ATLAS | Speaker Series

The ATLAS Speaker Series is made possible by a generous donation by Idit Harel Caperton
and Anat Harel.

ATLAS Speaker Series: Applied Technology,
Design and Creativity

Mark D. Gross, a professor of computational design at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Architecture and a former CU professor, will discuss the design process, do-it-yourself technologies, the Maker Movement, modular robotics, creativity and the interdisciplinary use of technology and computing. His talk is entitled "Applied Technology, Design & Creativity (or, let’s talk about making really cool stuff!)."

ATLAS Speaker Series: Mark Gross (click here for video)

The ATLAS Speaker Series is made possible by a generous donation by Idit Harel Caperton and Anat Harel.
5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 13, Cofrin Auditorium

Mark Maxham: SMRT DNA Sequencing

Mark Maxham, an engineer and software manager at Pacific Biosciences, led the software team that developed the DNA sequencing technology, Single-Molecule Real-Time (SMRT). The PacBio RS product represents the integration of innovations in many distinct disciplines. In a talk entitled "SMRT DNA Sequencing: Technologies Driving Development," Maxham will discuss how this technology was developed and the biological applications enabled by SMRT in medicine, agriculture and biofuels.

ATLAS Speaker Series: Mark Maxham: SMRT DNA Sequencing (click here for video)

The ATLAS Speaker Series is made possible by a generous donation by Idit Harel Caperton and Anat Harel.
5 p.m. Monday, Jan. 30, 2012, Cofrin Auditorium, ATLAS 100

Carmel Hagen: The Web and Social Media

In a talk entitled "The Web and Social Media: Separating the Noise from the Notable," Carmel Hagen will explore people's growing need to be online, connect with others and share the smallest details of their lives. Her discussion will cover the good and bad of the tweets, links, feeds and Facebook statuses flying through the Web. Hagen is a CU alumna, TEDx speaker and Boulder-based consultant in the fields of social media, branding and marketing.

ATLAS Speaker Series: Carmel Hagen, The Web and Social Media (click here for video)

The ATLAS Speaker Series is made possible by a generous donation by Idit Harel Caperton and Anat Harel.
5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27, 2012, Cofrin Auditorium

Smart Phones for Poor Farmers

5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 7, 2011
Heather Thorne will talk about her Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICTD) work, which is focused on using smart phones to create sustainable models for delivery of services and micro-businesses. Thorne leads Grameen Foundation's AppLab Indonesia and Uganda programs, the Community Knowledge Worker mobile agriculture program, and advises on other mobile innovation programs.
ATLAS Speaker Series: Smart Phones for Poor Farmers (click here for video)

Privacy and the Web

5 p.m. Monday, Oct. 31
Jim Harper, director of information policy studies of the CATO Institute and author of "Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood," will discuss:

- How do we balance privacy concerns against the trend to live a public life on the Web?
- What are the red flags in default settings? (As in Safari, Facebook and Google.)
- The pitfalls of opting in or out of various privacy settings.
- Is the onus on the individual?
- What are our expectations? Are they reasonable in today's digital market and meeting places?
- Are there cautions and/or benefits to the changing search algorithms that result in predictive
   marketing? Should your past behavior on the Web affect what you see today? Why should we care?
- If students today are the creators and users of tomorrow's digital marketplace,
   why is privacy relevant?

Jim Harper serves as director of information policy studies at the CATO Institute, a public policy research organization and think tank dedicated to principles of individual liberty, limited government and free markets. Harper works to adapt law and telecommunications, intellectual property and security. He holds a J.D. from UC Hastings College of Law and is author of "Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood." Read his bio.
     ATLAS Speaker Series: Privacy and the Web (click here for video)

ATLAS Speaker Series: One Laptop Per Child

Laura Hosman and Bruce Baikie discuss leading, proposing and deploying development projects in developing nations and in underserved and impoverished regions. Issues include:
• Team-building and promoting initiative and accountability in students.
• Building project-based courses.
• Fundraising, grant writing & publicity.
• Opportunities to lead vs. facilitate.
• Planning for project sustainability, travel and deployment.
• Administrative and ethical challenges.
ATLAS Speaker Series: One Laptop Per Child (video)

Ed Tech, Classroom Resources and Impact on Learning

4 p.m. Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Margaret Dickey-Kurdziolek, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science at Virginia Tech and researches issues of human computer interaction, will give a presentation entitled "Technology for Learning: Developing Educational Technologies that Survive in the Classroom."

