Fungus February: Fungus Fair at Presidio Tunnel Tops Join us outside the Field Station at Presidio Tunnel Tops for the Parks Conservancy Fungus Fair to explore the weird and wonderful world of fungus! Learn the process of how mushrooms grow, how to identify them in the wild, and what ecologists have been learning about fungus in the park. Weather ...
Join us for a series of fun and engaging days of creativity and sustainability. Let’s come together to transform plastic waste into beautiful works of art that examine the connection between plastic and ocean life cycles, and inspire change. Your created pieces will be part of a community art installation ...
Where: Palo AltoCost: Free
Evolution Days 2026Each year, the Essig Museum celebrates the birthdays of Charles Darwin (February 12th, 1809), Alfred Russel Wallace (January 8th, 1823), and Henry Bates (February 8th, 1825) with special behind-the-scenes tours of our collection in the Valley Life Sciences Building (VLSB). Join us for a special look at our collections featuring ...
New technologies have the potential to greatly enhance and expand the functioning of human memory, but they can also come with unintended consequences. Having access to smartphones and the Internet, for example, has changed how people remember (and often what they forget). In this talk, I will provide an overview ...
Where: Santa CruzCost: Free
Junior Rangers at the Refuge: Bird Beak BuffetLove learning about new habitats? Curious about wildlife? Our Junior Rangers at the Refuge program is perfect for your family! Join us each month as we explore the Don Edwards SF Bay National Wildlife Refuge through fun, educational activities.This February, we'll discover how the Refuge can support over 280 species of birds ...
Brian is a marine ecologist who works on the foraging behavior, habitat associations, and spatial ecology of seabirds, and tries to incorporate these perspectives into spatial models of seabirds and their prey. Brian has worked on marine or aquatic birds within California, Alaska, Maine, Nova Scotia, and Wisconsin, and works ...
Classical methods for achieving nucleophilic substitution reactions of alkyl electrophiles (SN1 and SN2) have limited scope and are not generally amenable to enantioconvergent variants that employ readily available racemic coupling partners. In this talk, the use of radical chemistry in combination with transition-metal catalysis to address the dual challenges of ...
Speaker: Caleb Luke Mayer, Stanford UniversitySee weblink for connection information
Where: Cost: Free
Out of the ice age: Insights into past sea level and ice sheets from Beringia to AntarcticaAlthough understanding how ice sheets respond to a changing climate is a pressing issue of the century, our current knowledge of past ice-sheet changes remains limited by data sparsity. Over the last deglaciation, we understand global sea-level changes quite well, however, we know little about which ice sheets contributed meltwater ...
Designing, constructing, maintaining, and upgrading civil engineering infrastructure requires fresh thinking to reduce materials, energy, and labor. Meeting this goal depends on a deeper understanding of infrastructure performance - during construction and throughout its service life - enabled by innovative monitoring. The future of infrastructure will rely on smarter information: ...
Extensive attention has been paid to the potential harms of media consumption generally, and social media use in particular, with relatively little consideration given to the potential psychological benefits of media use. This talk will address why this bias exists and its potential for unintended negative consequences. Evidence of how ...
The computational resources required to describe the full state of a quantum many-body system scale exponentially with the number of constituents. This severely limits our ability to explore and understand the fascinating phenomena of quantum systems using classical algorithms. Quantum simulation offers a potential route to overcome these limitations. The ...
Spectroscopy and microscopy have the potential to reveal the structure and dynamics of complex materials, ranging from chromophores in solution to molecular aggregates, nanomaterials, and even quantum sensors. Yet, disentangling these signals and extracting an intuitive picture of how excitations form, move, and transform is one of the most persistent ...
