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 ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Varies
Saturday, 02/21/26
Open Community Hike Day at Bouverie PreserveCome out to the Bouverie Preserve in the Sonoma Valley, where we invite you to an open recreational day!Join us for the rare opportunity to explore the 535-acre preserve of mixed evergreen forest, riparian woodland, and chaparral. The preserve is home to a rich combination of plants and animals, including ...
Where: Glen EllenCost: Free
An Easy Intro to Feynman's Quantum ElectroDynamics (QED) - LivestreamOne of the most delightful and informative physics books ever written is Richard Feynman’s QED. In this short book, Feynman undertook the daunting task of explaining his Nobel-Prize-winning theory, Quantum ElectroDynamics, without any math except in a few elaborating footnotes. Remarkably, he succeeds! In this talk, Terry replicates many of ...
Where: Cost: Free
Baylands ExplorationsJoin expert EV docents for an exploration of the science and nature of the Palo Alto Baylands. What makes this habitat so special? How do the plants and animals survive the salty conditions? Why is it so different at different times of day or times of the year? How can ...
Where: Palo AltoCost: Free
Science Saturday: Reptile RevelryJoin us for Science Saturday celebrating the remarkable lives of reptiles and amphibians! With family-friendly games, crafts, and special guests, this event includes free admission to the Museum
Analyzing organic materials in artworks has long been associated with destructive techniques, which can be a major limitation when working with delicate or historically important objects. Recent developments, in both instruments and sampling strategies, have opened the door to approaches that require little to no intervention on the object itself. ...
Where: Cost: Free
Microbes vs. Climate Change: Bay Area EditionPOV: You are amongst the smallest and mightiest population in the Bay Area. Join us to see how microorganisms cope with climate trends!Imagine life as some of the smallest, but mightiest living things in the Bay Area: microbes! Join us for an interactive presentation and activity to learn about some ...
Where: AlvisoCost: Free
Spring FestivalKick off the Year of the Horse with culture, creativity, and connection! Join us for a day of activities and crafts for the whole family. Hear real-life stories of rescue-to-hero horses. Make your own lion dance puppets, and discover the foundations of Chinese dance. Immerse yourself in traditions old and ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free with admission
Jazz Under the Stars - CANCELEDJazz Under the Stars is a FREE monthly public stargazing event! Usually occurring on the Saturday nearest the 1st quarter moon (check our Events Page), join us in Building 36 on the 4th floor observatory for a night of smooth jazz, bright stars, and a lot of fun! We play our ...
Where: San MateoCost: Free
Starry Nights Star PartyJoin the San Jose Astronomical Association (SJAA) and Santa Clara County Open Space Authority (OSA) for an unforgettable night of exploring the night sky. Our knowledgeable docents, members of SJAA, will be your guides to providing valuable insights into the wonders of our universe. The viewing site, Rancho Canada del ...
Where: Morgan HillCost: Free
Capturing Nature’s Most Beautiful Light Shows: Auroras and EclipsesAuroras and eclipses are nature’s most spectacular light shows and bucket-list experiences for many, but how do you maximize your odds of actually seeing them when it counts? In this presentation, Vincent Ledvina, professional aurora chaser and space physics Ph.D. student, will break down the science behind auroras and the ...
Where: OaklandCost: Free
Sunday, 02/22/26
Gathering 4 Gardner: Pixar in a BoxJoin us for a fascinating talk on the science behind Pixar films! Part of the Gathering 4 Gardner (G4G) conference, this talk features mathematician and former Pixar senior scientist Tony DeRose, who will share his insight into how STEM advancements have impacted filmmaking.We’re pleased to host this presentation as part ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free with admission
Marine Science Sunday: Marine Mammal BabiesJoin us to learn more about the elephant seals and gray whales being born right now along the coast! We will explore the incredible cuteness of marine mammal babies and the adaptations of marine mammal moms to care for their young. We will also share the best places to see ...
Where: SausalitoCost: Free with admission
Monday, 02/23/26
Beyond Black-Box: Human-Centric and Physics-Informed AI for Integrated and Autonomous ConstructionAs global demand for urban infrastructure collides with severe labor shortages and urgent decarbonization goals, industrialized construction has emerged as a critical paradigm shift for the AEC industry. However, the transition toward fully integrated and autonomous systems remains stalled by a fundamental technical hurdle: distributional shift. Unlike highly structured digital ...
