Tina Seelig, Executive Director, Stanford Technology Ventures Program; Director, Epicenter
Creativity often feels like a mystery. Whether we are struggling to generate fresh ideas or staring at problems with no solutions in sight, the spark of creative genius often seems out of reach. In this talk Tina Seelig reveals a set of tools and conditions that we each control - our Innovation Engine - that allows us to increase our own creativity and that of our teams and organizations. She shows that just as the scientific method demystifies the process of discovery, there is a formal process for unlocking the pathway to invention.
Jennifer Dionne, Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
We may someday live in a world in which cancer is cured with light, objects can be made invisible, and teleportation through space and time is possible. The future of science fiction is now becoming a reality, thanks to advances in nanomaterials science and engineering. Join Professor Jen Dionne as she explores the unique and enabling properties of nano-sized materials, with applications ranging from highly efficient solar-renewable technologies to optical computers and cloaks of invisibility.
Margot Gerritsen, Associate Professor, Energy Resources Engineering, and Director, Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering
Few yacht races are as exciting as the America's Cup. The catamarans used today are incredibly fast and strong, and the sailors are true athletes. Designing the yachts and racing them successfully requires great expertise and skill, and deep knowledge about materials, mechanics, and yes, mathematics. Advanced calculus, algebra and computing are used in designing sails, hulls and choosing the optimal track through the water. Margot Gerritsen advised a graduate student on Team New Zealand, one of the world’s top America's Cup teams. Join her to learn about the challenges of harnessing airflow, structural mechanics and computing to optimize a yacht, and the excitement of working for an elite sailing team.
Manu Prakash, Assistant Professor, Bioengineering
When you go to the zoo, you see a very small fraction of what creeps and crawls on this planet. Our planet is filled with living creatures just as beautiful as large mammals, but completely invisible to the naked human eye. One could argue that these invisible players "call the shots." They represent a significant biomass of the planet, cause unknown diseases and keep the ecosystem ticking. Professor Manu Prakash wants to make this hidden world visible, not just to scientists, but to everybody in the world. His lab has invented a "use-and-throw" microscope that can be folded out of paper (!) in a few minutes. Join Professor Prakash in an ordeal of Origami to build functional microscopes from scratch to illuminate the invisible life around us. Let's see what you will discover.
Sigrid Close, Assistant Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics
Meteoroids are small, solid objects in space produced when comets and asteroids break up. Over 100 billion of them, each travelling at more than 24,000 miles per hour, enter Earth’s atmosphere every day. Most are too small to reach the Earth’s surface, burning up as shooting stars. We call them meteors. These bits of stardust are fundamental to our understanding of the formation of Earth, our solar system, and even humankind, but they are not well understood. Join expert Sigrid Close on a journey of discovery to learn about meteoroids, meteors and their links to creation and destruction.
Fei-Fei Li, Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Almost half the human brain is involved in vision. The moment we open our eyes, we see objects laid out in ways that we can navigate, manipulate or enjoy. Humans are superb seeing machines, but not so for computers. Now, engineers and scientists are designing intelligent machines that can not only see, but grasp the meaning of pictures. Although we are still far from such a goal, we may one day have smart computers and robots able to interpret visual data like a human, to navigate, do chores or even perform surgeries and manage information. Join Professor Fei-Fei Li to learn about the latest progress in computer vision and explore the larger implications of “Computers that See.”
Olav Solgaard, Professor, Electrical Engineering
Optical fibers are more than the information conduits of the Internet. They are also used to provide a crisp, three-dimensional window into human anatomy at the cellular level. Join Professor Olav Solgaard to hear how engineers are harnessing the information-carrying capacity of optical fibers to build miniaturized microscopes and sensors to study cellular structure, gene expression and pathology in the human body and more.
Gianluca Iaccarino, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Extremely powerful computers with up to 100,000 processors have enabled unprecedented numerical simulations that are pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Join Professor Gianluca Iaccarino and colleagues from the Center for Turbulence as they demonstrate how they are using the world’s largest computers to study fluid dynamics in interesting ways. His models include creating a planet in seven days, quieting noisy jets and slowing a Formula 1 car. In his talk, Professor Iaccarino will provide a window into intriguing physical phenomena, the challenges of extreme-scale computations and include plenty of simulations illustrating the fascinating beauty of fluid turbulence.
Philip Levis, Associate Professor, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Wireless networks have become a key part of daily life, but understanding how and why they work can seem daunting. Join wireless expert Philip Levis as he discusses the history of wireless and the basics of modern phone and WiFi systems. Professor Levis will answer questions such as: Why do more bars mean faster speed? How is it possible there are dead spots in Silicon Valley? Why does signal strength change even when I’m standing still? By the end the class, he hopes at minimum you come away knowing where to stand for a better cell signal and good places to put your home WiFi router.
Robert Sutton, Professor, Management Science and Engineering
Join management expert and best-selling author Bob Sutton to learn how leaders can spread great thinking—and acting—to more people and places, or as Sutton puts it, how they “scale-up excellence.” Sutton believes that the best leaders devote the most energy to building better rather than bigger, and how scaling requires great patience and persistence. “The best leaders are fighting a ground war, not an air war,” he says. Sutton will draw upon the lessons of pirate ships, cheating college students, the effects of music in British grocery stores, why people choose cake over fruit, and how bad is stronger than good.