Speakers

Allan is a past president of the Los Altos Rotary.

Host: Amy Boggs

Speaker contact: allan@varni.com

 

 (ab)

Host: Steven Weiner

This year marks the 500th anniversary of the death of the original Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci, and a new book by a Silicon Valley author highlights a little-recognized but fascinating component of his art and work.

Caroline Cocciardi focuses on Leonardo’s placement and use of mathematically-inspired knots throughout his art, and tells the story of the hidden messages conveyed by knots that appear in the artist’s most famous works, Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.

"The nonverbal language of drawing knots in a variety of designs and themes appealed to Leonardo so much so that he devoted a lifetime to their exploration," said Cocciardi.

"Leonardo’s Knots is an intriguing and impressive journey through Leonardo’s fascination with knots, their mathematical intricacy, and their integration into his art," according to Santa Clara University professor Don Riccomini. "Leonardo's contemporaries considered him more mathematician than artist, and Cocciardi does a thorough job of showing why through her analysis of the mathematics of the knots he integrated into his paintings."

Host: Amy Boggs

Incorporating the sense of touch into robots may provide new and useful robots in society.

 

 

 

Host: Amy Boggs

rcalandra@fb.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Alexander Cannera, educator and engineer, will present the latest research on how elements in our world affect our health. This information will shed light on how our bodies respond to the everyday exposure to sun, X-Rays, food,,computers, cell phones and more. His talk will explain how Mother Nature is very smart about the chemistry in our environment by evolving mechanisms within our cells that repair themselves to keep us healthy.

 

Introduction by Steven Weiner

Dean Winslow is an American physician, academic, and retired United States Air Force colonel. He is currently on leave from Stanford Department of Medicine while working as Lead Physician for the NSF at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. In addition to his Infectious Diseases subspecialty, he is a distinguished graduate, United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, Flight surgeon (1983).

 

 

Host: Amy Boggs

dwinslow@stanford.edu

Have you ever wondered what the Coast Guard does?

Wonder no more. Come and hear about the myriad services performed by this august body.

Host: Mark Flegel/Amy Boggs

 

Robert Buelteman is an artist whose fascination with transcendence is reflected in his photographs, portraying the universe as alive and life as mysterious and profound. Whether examining the grand landscape or inquiring into the design of plants, his print work is a powerful extraction of beauty and substance revealing unrecognized dimensions in the commonplace.

 

Introduced by Steven Weiner

Thomas Foon Chew arrived in San Francisco from China in 1897, when Thomas was 8. His father had a small cannery that was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, but he rebuilt the cannery in Alviso, and at that time brought Thomas into the business. They canned tomatoes, apricots, peaches, plums and more -- and added plants in Mayfield (now Palo Alto) and along the Delta. Local papers dubbed him “The Asparagus King” for perfecting the canning of green asparagus. By the 1920s, Bayside had become the third-largest canning business in the country.

Although his life was short, thomas Foon Chew left a legacy of values. All seven of his children graduated from college, despite the Great Depression. Forty years later, many of his workers said his kindness had changed their lives. Alviso salutes him today with a street named in his honor and with four historical plaques. One is on Hope Street – a fitting place to mark the memory of this optimistic and inventive Californian.

 

Speaker invited by Steven Weiner