Financial systems underpin climate resilience: they fund protective infrastructure, shape preparedness through risk transfer, and provide the insurance that enables communities to recover from disasters. Yet these systems are increasingly strained by climate-driven extremes, evident in the National Flood Insurance Program’s multi-billion-dollar debt and the withdrawal of insurers from high-risk ...
Machine learning is the key technology underlying today's amazing artificial intelligence systems.How did we get to today's technology which now supports a trillion dollar AI industry? What were the key scientific breakthroughs? What were the surprises and dead-ends along the way, as seen by the researchers who created them? Who ...
The Earth’s subsurface is fractured and highly heterogeneous, and fractures often act as preferential pathways that dominate fluid flow and solute transport. This fracture-controlled behavior strongly influences a variety of subsurface technologies including carbon and hydrogen storage, natural or stimulated hydrogen production, geothermal energy, enhanced hydrocarbon recovery, and long-term geologic ...
With all the trouble going on in the world, why would we make games? Shouldn't we be working on climate change or be out protesting? Games can be more than just escapism though. Come learn how they can be art, a protest or way to refresh ourselves when we're tired ...
Popular culture is one of the most powerful spaces where publics encounter science, form attitudes toward it and imagine what scientific futures might look like. Film, for example, reaches global audiences and offers a narrative imagination lab where emerging technologies can be explored long before they enter everyday life. These cinematic ...
Fault-tolerant quantum computation requires further advances in lowering physical qubit error rates in scalable architectures. In this talk, I will present our work on understanding and controlling the microscopic sources of decoherence in superconducting qubits arising from material defects and interfaces. I will present our identification of microscopic origins of ...
Speaker: James Gagnon, University of UtahRoom: Auditorium
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Accelerating Irregular ComputationThe last decade of hardware scaling has been defined by a contract of regularity in which modern parallel hardware reaches peak throughput when data is organized as dense tensors and computation is uniform. This contract breaks down for the irregular representations used to model the physical world, including dynamic meshes ...
The diversity of beetles is widely known - but beetles are complex creatures living in diverse locations so they don’t all compete. Far less well known is the diversity of bacteria within species, most surprisingly with huge number of variants living together and directly competing for very long times. Why ...
The global energy transition will only succeed with the active participation of the private sector. Corporates are central to this effort: they are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions, among the largest consumers of electricity, critical drivers of innovation and scale in climate technologies, and - crucially - key providers ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Advanced Geothermal Energy for California Science, Status and ChallengesAll indications are that advances in drilling technology, mostly developed for or by the oil and gas industry, have placed geothermal energy (the kind that generates electricity) on the cusp of major new opportunities. Historically limited to geographic locations where hot rock and water are relatively near the surface, the ...
Where: SebastapolCost: $7 Advance, $10 at door
From Prompt Grounding to Edge Delivery: Agentic AI at ScaleAs enterprises adopt Generative AI, the challenge shifts from building isolated models to engineering multi-tenant AI platforms that are secure, grounded, and operationally reliable. This session explores the architecture of prompt-grounded, agentic AI systems that combine prompt engineering, retrieval-based grounding, and tool orchestration with cloud and CDN-based delivery to enable ...
Where: Mountain ViewCost: Free
Tuesday, 02/24/26
Exploring the Hidden World of Backyard Birds - LivestreamExplore the stars of Backyard Birds Revealed with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and acclaimed wildlife photographers Tim and Russell Laman. This live online event celebrates the quiet wonder of winter birdwatching - the reminder that even in the coldest months, life and color thrive just beyond your doorstep.Our five-part video series ...
Slow, spatially complex motion and transport in the body play central roles in health and disease. Yet these dynamics remain difficult to measure non-invasively because they occur in small or geometrically complex regions, or are too slow and become buried under larger physiological fluctuations. To address this, we developed a ...
Right after it cooled off in the Hadean, Earth is thought to have been mostly an ocean planet. The first substantial record of emerging land dates to the early Archean, with the recognition of sedimentary rocks laid down in subaerial environments. Deciphering that record is paramount to our understanding of ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Quantum Computing in Practice - LivestreamQuantum computing is a rapidly emerging field that uses the laws of quantum mechanics to solve problems that are far beyond the reach of even the most powerful traditional supercomputers. While there is tremendous promise, quantum information is remarkably delicate, and building systems that can manipulate it poses an enormous ...
