Science Sundays | Arts and Sciences

SCIENCE SUNDAYS provides a forum to interest, engage, and inform the public about a wide range of current and emerging topics and issues in science that touch our everyday lives. Speakers are experts in their fields from on campus and around the world with experience in making their topics interesting and accessible for audiences of all ages, with or without a science background.

Upcoming Talks

Sept 8, 2013
Computational Imaging and Diagnosis for Telemedicine and Global Health

Aydogan Ozcan--With more than six billion cell-phone users in the world; the majority of them in developing parts of the world, new opportunities exist to put their technology to work in point-of-care diagnostics and/or microscopic imaging applications to improve health care. This is especially important in areas where medical facilities and infrastructure are extremely limited or non-existent. Ozcan introduces new imaging and detection architectures using novel theories and numerical algorithms to address immediate needs of telemedicine for global health problems.

Aydogan Ozcan is an associate professor at UCLA leading the Bio- and Nano-Photonics Laboratory at the Electrical Engineering and Bioengineering Departments. He has 22 issued patents--all of which are licensed—and more than 15 pending patent applications. He is author of one book and co-author of more than 250 peer reviewed research articles. Ozcan has received several awards, among them: the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), SPIE Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award, SPIE Early Career Achievement Award, ARO Young Investigator Award, NSF CAREER Award, NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award and MIT’s TR35 Award for his seminal contributions to near-field and on-chip imaging, and telemedicine based diagnostics. innovate.ee.ucla.edu/, org.ee.ucla.edu/innovate.ee.ucla.edu//prof.-ozcan-brief-biosketch.html

October 13
The Great Animal Orchestra

Bernie Krause--A musician and naturalist and one of the world's leading experts in natural sound, Krause has spent his life discovering and recording nature's rich chorus. Searching far beyond our modern world's honking horns and buzzing machinery, he has sought out the truly wild places that remain, where natural soundscapes exist virtually unchanged from when the earliest humans first inhabited the earth. Krause shares fascinating insight into how deeply animals rely on their aural habitat to survive and the damaging effects of extraneous noise on the delicate balance between predator and prey. But natural soundscapes aren't vital only to the animal kingdom; Krause explores how the myriad voices and rhythms of the natural world formed a basis from which our own musical expression emerged.

From snapping shrimp, popping viruses, and the songs of humpback whales-whose voices, if unimpeded, could circle the earth in hours—to cracking glaciers, bubbling streams, and the roar of intense storms; from melody-singing birds to the organlike drone of wind blowing over reeds, the sounds Krause has experienced and describes are like no others. And from recording jaguars at night in the Amazon rain forest to encountering mountain gorillas in Africa's Virunga Mountains, Krause offers an intense and intensely personal narrative of the planet's deep and connected natural sounds and rhythm. wildsanctuary.com

November 17
Building the cosmos: how simulations shed light on the dark universe

Risa Wechsler--Recent advances in observations of the cosmos have allowed us to peer into the earliest moments of our Universe, and have dramatically changed our picture of its contents. Wechsler will walk you through how cutting-edge simulations allow us to be a fly on the wall during the formation of the cosmos, and shed light on the physical processes that created the Universe we see today.

Risa Wechsler is an associate professor in the Physics Department at Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and a member of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.

risa.stanfiord.edu/

December 8
The Quantum Information Revolution

Paul Kwiat--More than a century after Einstein's revolutionary suggestion that light is composed of particles, the quantum information revolution seeks to use the almost magical properties of nonclassical physics to enable new feats in information processing that would be difficult or impossible without the quantum advantage. Kwiat will discuss how quantum randomness, superposition, and entanglement can be used to realize perfectly secure cryptography, ultra-fast computation, and completely non-invasive 'photography.' Time/appetites permitting, Kwiat may also give a brief lesson in Quantum Cooking.

Paul Kwiat is the Bardeen Chair in Physics, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. A Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America, he has given invited talks at numerous national and international conferences, and authored over 135 articles on various topics in quantum optics and quantum information. His research includes “quantum interrogation” and optical implementations of quantum information protocols. particularly using entangled photons.

January 12, 2014
Carcinogens in the Environment: Separating Fact from Fiction

Jim Gentile is Dean for the Natural Sciences at Hope College, and Past-President of Research Corporation for Science Advancement. He has a PhD in genetics and formerly held an endowed professorship, and was dean at Hope College (MI). He is president of two separate scientific societies as well as past editor-in-chief for the international journal Mutation Research. He is a former member of both the Michigan Hazardous Waste Site Review Board and US EPA Science Advisory Board, as well advisory boards for NIOSH, NSF and NIH. He served on both the NRC Committee on Undergraduate Science Education, and the NAS Science Education and Life Science Boards. He is a National Academies Education Mentor.

Gentile had a leadership role in the publication, Biology 2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists. He also served on the National Science Board Commission on science education and was a co-chairperson of the National Academies Summer Institutes for Education in Biology. He was a governor for the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research, a council member for the Council on Undergraduate Research, and on the executive committee for Project Kaleidoscope. He is the receipient of the Alexander Hollaender Research Excellence Award, the Distinguished Alumni Award from Illinois State University, the Cancer Medallion of the Japanese National Cancer Institute, the Science Medal of Distinction of Pisa, Italy, and is an AAAS Fellow. His research focus is environmental mutagenesis and carcinogenesis, with an emphasis on metabolism of carcinogens plant and animal systems, and the association between inflammation and cancer.

February 9 OPEN

March 2
Mathematical cryptography

Jill Pipher, professor of math, Brown University

April 13
Falling Paper and Insect Flight

Jane Wang--Her work is driven by a fascination with the puzzles and beauty around us. She will discuss puzzles and mathematics about the dynamics of falling paper and the tricks used by insects to fly.

Jane Wang is a professor of physics and mechanical engineering at Cornell University. A theoretical physicist, Wang studies the physics of living organisms. Her research aims to identify, investigate, and discover new phenomena in a broad range of physical and biological systems. She has worked on problems in statistical physics of turbulence and turbulent diffusion, fluid dynamics, and applied mathematics. Her recent work has focused on understanding the physics of insect flight: how do insects fly, why do they fly the way they do, and how can we infer their 'thoughts' from their flight dynamics.

She received her PhD in Physics from the University of Chicago in 1996. She was then a NSF-NATO postdoctoral fellow at the department of theoretical physics of Oxford University and a visiting member at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. She joined Cornell in 1999, where she is now a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and physics. She is a member of the American Physical Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Her work is supported by an NSF Early Career Award, an ONR Young Investigator Award, a David and Lucille Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, and a Radcliffe Fellowship in Science.

http://dragonfly.tam.cornell.edu/

SECOND SEASON TALKS 2012-13
FIRST SEASON TALKS 2011-12

LOCATION
Lecture - Ohio Union, US Bank Conference Theater
Reception - Ohio Union, Ohio Staters' Traditions room

FREQUENCY
Lectures are typically held the second Sunday of each month during the regular academic term.

TIME
All lectures are held from 3-4pm, with a reception immediately following from 4-5 pm.

PARKING
Parking is available in the Ohio Union Garage.

CONTACT
Beth Van Gundy

SCIENCE SUNDAYS is a free, public lecture series sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and the following participating science centers and institutes:
Center for Applied Plant Sciences (CAPS)
Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP)
Center for Emergent Materials (CEM)
Electronic & Magnetic Nanoscale Composite Multifunctional Materials (ENCOMM)
Mathematical Biosciences Institute (MBI)