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Celebrating 100 Years of MIT in California

		MIT Club of Northern California Visit the MIT Club of Northern California Web site to learn about many other upcoming club events. Become a member today! MIT Club of Southern California Visit the MIT Club of Southern California Web site to learn about many other upcoming club events. Become a member today!

For 100 years, MIT alumni have been networking, sharing and learning in California Clubs. In celebration of this momentous anniversary, the Alumni Association and MIT Clubs of Southern California and Northern California have been presenting a speaker series featuring prominent MIT faculty from diverse fields.

Don't miss these opportunities to connect with the MIT community, network with fellow alumni, and learn about the fascinating work of MIT faculty.

Professor Dava Newman SM '89, PhD '92
Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow
Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems
Director of Technology and Policy Program

"Hybrid Human-Machine Systems in Extreme Environments"
Dr. Newman's expertise is in multidisciplinary research that combines aerospace biomedical engineering, human-in-the-loop modeling, biomechanics, human interface technology, life sciences, systems analysis, design and policy. Dr. Newman's research studies are carried out through space flight experiments, ground-based simulations, and mathematical modeling. Current research efforts include: advanced space suit design, dynamics and control of astronaut motion, mission analysis, and engineering systems design and policy analysis. She also has ongoing efforts in assistive technologies to augment human locomotion here on Earth.

Prof. Newman's spandex space suit was named one of Time Inventions of the Year. She was the co-chair of the Presidential Task Force on the Educational Commons and is Housemaster of Baker House.

Past Events in this series

Professor Pawan Sinha PhD '92
Associate Professor of Vision and Computational Neuroscience Research

"Learning to See in Late Childhood"
Professor Sinha's work in the Sinha Laboratory for Vision Research focuses on the two key aspects of visual cognition: learning and recognition. Sinha and his team spearhead Project Prakash, bringing light into the lives of curably blind children and, in so doing, illuminating some of the most fundamental scientific questions about how the brain develops and learns to see. This international initiative is changing the way we think about blindness, vision and serving the poorest communities around the world.

To read more about Professor Sinha and his work:
Visual neuroscience: Look and learn from Nature
Where Blindness is Epidemic from Time magazine

**Postoned until future date**
Professor Victor Zue PhD '76
Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)

"On Organic Interfaces"
For over four decades, the research community has taken remarkable strides in advancing human language technologies. This has resulted in the emergence of spoken dialogue interfaces that can communicate with humans on their own terms. For the most part, however, we have assumed that these interfaces are static; they know what they know and don't know what they don't. In my opinion, we are not likely to succeed until we can build interfaces that behave more like organisms that can learn, grow, reconfigure, and repair themselves, much like humans. In this talk, I will argue my case and outline some new research challanges.

Professor Zue's primary research interest is the development of spoken language interfaces to make human-computer interactions easier and more natural. Prior to 2001, he headed the Spoken Language Systems Group, which has pioneered the development of systems that enable a user to interact with computers using multiple spoken languages.

MIT on the Road — San Francisco

MIT on the Road is an intense experience, an information rich and exciting day of insights that only a place like MIT can provide. It is a day in which the Alumni Association brings together some of MIT's most talented faculty to take you inside their cutting edge research. Each faculty member gives a full length lecture, and there is ample time at the end of each presentation for the flurry of questions that inevitably arise.

"Neural Mechanisms of Complex Learned Behavior: Lessons from a Songbird" Michale S. Fee Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT "Abrupt Climate Change" John C. Marshall Professor, Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Director, Climate Modeling Initiative, MIT "Global Resources and the Built Environment" John E. Fernandez '85 Associate Professor, Building Technology, School of Architecture, MIT

The Club of Northern California would like to thank Lightspeed Venture Partners for generously serving as sponsor of the 100th Anniversary Faculty Lecture Series.