The discovery of quantum materials, from unconventional superconductors to topological and correlated systems, has traditionally relied on a slow and fragmented loop between theory, computation, and experiment. Serendipity and brute force trial-and-error have played an important role in many important discoveries. In this talk, I will describe how Periodic Labs ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Responsibly Improving AI with Privacy-Sensitive Data: Principles, Theory, and PracticeLarge language models have revolutionized the field of machine learning, but a core tenet remains: AI systems need to be built and tuned using high-quality data from the right domain. As these systems increasingly touch our daily lives, the relevant data is frequently distributed and privacy sensitive. In this Richard ...
I will present battery-free autonomous microrobots that can fly in the wind or drive independently on the ground using microwatts of harvested energy from light or radio waves. These mobile sensing platforms could have a transformative impact in applications from agricultural monitoring, hazardous infrastructure inspection, exploring extraterrestrial environments, and reconfiguring ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Old-Growth Chronicles: Saving the Salmon Forests - LivestreamLynda Mapes will give a short presentation on highlights from her latest book, The Trees Are Speaking: Dispatches from the Salmon Forests, including an exploration of how abundant salmon runs once nourished old-growth forests on both coasts. She will detail other takeaways from her wide-ranging project on these remarkable ecosystems, ...
There are scientific truths, religious truths, historical truths, mythical truths, and more. In our current swamp of misinformation, disinformation, truthiness, rewritten history, conspiracy theories, “fake news,” and bald-faced lies, how do we discern actual facts and truth? What is “truth,” anyway? The Declaration of Independence claims that “We hold these ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $22 General, member discounts
Come learn more about the Western Snowy Plover, a diminutive shorebird that calls the beaches of Monterey Bay home. Point Blue Conservation Science ecologist Kriss Neuman has spent decades studying this tiny, threatened shorebird and will share information on the plover’s life history and breeding ecology, discuss why California’s sandy ...
Where: Pacific GroveCost:
Unraveling individual and environmental drivers of variation among elephant seals - LivestreamEnvironmental variation across temporal and spatial scales shapes individual differences in traits and causes resource acquisition and allocation to fluctuate dramatically. Spotlighting northern elephant seals as a model system, Roxanne and research technician Conner Hale will discuss how the Beltran Lab combines mark-recapture methods and animal-borne sensors to investigate how individual ...
The most energetic phenomena in the universe tend to reveal themselves through intense, short-lived signals. These violent transient events include novae, supernovae, and mergers of both neutron stars and black holes. Their signals - their natural messages - can span the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and may include gravitational waves as ...
Where: NovatoCost: Free
Wednesday, 02/25/26
AI-Driven Load: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities - LivestreamThe growth of AI is driving increasing energy demand in the form of new data centers, while also changing how data centers are designed and operated. In this webinar, experts from EPRI’s DCFlex initiative and Stanford’s Bits & Watts Initiative will discuss trends, challenges, and opportunities arising from this AI-driven ...
Where: Cost: Free
Drive-Thru USA - the Spatial Analysis of Car-Centric Sprawl - LivestreamDrive-thru businesses, in which customers place and retrieve orders without ever leaving their cars, discourage social interaction and physical exercise, and degrade a street’s walkability and air quality. Despite these negative attributes, their proliferation across the United States has never been quantified or spatially analyzed. This study pursues this topic ...
Extreme urban heat, driven by climate change and rapid urbanization, poses a growing threat to public health, energy systems, and economic productivity. Yet effective urban heat mitigation is hindered by two key gaps: limited mechanistic understanding of urban heat environment across global cities, and a lack of robust tools to ...
The crustal magnetic anomalies near the lunar crater Gerasimovich are among the highest-magnitude anomalies on the Moon. Previous work has suggested they formed from the deposition and magnetization of ejecta from the Crisium basin, which is antipodal to the region. In this talk, I will describe the correlation between topographic ...
