in World War I. She is a contributor to the New Yorker's website and a former writer and editor for Grantland. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Times, Vogue, and other places.
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Finding a “Healthy” Problem to Solve
Tuesday, May 14
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
MIT, Building 34-101, EG&G Education Center, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Pre-registration is required
$25 Members; $25 Livestream Members; $45 Non-Members: $45 Livestream Non-Members; $10 Students; $10 Livestream Students; $5 Student Members; $5 Livestream Student Members
This event will be live streamed - select the live stream ticket option @ checkout if you would like to watch the event online.
If you registered for the live stream, you'll be emailed a link & password between 5:30PM & 6:00PM on the day of the event
What motivates an entrepreneur is passion, but what keeps them focused and makes them successful is having a true understanding of the problem or unmet need they are addressing. Hear two digital health entrepreneurs at different stages of their journey share their story. Learn to better understand when a passion is a real problem that can lead to a great start up. Our experts will also share their two different approaches to starting a company in healthcare.
You will learn:
How to engage hospitals and healthcare systems to help solve meaningful problems.
How an accelerator can benefit your team/product.
How patient satisfaction and health outcomes can drive success and scale.
What it takes to successfully integrate with larger digital health products.
Paola Abello, Director of Innovation at the Center for Primary Care, Harvard Medical School will chat with Sterling Lanier, CEO, Tonic Health, which is a is a real-time mobile data collection and payments platform that provides a seamless, easy and engaging way for patients to fill out any survey, sign any consent form or make any payment when and where it’s most convenient for them, and Akshaya Shanmugam, Co-founder & CEO, Lumme Labs is developing a cutting-edge addiction treatment platform by combining wearable technology, machine learning, and behavioral psychology.
Speakers
MODERATOR: Paola Abello, Director of Innovation at the Center for Primary Care, Harvard Medical School
SPEAKER: Sterling Lanier, CEO, Tonic Health
SPEAKER: Akshaya Shanmugam, Co-founder & CEO, Lumme Labs
Event Schedule
Registration & Networking:6:00 - 6:30 PM
Welcome and Panel Discussion: 6:30 - 8:00 PM
Networking hour after the event: 8:00 - 9:00 PM
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History of Science for the People
Tuesday, May 14
6:00-9:00 p.m.
MIT, Building 4-237, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear),Cambridge
Science for the People is having an event on the history of Science for the People, including short presentations by members of the original organization and a moderated Q&A/panel discussion. This will be a chance to have some intergenerational dialogue, think and talk about what’s different and what’s the same about those times and now, and perhaps distill some lessons for organizing from the experiences of the past.
We plan to serve some vegetarian food (probably Middle Eastern), although not a full dinner. It is important to RSVP so that we’ll know how much food to buy.
We hope to see you there! Please spread the word electronically and/or by other means.
More information at https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/sftp-boston-announcements/10r_zxDQGkk/C4-MUmoQDAAJ
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Getting to the Point with the authors of "The Hill to Die On"
Tuesday, May 14
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, 210 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston
Cost: $0 – $28
Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer, coauthors of Politico Playbook, will join Steve Scully, Political Editor, C-SPAN, for a discussion of their inside account of President Trump’s first two years in the White House as viewed from Capitol Hill. From negotiations with congressional leaders over the government shutdown to the Supreme Court confirmation hearings, "The Hill to Die On" offers an inside look at the defining moments and power struggles that have roiled Congress under the Trump Administration.
A book signing will follow and copies of "The Hill to Die On" will be available for purchase at the Institute’s gift store on the night of the program.
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Links to events at over 50 colleges and universities at Hubevents: http://hubevents.blogspot.com
Thanks to
Fred Hapgood's Selected Lectures on Science and Engineering in the Boston Area: http://www.BostonScienceLectures.com
MIT Events: http://calendar.mit.edu
Harvard Events: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/harvard-events/events-calendar/
Harvard Environment: http://environment.harvard.edu/events/calendar/
Sustainability at Harvard: http://green.harvard.edu/events
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/
Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/
Startup and Entrepreneurial Events: http://www.greenhornconnect.com/events/
Cambridge Civic Journal: http://www.rwinters.com
Cambridge Happenings: http://cambridgehappenings.org
Cambridge Community Calendar: https://www.cctvcambridge.org/calendar
If you have an event you would like to see here, the submission deadline is 11 AM on Sundays, as Energy (and Other) Events is sent out Sunday afternoons.
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