Computer Vision for Sustainability ResearchThis session will cover:Core computer vision methods and emerging approaches (e.g., image segmentation, object detection, foundation models)Applications across climate adaptation, energy systems, agriculture, urban resilience, conservation, and moreOpportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborationMany sustainability challenges depend on extracting insights from visual data at scale??"from monitoring ecosystem change to assessing climate risk. This ...
Design mediates the relationship between humans and nature. In the built environment, engineering decisions about form, structure, and material shape how people inhabit space and how natural systems are engaged, preserved, or transformed. Today, the environmental impact of construction is one of the defining challenges of our time. Buildings account ...
Thermal radiation plays a central role in energy conversion, yet it is rarely treated as a designable resource in solid-state systems. In this talk, I will discuss how controlling radiative energy exchange with materials and optical structures enables new routes for power generation beyond conventional photovoltaics. I will first describe ...
The El Niño??"Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a major source of interannual climate variability, shaping rainfall, drought, and weather extremes. Yet even state-of-the-art climate models show substantial biases in reproducing ENSO amplitude, spectral behavior, and the frequency of extreme events. Pinpointing which processes are misrepresented is difficult in comprehensive models because ...
Macrocyclic arene compounds have played a fundamental role in the development of supramolecular chemistry. Research on these systems have laid the foundations to explore and establish non-covalent interactions, e.g., hydrogen bonding, pi···pi stacking, C-H···pi interactions. My research group has taken the basic principles of macrocyclic arenes to design architectures enforcing ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
First Friday Nights at CuriOdysseySwing into the weekend with science, animals, music, food trucks, and fun! On the first Friday of every month, parents and kids celebrate together at CuriOdyssey.Dance to some of your favorite hits, while enjoying animal presentations and science activities. Activities and programs are different each time, so make it a ...
Tucker Jones will talk about early galaxies observed with the James Webb Space Telescope,andEmily Silich will speak about what happens when clusters of galaxies collide.
Where: DavisCost: Free
Climate-Resilient Bay Area - LivestreamWe welcome Charlie Onorati of SaveSFBay giving us a status update on the Bay Area’s climate resilience, with a focus on sea level rise.Charlie will share key resources to help attendees understand the Bay’s preparedness for sea level rise, explore regional biodiversity, and examine nature-based infrastructure projects that reduce flooding ...
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located on a high mountaintop in Chile, is equipped with an 8.4-meter primary mirror and the largest digital camera in the world, the LSST Camera. Rubin Observatory will soon begin an unprecedented 10-year survey that will repeatedly scan the entire Southern sky every three to ...
Where: San MateoCost: Free
Saturday, 03/07/26
Life’s Six Great Ways of BeingUnderstanding how all of life is organized and interrelated remains fundamental to biology and evolution. Advances and applications of molecular phylogenetics and other tools continue to fascinate, inspire questions about common ancestry, and invite reexamination of traditional classification systems and the Kingdoms of life. Please join us to hear from ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free, donations encouraged
Butterfly Garden Volunteer Workday at the EECJoin us in this volunteer opportunity to help the educational native plant gardens and trails at the EEC!Help us with maintain and improve the habitat and trails at the Environmental Education Center at the Don Edwards SF Bay NWR! Activities may include removing invasive plants, picking up litter, or maintaining ...
Coastal Walk at Pillar Point BluffJoin Peninsula Open Space Trust for a beautiful walk at Pillar Point Bluff just north of Half Moon Bay! You will be guided by POST ambassadors who will share details about the area’s interesting natural history, from the coastal scrub habitat to the Fitzgerald Marine Preserve which hosts tide pools ...
The North Bay Science Discovery Day is a one-day, free community science festival to spark curiosity and wonder in children and families. The festival brings together 100+ organizations and 10,000 attendees - supported by 70 sponsors and 150 volunteers - for youth to talk with scientists and engineers while exploring ...
Where: Santa RosaCost: Free
Wolves Weekend at The Tech Interactive - March 7 & 8The wolves are back (in Yellowstone National Park), and they’re taking over The Tech. Wolf ears will be provided for the first 500 visitors by Great Wolf Lodge! Please note, no live wolves will be in attendance. We are keeping them wild, just the way they belong.Visit The Tech Interactive ...
First Saturday Tours are a wonderful way to introduce yourself to the Arboretum or to deepen your knowledge of the Arboretum’s plant collections. Each tour is a little different depending on the time of year, the interests of the tour guide, and the people who join in. For example, you ...