Feminist interventions have instrumentally shaped critical perspectives in mapping. Yet, feminist mapping has often been erased or considered niche within both GIScience and critical GIS conversations. Drawing on recent work in data feminism, design justice, and feminist digital geographies (among others), I engage with a feminist mapping framework to reveal ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Productively Programming Accelerated Computing SystemsModern accelerated computing systems are increasing in scale, becoming more specialized and diverse, and evolving more quickly. While these changes bring significant performance improvements, they also come with the challenges of productively developing software that targets complex and rapidly changing hardware. For software to keep up with modern hardware, programming ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Leading Scientific Innovation: A conversation with Dr. Kimberly BudilJoin us for a fireside chat with Dr. Kimberly Budil, Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as part of the Russell Women in Science Leadership Lecture Series at Northeastern Oakland. Dr. Budil will discuss LLNL's mission and core scientific capabilities, her leadership approach as the Lab's first woman director, and ...
Where: OaklandCost: Free
The Age of Tech x Biopharma - Livestream(In-person tickets are sold out)AI and emerging technologies are reshaping biopharma and redefining how science is built, scaled and valued. As the landscape shifts, the industry must confront critical questions about leadership, capital strategy and what innovation really looks like in the years ahead.Join us to hear inside perspectives from ...
Where: Cost: Free
Virtual Skeptics on the PubThis is a casual night of socializing with fellow science-forward skeptics and with others inhabiting our oblate spheroidal planet.Please join us! This is a free event brought to you by Bay Area Skeptics. All are welcome.Click here to join.
Who gets included in neuroscience - and who gets left out?Many common tools in psychophysiology and neuroscience - like EEG, EDA, and fNIRS - struggle to work accurately across different skin tones and hair types. While not intentionally exclusionary, these technologies often fail to accommodate darker skin and curlier or ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $25
Thursday, 02/26/26
Fostering Resilient Communities with Prescribed Fire - LivestreamLearn how fire readiness extends to both prescribed fire and wildfire, and why collaboration with communities is essential for all types of resiliencies.All Hands Ecology Director of Prescribed Fire Julia Berkey will introduce her work with All Hands’s Fire Forward program to build prescribed fire capacity in the North Bay, ...
Where: Cost: Free
eyond the Benchmarking Paradigm: Audits & Evaluation in the Age of Artificial IntelligenceDespite great potential, there is a growing gap between what AI systems promise and what they deliver, with real human costs.AI auditing is the practice of independently evaluating deployed AI systems to determine how they behave, what risks they pose, and whether they meet their intended objectives. This interdisciplinary endeavor ...
NightLife: SF Center StageWe're bringing you classic art forms in an unexpected setting. It's an elevated crossover of the symphony, opera, and ballet, brought to you by the San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center.
Where: San FranciscoCost: Varies
After Dark: Unplug and PlayPlay with eye-opening exhibits, test your knowledge at science trivia, and enjoy a dance performance in our Bay-adjacent gallery.
Where: San FranciscoCost: $22.95 General, Free for members
What can fashion teach us about sustainability, culture, and justice?Join Grace Toléqué - Stanford lecturer, researcher, and fashion designer - for a compelling look at fashion, environmental justice, and sustainability in West Africa.Drawing on West African sartorial traditions, this lecture explores how custom-made clothing, reuse, and women-led cultural practices have ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $25
Friday, 02/27/26
International Polar Bear Day: Melting Ice, Mighty Bears - LivestreamStep onto the frozen Arctic seas (without leaving your classroom) to meet the largest bear on Earth, the polar bear. This session takes students through icy hunting grounds, explains how shrinking sea ice changes their way of life, and invites them to think like Arctic scientists. With real polar bear ...
Citizen Science in Astronomy - LivestreamJoin Dr. Franck Marchis, Director of Citizen Science at the SETI Institute and co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of SkyMapper, and Dr. Lauren Sgro, Outreach Manager at the SETI Institute, for a conversation on citizen science with the Unistellar network in partnership with the SETI Institute. We will discuss making ...
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 ...
Metalloenzymes catalyze the challenging chemical reactions that lie at the core of vital life processes, from carbon and nitrogen fixation to photosynthesis and respiration. Native metalloenzymes use only earth-abundant transition metals and operate under mild conditions, accessing reactivity that remains largely out of reach for synthetic systems. Given the importance ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Muir Woods Night TourEver wondered what Muir Woods is like after the park closes?Join us on our free evening tour to explore what keeps the redwood forest awake when we go to sleep. Step outside your comfort zone and into the ancient, nocturnal setting of Muir Woods for this two-hour, two-mile walk.After all, we're ...
