Nerd Nite SF #15: Virtual Factories, Winery Architecture, and Microbe Hunters

Chocolate, wine, white blood cells: three wondrous substances that make life worth living--or possible at all! This month at your friendly, neighborhood lecture-series-in-a-bar: a tech designer demos a cross-reality chocolate factory; a winery architect plunges us into high-tech booze bunkers; and a cell migration researcher takes us on safari with microbe hunters, neutrophils. Be there and be square!

Willy Wonka has nothing on this! The Virtual Chocolate Factory is a research project at the FX Palo Alto Laboratory (FXPAL) that uses high-end game engines to investigate practical uses of mixed-reality systems at a real chocolate factory: SF start-up, TCHO. FXPAL's senior research scientist will demo their virtual 3D world. Oompa Loompas not included.

Maribeth is a researcher/designer who builds real-world, socially informed, exploratory applications for new technologies.

Secret complexes buried beneath a hillside. Steel cauldrons containing one of the world's most treasured commodities. High-tech labs in search of the perfect formula for wealth and fame. What is this, a James Bond movie? No! This is the unknown world of winery design! An architect will give you a crash course on its surprising complexity.

Matt is an architect, surfer, and SF native from a family of wine devotees.

Neutrophils are one of the first immune cells to reach sites of infection in the body, where they pursue and engulf invaders. With only a whiff of scent, they dodge obstacles while relentlessly tracking their prey. We'll watch a National Geographic-style chase scene, and discuss a protein inside these cells that may be the key to understanding how they hunt.

Sheel is a biophysics grad student in the Weiner Lab at UCSF, where he works on developing new tools for studying cell migration.

Plus: DJ Alpha Bravo