Where: Santa CruzCost: Free with admission
Sunday, 03/08/26
Wolves Weekend at The Tech Interactive - March 7 & 8The wolves are back (in Yellowstone National Park), and they’re taking over The Tech. Wolf ears will be provided for the first 500 visitors by Great Wolf Lodge! Please note, no live wolves will be in attendance. We are keeping them wild, just the way they belong.Visit The Tech Interactive ...
Where: San JoseCost: $38.00
Marine Science Sunday: Amazing MigrationsWe're celebrating the animals that love to travel! Marine mammals like gray whales and northern elephant seals are famous for their epic migrations along the California coast. During this Marine Science Sunday, you'll learn about some of the ocean's best swimmers.Talks at 10:30 AM, 12:00 PM, and 2:00 PMSpace is ...
Where: SausalitoCost: Free with advance registration
Cool Insect DefensesLearn about the amazing tricks insects use to protect themselves from predators.Insects are important food sources for so many animals, sustaining much of the wildlife we know and love! Join us in the Visitor Center for a presentation to learn about many of the amazing ways that insects protect themselves!This ...
I am using optogenetic tools in cells to manipulate hedgehog signaling and look at pathway dynamics in different developmental systems.Speaker: Lorenzo Del Castillo, UC San Francisco
Despite the rapid adoption of LLM chatbots, little is known about how they are used. We approach this question theoretically and empirically, modeling a user who chooses whether to complete a task herself, ask the chatbot for information that reduces decision noise, or delegate execution to the chatbot.The model-a rational ...
Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) have emerged as a key technology for harnessing high-temperature energy from hot dry rock (HDR) at depths of ~3-10 km. Rapid progress in horizontal drilling and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing has enabled creation of large stimulated reservoir volumes, yet major challenges remain - fracture-flow short-circuiting, limited ability ...
Ask anyone what matters most to them and the answer is likely to be other people: partners, parents, children, friends. We know so much about the people we are close to: how they like their coffee, if they dance well, how they look when they’re angry, whether they tend to ...
More than five decades ago, President Kennedy exhorted the nation to rise up and meet the biggest challenges of that period, amongst them being the Race to the Moon, that led to the “Moonshot”, and the establishment of the Apollo program. It is quite likely that we, as a nation ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Astronomy on Tap Charlottesville: The Power of Radio AstronomyA Cosmic Broadcast: Massive Stars on Every ChannelSpeaker: Anna Dignan, University of VirginiaWhat is the Radio Spectrum and Why Does it Neet Protection?Speaker: Chris De Pree, National Radio Astronomy ObservatorySee weblink for streaming information
This session will provide an overview of different ways that a climate technology startup can raise capital and obtain other support at the pre-seed and seed/series a stage of its development.Speaker: Craig Tighe, DLA Piper
Where: StanfordCost: Free
'The Problem with Plastic' - LivestreamA powerful look at plastic’s impact on human health and the environment, and how we can fight back by putting people and the planet over plasticsPlastic is everywhere - wrapped around our food, stitched into our clothes, even coursing through our veins. Once a marvel of modern science, plastic has ...
Where: Cost: Free
Conversations on AI: The Power Grid - Past, Present, and FutureFeaturing Rick Wilmer ’84, CEO of ChargePoint, and Dr. Roman Dudenhausen, CEO of Con Energy, and moderated by Dr. Napoleon Paxton, the conversation will also look ahead to emerging technologies and innovations that may transform how power is generated, distributed, and managed in the years to come.Register at weblink to ...
The Ancient Art of Voyaging: A Night with Traditional Master Navigators of MicronesiaFeaturing Sesario Sewralur, Cecilio Raiukiulipiy, Mario Benito, and Milton Coleman Jr. (aka “Jun”)Experience a glimpse into the realm of Traditional Master Navigators of Micronesia, as they humbly share stories of stars, voyages, navigation, and the enduring quest to keep their ancient knowledge, practices, and legacy alive. Witness the Planetarium transformed into an immersive ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $15 General, $12 Members/youth/Seniors
In the course of my group’s efforts to discover new asymmetric catalytic reactions, we have had occasion to perform deep mechanistic analyses of the catalysts we have discovered. In this lecture, I will relate different stories where seemingly minor “misbehaviors” in our experimental data were examined closely and found to ...