Where: Mill ValleyCost: Free
IMPACTS OF PLASTIC POLLUTIONFour exceptional speakers will present their research and experience of key impacts on human health, animal health and biodiversity.Dr Desiree Labeaud , MD, Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine ??" impacts on human healthDr Padraig Duignan, DVM, and Dr Cara Field, DVM, Directors at The Marine Mammal Center - ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $15 General, $10 UFE & FACC Members
Saturday, 02/28/26
Stewardship Saturday: Exploring Human and Marine Mammal AdaptationsThis free program for high school students features rotating events along our 600-mile range exploring various realms of conservation.Join Seymour Marine Discovery Center and The Marine Mammal Center for a hands-on event exploring marine mammal adaptations. Together, we will conduct experiments comparing and contrasting our human capabilities with various marine ...
Where: Santa CruzCost: Free
Science Saturday: Reptile RevelryJoin us for a FREE Science Saturday celebrating the remarkable lives of reptiles and amphibians! With family-friendly games, crafts, and special guests, this event includes free admission to the Museum.
Where: Pacific GroveCost: Free
Science Saturdays: Hands-on Exploration for KidsFrom how snow forms, to how erosion impacts the earth, to how we can read the clues that animals leave behind, we’ll explore topics that will both engage, fascinate and help us all be a little more conservation-minded. Each month will cover a different topic, such as Weather & Climate, ...
Where: Palo AltoCost: $20/child
Sunday, 03/01/26
Solar ObservingIt’s there for us year round, lighting our days and providing energy for our lives, so maybe it’s time to give it a closer look. Join SJAA for amazing and detailed views of the Sun, and be assured that we’ll be using special telescopes that will keep your eyeballs perfectly ...
Subsurface energy production and storage play a central role in the energy transition. However, subsurface systems are inherently complex. Predicting and optimizing these systems remains challenging due to coupled multiphysics processes, multiscale behavior, and substantial uncertainty. In this talk, I will present three lines of research spanning reservoir stimulation, underground ...
Optical spectroscopy based on second-order nonlinearity is a critical technique for characterizing two-dimensional (2D) crystals, and it also finds numerous applications in bioimaging and quantum optics. It has been generally believed that second-harmonic generation (SHG) in crystals with inversion centers (centrosymmetric crystals), such as graphene and other bilayer 2D crystals, ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Bird Feathers & Their Fascinating Functions - LivestreamJoin Heather Wolf, author of "Find More Birds: 111 Surprising Ways to Spot Birds Wherever You Are" and "Birding at the Bridge: In Search of Every Bird on the Brooklyn Waterfront", as she discusses the many fascinating functions of bird feathers - they’re not just for flight and warmth! Come ...
This talk explores how to push the boundaries of robotic autonomy and mobility. We review the current state of adaptive legged locomotion and navigation policies, and discuss pathways toward policies that generalize beyond their developers’ original intentions. We examine how such policies can be trained across diverse modalities and data ...
Modern tests of Quantum Electrodynamics in the strong-field regime Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is a well-established physical theory and its predictions have been confirmed experimentally in various regimes and with extremely high accuracy. However, there are still areas of QED that deserve theoretical and experimental investigation, especially when physical processes occur in the presence of intense background electromagnetic fields, i.e., ...
China has emerged as the global leader in clean energy industries, reshaping the trajectory of the energy transition worldwide. This talk examines the rapid rise of China’s electric vehicle (EV) industry. I discuss how coordinated industrial policies, consumer incentives, and rapid expansion of charging infrastructure helped scale early adoption. Over ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Residential Decarbonization: the Next Climate BattlegroundWhat does it actually take to decarbonize the places we live, why does local policy matter so much? Presented by Manny's Climate ClubResidential buildings are one of the largest sources of climate pollution, and the transition away from fossil gas toward clean electric homes is already underway. But this shift ...
The Treehouse Childhood Cancer Initiative is dedicated to improving the diagnosis and treatment of children affected by rare genetic diseases. Our group has compiled some of the largest pediatric cancer RNA-sequencing databases, and we leverage this tool to employ genomic and transcriptomic analyses to identify diagnostic and therapeutic options for ...
Join Chabot astronomers for a live watch party of the magnificent Total Lunar Eclipse from Chabot’s Observation Deck. Bring your friends & family and a lawn chair to enjoy Eclipse-themed crafts and demonstrations, then get bundled up with a cup of hot cocoa to watch this stunning celestial show. During ...
