Joanne Emerson is an Assistant Professor of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis. Her recent research focuses on identifying infective and degraded viral particles in soil to understand more about the relatively unknown field of soil viruses.

Victor Couture is an Assistant Professor at the Vancouver School of Economics of the University of British Columbia. In this lecture, Couture discusses the methodology and results of his research pertaining to global urban transportation.

Garen Baghdasarian previously held a number of positions including Chair of the SMC Life Sciences Department, SMC Director of the Center for Environmental and Urban Studies, and co-Chair of the SMC Global Citizenship Study Abroad committee.

Check out the accompanied blog: Coral Reef Blog

Our first college AMA features students from Cal Poly SLO, UCLA, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins. Listen to their advice on the college application process, and get your questions about college life in general answered.

In this lecture, Bonahon discusses curvature, which measures how much a curve is curved, or how much a surface is bent in space. Curvature plays an important role in physics, from soap films to relativity theory; it also comes up in objects that look very different from curves and surfaces, such as the very large networks that occur in the structure of very large data sets.

Dr. Heiko Hoffmann is a senior researcher at HRL Laboratories, investigating cutting-edge technology in artificial intelligence and robotics. In this lecture, Hoffmann gives a comprehensive overview of the current state of robotics, the science behind training robots, and the future of the robotics industry, focusing on movement and detection. Hoffman also discusses the background necessary to pursue a career in AI or robotics and the challenges of entering the field.

Check out the accompanied blog: The Reality of Robotics

In this lecture, Jackson presents a survey of the literature on the economic consequences of the structure of social networks and discusses both the theoretical and empirical findings concerning the “macro” and “micro” characteristics of social-interaction networks in determining learning, diffusion, decisions, and resulting behaviors.

Check out the accompanied blog: Exploring Social Networks