Speakers

Caroline Cocciardi writer and filmmaker began an independent study on Leonardo da Vinci, while living in Rome. Her 20 year research lead to a da Vinci discovery.

Overlooked for centuries yet visual to the naked eye Cocciardi detected that the minute interlocking embroidered knot pattern on Mona Lisa’s dress deviated from the decorative embroidery of the day.  The Mona Lisa Knot was a mathematical pattern based on its angular crossing patterns.

In the process of looking in Leonardo’s codices for his preliminary sketches of The Mona Lisa Knot, she discovered he had dedicated a lifetime to his knot art works. Her newly released art book, “Leonardo’s Knots” will introduce you to a facet of the Renaissance painter that was overlooked for centuries yet was present in his artworks: his passion for intertwining knots. She has lectured for many institutions and museums about Leonardo da Vinci’s knot art.

In 2009, Cocciardi’s documentary, “Mona Lisa Revealed” was featured at the Carmel Film Festival documenting engineer Pascal Cotte, inventor of the multi-spectral camera that uncovered five centuries of secrets within Leonardo’s iconic Mona Lisa. Cocciardi represented Cotte’s Mona Lisa photographs in a worldwide Leonardo exhibition.

Born and raised in China, Mr. Nan Su came to the U.S. in 1989. He has been serving as a news commentator for SOH International Chinese Radio Network and NTD International TV Network since 2003, commenting on a wide range of national and international news events. In the past decade, Mr. Su has made many speeches at public events on topics related to China. He has also been publishing poems, short stories, and prose in Chinese since 2000.

In addition to his media work, Mr. Su is an advocate for human rights in China. He was one of the coordinators of Human Rights Torch Relay in 2008 prior to Beijing Olympics. Starting from Athens, the Human Rights Torch Relay spanned from July 2007 to July 2008, with stops at more than 100 cities around the world in order to raise international awareness of China’s human rights situation.  Mr. Su was instrumental in making San Jose as the first stop of the torch relay in North America.

Besides his involvement in the public, Mr. Su holds a Master degree in Engineering and has been a professional engineer for over 20 years. Mr. Su has been married for 27 years, and currently lives with his wife and two daughters in San Jose, California.

Josué Medellín-Azuara is an Acting Associate Professor at UC Merced, and an Associate Director of the UC Agricultural Issues Center. He also serves as an Adjunct Research Fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center, and as a managing partner for Pacific Agroecology and Economics, LLC.  His professional experience includes project and environmental management positions and consulting for industry and non-governmental organizations such as the Natural Heritage Institute, the Stockholm Environment Institute, El Colegio de México, the Catholic University of Chile, and the World Bank. His research is focused on water supply and agricultural production considering climate extremes, water quality, and food-water-energy system interactions. He obtained his Ph.D. from UC Davis.

 

Lessons Learned for Water Management in California under Climate Extremes

California has successfully weathered past droughts and floods with the benefit of learning from these past extreme events. This seminar provides an overview of California’s water resources for agriculture, cities and the environment with a retrospect analysis of how these past extremes have contributed to contemporary water management. While California’s extreme events need not to be economically catastrophic, these always bring impacts and challenges to some sectors like small rural communities and native ecosystems. Opportunities for innovation in water use and management in California and other semi-arid regions will be discussed. 

Bob was hired on in October 2018 as a Partnership Specialist for Santa Clara County. He worked the 2010 Census in the downtown San Jose Office, starting off as the QA manager. After 9 months he became the Local Census Office Manager (LCOM) in the newly opened Santa Clara/Sunnyvale Office. As the LCOM he oversaw the Census operations in 9 cities in Santa Clara County and all of Santa Cruz County. At its peak there were over 2100 people working out of the Santa Clara. He comes with a wealth of knowledge on the reasons for doing the Census. He is native to this area, born and raised in Mountain View and currently lives in Sunnyvale, Ca.

Intuitive Surgical was founded 24 years ago as a spinoff from SRI in Menlo Park, CA to create innovative, robotic-assisted systems that help empower doctors and hospitals to make surgery less invasive than an open approach. With more than 43,000 da Vinci trained surgeons using 5000 systems in 66 countries, over 5 million patients have been treated using the technology to-date.  Jonathan will discuss Intuitive Surgical’s history and how it creates value for patients, surgeons and healthcare systems worldwide.  He will highlight areas of growth for surgical robotics in general, with a deeper dive into areas that could benefit from improvement.

Jonathan Sorger is the vice president of research at Intuitive Surgical, where he leads a group whose main focus is to address unmet clinical needs through the use of robotic technologies.  He attended Leland High School in San Jose, continued on to study bioengineering at UC San Diego and received the PhD and MBA degrees from Johns Hopkins University with a focus on biomedical engineering and magnetic resonance imaging applied to cardiac pathologies. 

 

Dr. Andrew Gunther will review the basic physical principles and observations that have led every scientific academy in the world to conclude that human emissions of greenhouse gasses are altering the climate. He will discuss what the expected significant climatic changes mean for the country in general and the Bay Area in particular. More information about Dr. Gunther is available at http://www.andrewgunther.com/.