Where: OaklandCost: $15 General, $7 Kids, free for members
Precisely Controlled Macromolecular Architecture by ATRPVarious well-defined polymers with precisely controlled macromolecular architecture were prepared under environmentally benign conditions, with ppm of catalysts, in an aqueous environment, and in open-air with temporal control by light, electrical current, mechanical forces, or benign chemicals such as ascorbic acid. The dynamic exchange between active radicals and dormant species ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
AI, Cyber & Systemic Risk: Securing the Digital FrontlineNicole Perlroth, former NYT journalist and cyber investor, explores how AI is amplifying threats and reshaping defense - implications for risk, resilience, and governance.Attend in person or on Zoom (see weblink)
Digital mental health interventions (DMHIs) hold promise to advance mental health equity by addressing provider shortages, reaching individuals who might not seek services in traditional healthcare settings, and making evidence-based treatments available 24/7. However, DMHI science to date has rarely involved members of historically marginalized groups in the development, testing, ...
The proliferation of marine algae in the Neoproterozoic Era is thought to have stimulated the ecology of predatory microbial eukaryotes (protists) and the evolution of more modern marine food webs. Paleontologists and geochemists have predicted that these algae-eating microbial predators would have been restricted to well-oxygenated marine waters, and would have been near-absent in anoxic ...
In this talk, several recent developments in the study of fractionalized states of matter will be reviewed. The focus will primarily be on the condensed matter physics perspective, presenting a theoretical approach to the Fractional Chern Insulator (the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect without a magnetic field), its unique properties, and ...
Polaritons are hybrid light-matter states that arise from strong interactions between the confined electromagnetic field of an optical cavity and an ensemble of intracavity molecules. Molecules under such strong cavity coupling appear to demonstrate distinct reactivity and photochemistry from molecules in free space, but the mechanisms and scope of these ...
Advancements in quantum computing have enabled the development of small-scale quantum computers and simulators that adhere to the principles of quantum physics. Despite its rapid progress, those devices are not yet flawless and errors accumulate, posing serious challenges to their application to interesting problems. In this talk I will first ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
The Amazing Nature of Animal SensesJoin POST for a special evening with Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Ed Yong, author of the New York Times bestseller An Immense World. In this captivating lecture, Ed explores the extraordinary sensory worlds of animals - from the echolocation of bats to the magnetic navigation of sea turtles - revealing ...
Where: Mountain ViewCost: $45 General $25 Seniors, Students, Youth
The asteroid (16) Psyche may be the metal-rich remnant of a differentiated planetesimal, or it may be a highly reduced, metal-rich asteroidal material that never differentiated. The NASA Psyche mission aims to determine Psyche’s provenance. How did we choose the science instruments we’d need, when there was not even a ...
Seasonal snowpacks are a critical component of the global water cycle, governing river discharge, groundwater recharge, and freshwater availability for billions of people worldwide. Yet current satellite-based methods for estimating snow water equivalent (SWE) suffer from fundamental limitations, including coarse spatial resolution, limited coverage, and reliance on uncertain a priori ...
Over the course of the Pleistocene, the Bering Sea has alternated many times between a marine gateway connecting the Arctic and Pacific Oceans and a land bridge connecting North America to Asia. However, very few sediment cores for paleoceanographic or paleoenvironmental reconstructions of this region have been collected. Some have ...
Because there’s been a lot of talk about 3I/Atlas, we are excited to hear from Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Tracy Becker for an extended talk: “What we Know About the 3rd Ever Interstellar Object 3I/Atlas” AND to host a discussion panel with our resident AoTSATX scientists on these unique visitors ...
This seminar will present an innovative approach to co-design fundamental biogeochemical science that aligns with policy and community priorities. The framework will be explored through case studies on ocean-climate stressors, mitigation, and solutions. This presentation will focus on the fundamental research of reactive oxygen species (ROS), such as superoxide and ...
Glaciology is driven by two fundamental goals: to understand how ice sheets will evolve in a warming climate and contribute to future sea-level rise, and to understand how ice sheets behaved in the past, providing insight into Earth’s possible climate states. Both goals require observing how ice flows and deforms??"ideally ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Book Talk: 'Rebooting Tech Culture'Join us to hear Telle Whitney speak about her book, Rebooting Tech Culture, in conversation with John Wawrzynek and the Berkeley Society of Women Engineers. Reception and book signing will follow.Telle Whitney is a senior executive leader, an entrepreneur, an author, and a recognized advocate and expert on women and ...