Human manipulation is a dance of contact - carefully choreographed by physics, geometry, perception, and control. Despite extensive theories of contact physics and our advanced learning methods, achieving generalizable robot dexterity in the open world remains elusive. The challenge lies in the “hybrid” nature of contact: interactions are non-smooth and ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Popping the Science Bubble: Two talksWhat a trip! How psychedelic drugs reopen critical periods of developmentSpeaker: Makenzie Wilkinson, NeroscienceVisual processing and the limits to acuitySpeaker: Lauren Sigda, Vision ScienceAttend in person or click here to watch on Zoom
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Finally, something goodStefan Sagmeister has designed for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, HBO, and the Guggenheim Museum. He’s a two time Grammy winner and also earned practically every important international design award. Stefan talks about the large subjects of our lives like happiness or beauty, how they connect to design ...
Why do countries rich in oil so often experience political instability and human rights conflict?In this lecture, Mona Shomali explores the idea of the “resource curse” - a theory in international development that helps explain why vast natural wealth can fuel inequality, violence, and environmental harm rather than prosperity.Drawing on ...
This talk will cover all things Sonoma County fungi: My obsession origin story, where to find mushrooms, important trees to learn, edible mushrooms, weird mushrooms, resources to utilize, mushroom stories, and more.Speaker: David Healy, Teacher
Landslides remain a major global hazard, with thousands of events each year posing significant impacts to human life, infrastructure, critical lifelines, and ecosystems. Global climate change and evolving land-use practices are expected to increase the frequency, severity, and spatial extent of landslides, further amplifying the socio-economic risks. While advanced constitutive ...
Geologic hydrogen, including both naturally occurring and stimulated, is a promising primary energy resource. The Earth is a natural laboratory where hydrogen can be observed from surface features (e.g., springs, fairy circles) and subsurface structures (e.g. geothermal wells, chromite mines). The Earth is also a natural factory where both natural ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Forest-based natural climate solutions: Is there still hope?Rapid decarbonization and conservation are both essential to addressing climate change, with tropical forests playing a critical role in achieving net-zero emissions.Drawing on research from the Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits (4C), Coomes will explore how forest-based nature-based climate solutions seek to reduce deforestation and restore degraded landscapes through credible ...
Campos agrícolas are fenced parcels spanning thousands of acres, owned or rented by Mexican-US agribusiness corporations, and characterized by intensive monoculture and large-scale production. There, surrounded by deserts and highways, transnational agricultural conglomerates have built “mini cities” as a frequent strategy to secure sufficient and available human labor. Each harvest ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Ultrafast Magnetism: The Physics Behind Faster, Greener Computing - SOLD OUTWhat happens when magnets move faster than we thought possible?In our everyday devices, magnets store information by flipping their polarity - north becomes south, south becomes north. But compared to modern silicon electronics, this process is surprisingly slow.Enter ultrafast magnetism. When magnets are struck with incredibly short laser pulses - ...
This presentation will discuss Scott Harris's new book, Why We Love Birds: 52 Birders on Birding. In the book, he interview 52 extraordinary birders about their spark bird, favorite bird, nemesis bird, and their favorite birding day. Accounts include Kenn Kaufman, Sy Montgomery, Pete Dunne, Debi Shearwater and Scott Weidensaul. Their answers ...
Astronomy on Tap is is a free public lecture series where astronomers give short, laid-back talks over drinks at local bars. No background in science required - our scientists share cool stuff about space while the audience just sits back and relaxes, with plenty of time to indulge their curiosity ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free
The Cosmic Background RadiationDr Bernardita Ried, of the Kavli Institute of Particle Astronomy at Stanford, will present to us on cosmic background radiation.
Cell membranes are highly sensitive to changes in pressure, temperature, and aqueous chemistry. This drives pronounced biochemical adaptation among marine life to protect membrane integrity and function under diverse conditions. For fifty years, scientists have recognized that organisms adjust the fatty (lipid) building blocks of their membranes to maintain optimal ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Exoplanetary Poetry: AI, Chemistry, and Alien Communication - LivestreamOur Cosmic Consciousness residency artists daniela brill estrada, Bart Kuipers, and Julie-Michèle Morin, discuss an art-science collaboration that imagines how language might emerge from alien worlds. Hosts: Bettina Forget and Cosmic Consciousness residency advisor Gregory Betts.Join SETI AIR program Director Bettina Forget for a conversation with Cosmic Consciousness artists in ...