Strongly interacting electrons exhibit a rich variety of striking phenomena in quantum materials, from the fractional quantum Hall effect to chiral superconductivity. Yet our understanding remains limited by the difficulty of solving the many-electron Schrödinger equation in a vast Hilbert space. In this talk, a “first-principles AI” framework is introduced ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
There’s Plenty of Diffusion at the Bottom The formulation of quantum mechanics in the late 1920s forever changed physics. More recently, quantum materials have emerged, offering fascinating opportunities in physical chemistry. Elementary interactions mediated by the diffusion of electrons, protons, atoms, molecules, and other quasiparticles in quantum materials give rise to intriguing phases and enable advanced technologies. ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Skeptics in a Real PubEnjoy an evening of socializing and feasting with fellow Bay Area science-forward folk in an Irish Pub on the Peninsula with great food. < Menu >Join us! This is a free event brought to you by Bay Area Skeptics. All are welcome.
Stanford physicist Maya Beleznay on Weighing Black Widow Pulsars ??" What would Robert Oppenheimer and a modern physicist have in common? Neither could tell you how many particles can fit in a city-size ball before collapsing into a black hole! Some neutron stars in our galaxy teeter on the edge of this maximum ...
?Join John as he shares photos and videos from an expedition cruise to the subantarctic islands of New Zealand and Australia as a True Young Explorer with Heritage Expeditions. These regions are designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites and are home to the highest diversity of breeding penguin and albatross ...
AI and DemocracyThe UC Berkeley AI and Society Initiative welcomes Larry Norden (NYU Brennan Center for Justice), David Evan Harris (Haas), and Ashish Goel (Stanford) to discuss AI and democracy. Professors Norden and Harris will talk about the way in which AI may amplify election misinformation this year, and why that is ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Apple at 50: Five Decades of Thinking DifferentOn April 1, 1976, Apple Computer was founded with a radical idea: that powerful computing should be personal. Fifty years later, Apple stands as one of the most influential technology companies in history??"shaping not only products, but culture, design, and how billions of people interact with technology every day.Join the ...
Are We Alone? The Hunt for Alien LifeSpeaker: Sanjoy Som, NASA AMESMeasuring the Universe with Gravitational LensingSydney Ericson, Stanford University
Space is no longer just the final frontier - it’s the next arena of global power.What was once dominated by a handful of national space agencies is now a crowded and competitive domain of commercial companies, militaries, intelligence agencies, and scientific missions - all operating in orbits that shape global ...
In the past three decades, more than 6000 planets have been discovered orbiting other stars beyond our own Solar System. However, we still don’t know if our Solar System is rare or unique - the powerful techniques that detect extrasolar planets have discovered systems very different than our own. In ...
Recent advances in neuroengineering enable large-scale neural recording in animals and humans, which, when combined with AI, have produced brain??"computer interfaces (BCIs) that decode motor intent or internal speech (“reading”). In contrast, precisely “writing” complex, behaviorally relevant information into the brain remains in its early days due to challenges in ...
Paranoid Publics: Psychopolitics of TruthFacts and established truths are regularly denied in contemporary life. This situation has brought paranoid politics into the mainstream, from conspiracy theories like QAnon, to sex panics and assaults on public health measures, to election denialism and the rise of vigilante militias. Paranoid Publics analyzes these phenomena as psychosocial realities ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
After Dark: Crafty and CalculatingWeaving together math, computing, and fiber arts, you’ll never look at the intersection of women and math the same way after tonight.
Today, as it nears its 50th anniversary, Apple is a global behemoth, one of the most valuable companies on the planet. But it’s been a rough and wild ride from scrappy startup to market leader. On April Fool’s Day in 1976, two twentysomethings named Steve founded a little company with the ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $25 in person/$10 online, member discounts
NightLife: Level UpAchievement unlocked: an epic night of gaming and cosplay collide for the return of this fan favorite event
Where: San FranciscoCost: Varies
Around the World in 80 BirdsIf you want to see a wide variety of birds, you’ll want to see representative species from different families of birds. That’s been a long-term goal of birder and photographer Bob Lewis who has set a goal of photographing a representative species from every bird family (Birds of the World ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Bluebirds in the 21st Century - LivestreamThroughout history, the bluebird has been iconic in many cultures, inspiring art, music, poetry, songs and mythology. Tonight, we invite you to learn about bluebirds and how they are an indicator of ecosystem health, as well as their important place in the ecosystem, where they are incredibly effective at controlling ...
Tennessee has a rich history of opposition to evolutionary concepts. Wesley H. Roberts has been on the front lines of evolution education advocacy for most of his 38 years of teaching in public schools. Beginning with his earliest exposure to evolutionary concepts via a Christian fundamentalist upbringing, Roberts will share ...