China looms large in US conversations about AI policy. But often the stories that spread about Chinese AI are oversimplified - “China is poised to overtake the US in the AI race,” “DeepSeek proved that chip export controls have failed,” “AI is one area where the US and China should ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
After Dark: Wondrous FungusCalling all fungi fans! Join us for an evening of spores, stalks, and species galore.
Where: San FranciscoCost: $22.95
NightLifeThursdays hit different at NightLife. The museum comes alive after hours - wilder, more curious, and full of exciting creatures. Grab your friends, grab a hand-crafted drink, and let yourself wander into whatever weird or wonderful corner calls you. You never know what you’ll stumble into next, and that’s the ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Varies
Friday, 03/06/26
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
Neutrino rest mass and oscillations, dark matter and dark energy and, just possibly, the existence of supermassive black holes early in the history of the universe point to our standard model of particle physics being incomplete. We will discuss how the weak interaction drives stellar evolution and how neutrinos steal ...
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 ...
With ~30 high-silica rhyolite domes and flows and a total eruptive volume of ~5-8.5 km3(DRE), the Mono Craters volcanic chain is one of the youngest and most active silicic systems in North America. Effusive products range in age from ~42 ka to 0.7 ka and exhibit changes in mineralogy (biotite-, orthopyroxene-, or fayalite-bearing) and crystallinity through time. Ion microprobe 238U-230Th dating of allanite and zircon surfaces ...
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 ...
Where: NovatoCost: Free
Astronomy on Tap East Bay - Two TalksThis month, we have two excellent talks lined up: First, Natasha Abrams (UC Berkeley) will discuss the variety of techniques astronomers use to observe and study black holes. Then we’ll hear from Mahlet Shiferaw (Stanford) about the “cosmic web” of dark matter that shapes the Universe!
?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 ...
Generative AI is entering classrooms at a breathtaking pace, often presented as a solution for efficiency by automating tasks such as writing, grading, feedback, and even classroom management. While convenient, these uses risk promoting a shallow, transmission-oriented model of education, one where teachers become content moderators, students become prompt engineers, ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
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 ...
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 ...
The lives of marine animals play vital roles in influencing policy decisions ranging from conservation to food security and global health. Yet, many species behaviors’ remain elusive to science as we have little to no direct observations of them. I propose the use of vision-guided autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) as ...
Smart grids are evolving into highly distributed, data-rich cyber-physical systems where conventional cybersecurity approaches are increasingly insufficient. Most machine-learning??"based defenses remain fundamentally predictive: they detect anomalies, estimate risks, and issue alerts. While valuable, these systems stop short of supporting the rapid, context-aware decisions required during active cyber-physical events.Large Language Models (LLMs) ...
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 ...
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 ...
As semiconductor design and manufacturing evolve into a data-intensive domain, the complexity of devices and variability in processes are driving significant computational demands. This talk introduces a new class of Agentic AI architectures tailored to tackle the challenges of scale, latency, and decision-making in contemporary EDA and fabrication workflows. We ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Belonging to the Earth: An Evening with Robin Wall KimmererExplore how scientific inquiry can be enriched by Indigenous ecological knowledge.The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is honored to present a special lecture featuring Robin Wall Kimmerer - mother, scientist, distinguished professor of environmental biology, member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and best-selling author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific ...
Where: Cost: Free
Saturday, 03/14/26
Baylands ExplorationsJoin expert EV docents for an exploration of the science and nature of the Palo Alto Baylands. What makes this habitat so special? How do the plants and animals survive the salty conditions? Why is it so different at different times of day or times of the year? How can ...
Where: Palo AltoCost: Free
Stewardship Saturday: Craft for ConservationJoin Ciclo and The Marine Mammal Center for hands-on, creativity driven event exploring how sustainability and conservation are deeply connected. Together, we'll learn about how reducing waste and reusing materials can support a healthier planet and protect marine life. During the event, participants will transform upcycled materials into jewelry, patches, ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free
Family Nature Adventures: InsectsUncover the fascinating lives of nature’s insects and get the buzz about bees during this month’s adventure!Interactive Workshop: Engage in exciting activities, experiments, and crafts to learn about the incredible characteristics of native insects and pollinators. Discover how these creatures play a vital role in populating your favorite flowers.Nature Exploration ...