Earth’s mantle occupies most of its volume, connecting the deep, inaccessible core to the surface. Its convection regulates the planet’s temperature, magnetic field, chemical distribution, and habitability conditions. Changes in convective regimes therefore have profound implications for Earth’s evolution and our interpretation of the geologic record. In this talk, I ...
Dr. Timothy Chou began his commercial career at one of Silicon Valley's first startups, Tandem Computers. He retired as the first President of Oracle's cloud computing business, pioneering the software-as-a-service model that would reshape the technology landscape. Following his retirement from Oracle, Dr. Chou has served on several public and ...
'Becoming Martian' - LivestreamJoin us virtually with the author of “Becoming Martian” to examine the potential consequences of life in space.As commercial space travel accelerates and plans for long-term human settlement beyond Earth move closer to reality, questions once confined to science fiction are becoming matters of scientific and policy relevance. We are ...
Where: Cost: Free
Controllable AI: Control Theory meets Artificial IntelligenceControl theory is fundamental in the design and understanding of many natural and engineered systems, from cars and robots to power networks and bacterial metabolism. In this talk, we explore how the principles of control and dynamical systems - formalized with control theory - can also play an important role ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Paved Paradise: The Ecological Impacts of Our Planet’s Roads - LivestreamSome 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, providing convenient infrastructure for humans at the expense of wildlife. Discover the profound ecological harm wrought by transportation, and the innovative solutions road ecologists, conservationists, and engineers are using to redress them. From tunnels for English toads to bridges for California’s ...
Once a marvel of modern science, plastic has become so inextricably woven into our lives that imagining a world without it seems impossible. Over the last 75 years, says author and environmentalist Judith Enck, plastic has cradled our planet in a synthetic embrace. In her new book The Problem With Plastic, ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $22 General
Listening with Merlin: How Sound ID Works and What It Can (and Can’t) Do - LivestreamMerlin Sound ID has made it possible for anyone to identify birds by sound, but how does it actually work, and how should birders use it? In this talk, I’ll give an accessible overview of how Merlin Sound ID listens to audio and turns it into species suggestions. I’ll describe ...
Where: Cost: Free
NightLife: Lunar UndergroundWelcome the Year of the Horse with LED lion dances, fortune tellers, and a bustling night market. Plus, a special performance by Frankie Fictitious. Our Lunar New Year celebration is one you won't want to miss.
Where: San FranciscoCost: Varies
After Dark: New Moon, New YearWelcome the Year of the Horse with traditional dances and uncover the significance of astronomical calendars.
Where: San FranciscoCost: $22.95 General, Free for members
Alison’s favorite photography subjects are tiny fungi and Myxomycetes (“Myxos” or “Slime Molds”), most so small that you would not see them as you walk through the forest. Alison will describe her evolution and process for creating beautiful photos of mushrooms and Myxos, most barely a few millimeters tall. She will share ...
Where: SebastopolCost: Free
Understanding Our Nearest Star: Solar Flares, Magnetic Explosions, and their Societal ImpactWhile our nearest star, the Sun, provides the conditions necessary for life on Earth, it also produces the most energetic events in the solar system. Solar flares release enormous amounts of energy, including intense and harmful X-ray radiation, and some eruptions are powerful enough to spew vast quantities of solar ...
Since its original development for engineering and insurance applications, the adoption of disaster risk assessment has grown, inspiring innovations in modeling, modern data collection methods such as crowdsourcing and remote sensing, and, importantly, a more diverse set of stakeholders. While promising, this growth necessitates new approaches that meet the distinct ...
NightLife: Friday Edition (18+)We're switching it up. For the first time ever, NightLife is landing on a Friday, and we’re opening the doors to guests 18+. Wander the museum after hours with a drink in hand, plus spend the night moving to sets from Shroomi, Maj, and MNTRA. Plus, explore vintage finds from ...
