Past Events

A Silicon Valley Innovation Journey: from Semiconductors to Sustainability

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Kevin Surace
CEO, Serious Materials

“FACTORIES RE-OPEN, CREATING NEW JOBS AND COST SAVINGS FOR U.S. EMPLOYEES”. Is this a headline from years gone by? A satirical story reported in The Onion? Or an apt characterization of the work of a 21st Century Silicon Valley innovation leader? Our third option has all the charm.
Join us as Kevin Surace, former semiconductor executive and current CEO of Silicon Valley-based Serious Materials, shares with us his recent White House commendations from the President and Vice President, and his adventures as a leader in one of the most critical 21st Century innovation industries.

Serious Materials develops and manufactures sustainable green building materials that save energy, save money, improve comfort and aggressively address climate change. The company was voted #1 at Cleantech Forum XII, won Global Gypsum Product of the Year 2008, won the first Aspen Institute award for innovation in Energy Conservation, and was awarded Green Product of the Year by Popular Science. It has also been recognized by TIME/CNN, Fortune, and Business Week as one of the top green technology companies. SeriousWindows(TM) and SeriousGlass(TM) reduce heating and cooling energy costs by up to 50% and improve occupant comfort. QuietRock® soundproof drywall and QuietGlass® reduce material use, enhance livability, and support dense sustainable urban construction. EcoRock(TM) uses 80% less energy in its core production and has the potential to save billions of pounds of CO2 annually making it the only true green alternative to gypsum drywall and five times more environmentally friendly. SeriousWindows, SeriousGlass and super-insulating ThermaRock(TM) drywall support energy efficiency funding programs as outlined under The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) including Weatherization (WAP), Green Federal Buildings, State Energy Program (SEP), Energy Efficiency Block Grants, Energy Tax Credit for Consumers, and Tax Deductions for Commercial Buildings.

Inspiration, Open Source and Sun SPOTs

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Roger Meike
Director of Operations, Sun Labs
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Embedded computers are all around us. There are many more embedded computers than there are people on the planet. The implications of the growth of these devices is staggering. While the internet has more than a billion computers connected to it, there are several times that number of cell phones connected to the internet. Sun has created an open source technology called Sun SPOT to help create the “internet of things.” The mission is to inspire a community of developers to invent the next generation of connected devices using Sun’s technology. Roger will discuss strategies and tactics employed as well as the results of Sun’s activities so far in this area.

Roger Meike is Senior Director, Area 51 and Director of Operations, Sun Microsystems Laboratories. His background is in cognitive science and his career has led him back and forth between new start companies and large research organizations. While his background is mostly in software, he also enjoys consorting with hardware folks. He has been accused of being many things including photo enthusiast, sailor, ham radio operator, musician and techno-geek/nerd.
Bring your curiosity and see you there!

Innovation on the Edge of Chaos

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Bruce Sawhill, ePluribus Research
with Jim Herriot

Dr. Bruce Sawhill will tell the story of chaos theory from the viewpoint of how the history of science influences and is influenced by the history of civilization and cannot be considered separately. In particular, why is chaos theory a relatively recent invention when in principle it could have been discovered in Newton’s time? The implications for modern day personal and business life will be discussed.

Dr. Bruce Sawhill received his PhD in theoretical physics from Stanford University in 1985. After a postdoc at the Max Planck Institut in Munich, he settled at the Santa Fe Institute from 1991-97 to study chaos and complexity science. In 1997 he co-founded the Bios Group, a complexity science consulting group formed to apply cutting edge science to business problems. In 2002 he co-founded DayJet Corp., the world’s first per-seat on-demand jet taxi service.

When Computers Look at Art

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David Stork
Ricoh Innovations

Thanks to cutting edge advancements in computer science, questions and controversies in the study of art are now being answered in ways that were not previously possible. For example, computer analysis is currently being used to authenticate paintings attributed to artists such as Jackson Pollock and Vincent Van Gogh. And analysis of perspective, shading, color and form has thrown a wrench into David Hockney’s bold claim that as early as 1420, Renaissance artists employed optical devices such as concave mirrors to project images onto their canvases. How do these computer methods work? What can computers reveal about images that even the best-trained connoisseurs, art historians and artist cannot? How much more powerful and revealing will these methods become? In short, how is computer image analysis changing our understanding of art?

Join us as David Stork addresses these questions and more. David is Chief Scientist at Ricoh Innovations. He is also a Consulting Professor of Statistics at Stanford, and a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition. He has authored and co-authored many publications, including Seeing the Light, the leading textbook on optics and the arts; Pattern Classification, the best-selling textbook in the field, and other critical works. He is also the creator of the PBS Documentary, 2001: HAL’s Legacy.