Tucker

Astronomer Eliot Quataert will describe the remarkable new results coming out of our first steps into the gravitational wave era of cosmic exploration. Dr. Quataert is Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Theoretical Astrophysics Center at UC Berkeley.

• UC Berkeley's Carina Cheng on "Observing the Night Sky" – What kinds of astronomical objects and phenomena can you observe in the night sky, and why is stargazing good for the soul?
• UC Berkeley's Mariel Goddu on "Where Do New Ideas Come From?" – Are the precursors to deviance, innovation, and productive rule-breaking evident in children's cognitive flexibility?
• Stanford's Ryan York on "Evolution Is All Around You" – How does the modern evidence of evolution in action have implications for how we think about evolution and nature itself?
• Stanford's Tyler McFadden on "Plantations, Pinochet, and a Paradigm Shift" — How can we navigate ecology, history, and politics to conserve biodiversity and solve Chile's largest environmental conflict?

• UC Berkeley computer scientist Dylan Hadfield-Menell on "What AI Researchers Can Learn from King Midas" – How do we build artificially intelligent systems that reliably do what we intend?
• Stanford botanist Therese LaRue on "The Plant's Ability to Survive" – How are plants so resilient to changes in their environments?
• UC Berkeley physicist Thomas Mittiga on "Magnetic Micro Mysteries" – How do we use artificial atoms to achieve technological breakthroughs and to understand exotic materials?

• Stanford's Anna Khazenzon on "Media on the Mind" – How do the ~7.5 hours/day(!) that youth spend with media relate to learning, thinking, and socializing within developing brains?
• UC Berkeley's Eric Copenhaver on "Vera's Veritable Dark Matter" – How was dark matter discovered, and how do we hope to identify this mysterious 80%(!) of the material universe?
• UC Berkeley's William Hawley on "The Earthquake Prediction Predicament" – Why is predicting earthquakes such an imposing (and perhaps impossible!) challenge?

Dr. Anthony Wagner is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Stanford Memory Laboratory. He also co-directs the Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging.

Dr. Vernard Lewis is emeritus Cooperative Extension Specialist in UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy, and Management. He joined the Cal faculty in 1991, specializing in Urban Entomology, authoring or co-authoring more than 150 publications, and giving hundreds of lectures & presentations. Dr. Lewis was inducted into the Pest Control Hall of Fame in 2016.

Adrian Liu is a Hubble Fellow in the Astronomy Department of the University of California, Berkeley. In August 2018, he will become Assistant Professor of Physics at McGill University and at the McGill Space Institute.

Our speaker, Dr. Carol Stoker, is staff planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. She has led field experiments in the Arctic, the Antarctic, underwater, and in the deserts of the US southwest. Most recently, she has helped to develop robotic systems to search for life on other planets.

Dr. Blake Sherwin is NASA Einstein Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He has also just earned the title of University Lecturer in Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge University in England.

Dr. Alan Agrawal is a physician who specializes in the treatment of autoimmune diseases in the field of rheumatology. He is also an avid amateur astronomer and independent historian on the development of the telescope.

Our speaker, Caltech's Erik Petigura, will survey humanity's current understanding of exoplanet demographics. He will highlight how these discoveries help illuminate the processes that led to the formation of the Earth and to the origin of life. Finally, Dr. Petigura will offer some thoughts on the types of discoveries that may await us in the coming years.

The University of Montreal's Lauren Weiss and Ohio State University's Marc Pinsonneault are NASA Kepler Mission Experts. Together, and separately, they have helped to discover many MANY worlds orbiting other stars.

In this Wonderfest dialogue, Dr. Weiss, a post-doctoral fellow, will talk about the sizes and compositions of the Kepler exoplanets. She will reveal the essentials of planetary discovery by helping audience members to build a model exoplanet system and observatory. Dr. Pinsonneault, Professor of Astronomy, will discuss what we are learning — from the very same sort of observatory — about sound(!) waves generated within stars, and what those sound waves can teach us about the host stars of exoplanets.