She will speak about the interactions students and teachers have with technology and each other, and how the details of these interactions can help developers create better learning technologies.
Her recent work investigates the use of alternative design strategies that engage teachers in designing and developing educational technologies that will both “survive” in the classroom and facilitate student learning.

Abstract
The problem of designing for the educational context is complex and multifaceted. In classrooms we see different types of users, with multiple goals, and unclear measures of success. Even when technology has been explicitly designed to address particular student misunderstandings, and has been demonstrated to increase student learning in experimental trials, successful use and adoption of the technology is far from guaranteed.

Stakeholders at the district, school and classroom level do not always see what student-learning gains can be had from using educational technology, and furthermore, do not make decisions regarding technology based on potential student learning alone.

In her talk, Dickey-Kurdziolek will review the case of a particular educational technology, SimCalc MathWorlds, which when used in experimental studies resulted in student learning gains in the mathematics of rate and proportionality. Then, she will describe case-studies of four classrooms using SimCalc MathWorlds with a variety of technological set-ups: traditional computer lab, mobile laptop carts, and one laptop projected on a screen at the front of the classroom.

The case studies will illustrate how the socio-physical classroom space, as well as the teacher perceptions of the technology, students and classroom, deeply impact how the students ultimately interacted with SimCalc MathWorlds. Finally, Dickey-Kurdziolek will report on recent work investigating the use of alternative design strategy, called “zensign”, while engaging teachers as participants in design, to facilitate the development of educational technologies that will both "survive" in the classroom context and facilitate student learning.
ATLAS Speaker Series: Ed Tech, Classroom Resources and Impact on Learning (click here for video)

Robotics & Music: Robots, Slime, Propane and
Other Ways to Make Strange Musical Instruments

6 p.m. Wednesday, April 13, Black Box (lowest basement level, B2)
The ATLAS Speaker Series presents a discussion with Eric Singer, founder and executive director of the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR), a group of artists and technologists who create robotic musical instruments. Visit http://lemurbots.org/. Free and open to the public.

Singer also leads a workshop, Introduction to Arduino, same day and place
from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. as part of the Communikey Festval of Electronic Arts.
Visit http://communikey.us/festival2011//. to learn about other festival
events, workshops, enrollment, tickets and tuition.

Building a Molecular Robotics Tool Kit

4 p.m. Wednesday, March 30, 2011, Cofrin Auditorium, ATLAS 100
Nadine Dabby of the California Institute of Technology will give a presentation entitled "Building a Molecular Robotics Tool Kit" that will explore recent experimental work on building a tool kit for programming the active self-assembly of molecules using DNA.

Nadine Dabby speaks at TEDxCaltech conference

Nadine Dabby speaks at TEDxCaltech conference

Dabby, who is a Ph.D. student in computation and neural systems, focuses on the theoretical and experimental underpinnings of programming molecular robots using DNA.

Abstract
Computer science and electrical engineering have been the great success story of the twentieth century. The neat modularity and mapping of a language (boolean algebra) onto circuits has achieved robots on Mars, desktop computers and smart phones.

But these devices are not able to do some of the small things that life takes for granted: repair a scratch, reproduce, regenerate, grow exponentially fast, and all the while move around and function. While traditional robots rely on digital computing to control sensing and actuating components, any implementation of single-molecule based robotics must overcome the limited ability of individual molecules to store complex programs.

In this talk, Dabby will discuss recent experimental work towards building a tool kit for programming the active self-assembly of molecules using DNA. See a video of one of her talks at TEDxCaltech.
Read a Caltech article about her work. Look into the Molecular Programming Project, an organization she is affiliated with.

For a video of her ATLAS presentation, click here.

The ATLAS Speaker Series: Previous events