Where: OaklandCost: $25 Adult, $35 Youth 3 - 8, Members 15% off
Pi DayCelebrate Pi Day at its birthplace! This irrational and transcendent holiday was founded in 1988 at the Exploratorium, and has since grown into an international phenomenon. Join in our annual procession around the Pi Shrine, enjoy slices of delicious pie, and think beyond circles and spheres with surprising exhibits about ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free with admission
There’s Nothing Common about the Common Crow!Learn about the fascinating world of crows!Join us in the Visitor Center at the Don Edwards SF Bay National Wildlife Refuge for a 50-minute presentation about crows, some of the most intelligent birds you can encounter! This program is led by USFWS volunteer Judi Nechols.
Where: FremontCost: Free
Starry Nights Star PartyJoin the San Jose Astronomical Association (SJAA) and Santa Clara County Open Space Authority (OSA) for an unforgettable night of exploring the night sky. Our knowledgeable docents, members of SJAA, will be your guides to providing valuable insights into the wonders of our universe. The viewing site, Rancho Canada del ...
Ornithologists often study breeding birds and as a result the winter ecology and social behavior of migratory birds is relatively under studied. My students and I conducted a 22-year study of a population of golden-crowned sparrows that winter in the Arboretum of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Each sparrow ...
Where: Santa CruzCost: Free
Junior Rangers at the Refuge: Track DetectivesLove 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 March, we'll discover who's roaming the Refuge by becoming track detectives! We'll become ...
Where: AlvisoCost: 0
Salt Marsh WalkJoin us for a short walk through the La Riviere Marsh!Join us for a leisurely hike along the La Riviere Trail. You'll learn about the ways that salt marshes benefit wetland ecosystems and us!Meet at the Visitor Center. Bring warm layers, sun protection, sturdy walking shoes, and binoculars if you ...
Speaker: Joseph Jackson, Environmental Compliance Inspector, Contra Costa CountyEditor's Note: Lauren Ashlock, UC Davis, was originally scheduled to speak today
AI coding agents now complete multi-hour coding benchmarks with roughly 50% reliability, yet a randomized trial found experienced open-source developers took about 19% longer when allowed frontier AI tools than when tools were disallowed.This talk presents the evidence on the productivity paradox in AI coding, shows the bottlenecks in deployment, ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Rethinking Materials for a Resource-Constrained World: Pathways to Sustainable and Equitable InfrastructureMaterials - particularly infrastructure materials - account for a substantial share of global energy use, mineral extraction, and anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Yet they remain essential for the built environment that underpins meeting quality of life needs, and demand for them is expected to grow. Addressing their climate impacts therefore requires ...
The nature of dark matter remains an outstanding question in physics, driving searches across a vast range of scales, from microscopic interactions to the cosmos. In this talk, I will explore two exciting avenues for probing dark matter: direct interactions with materials and its influence on stellar streams. At sub-GeV ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
First Results from the JUNO Experiment Neutrinos are elusive particles with unique properties that offer key insights into the fundamental structure of matter and the cosmic sources that produce them. The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a next-generation, 20-kiloton liquid scintillator detector, the largest of its kind in the world, located in China and recently ...
Why do you immediately click with some people while others just as inexplicably turn you off? Do people emit vibes? Is it possible to read a room? Are bad habits contagious? Kate Murphy, author of the international bestseller You’re Not Listening, answers these and other fascinating questions in Why We Click, ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $25 General, $10 Online, discount for members
Dopamine is everywhere - on podcasts, in productivity hacks, in conversations about addiction, motivation, and “dopamine detox.” But what does neuroscience actually say?In this lecture, Lucas Encarnacion-Rivera, PhD candidate in Neuroscience at Stanford University School of Medicine, cuts through the hype to separate fact from fiction about the brain’s most ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $25
Think Different: Apple, the Counterculture, and Digital Culture, 1976-2026Join us for this talk on the counterculture's significant influence on Apple's origin story as the company turns 50 on April 1st.As we approach the 50th anniversary of Apple Inc. on April 1, 2026, the counterculture's influence on the company's origins and brand continues to draw significant attention. This program ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $18 in person, $9 online
