Speakers

Because many of you asked to have Dr. Doty visit our club. Dr. Doty is the author of the NY Times Bestselling book: Into the Magic Shop. It's a neurosurgeon's quest to discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart. 

Today he is the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, of which the Dalai Lama is a founding benefactor. But back then his life was at a dead end until at twelve he wandered into a magic shop looking for a plastic thumb. Instead, he met Ruth, a woman who taught him a series of exercises to ease his own suffering and manifest his greatest desires. Her final mandate was that he keep his heart open and teach these techniques to others. She gave him his first glimpse of the unique relationship between the brain and the heart.

There’s fungus among us! Experienced mushroom hunters Dave and Lucy will take us on a quick and instructive tour of our local fungi: beautiful, repulsive, fascinating, and best of all, delicious! You’ll learn how to identify, collect, and prepare a few of the thousands of mushrooms varieties growing in our hills, and how to avoid the deadly ones. One lucky Rotarian may go home with their very own can of Huitlacoche!

With a love for wildlife and our nation’s wildlands, Nores was inducted into San Jose State University’s Justice Studies Hall of Fame in 2018 after earning BS and MS degrees before becoming a game warden for the California Dept. of Fish and Wildlife in 1992. 

In 2005 John promoted to Lieutenant, continuing his mission to protect and defend our nation’s wildlife resources.  John has investigated environmental crime and wildlife resource destruction for the last 28 years and was awarded the Governor’s Medal of Valor for lifesaving and leadership efforts in 2008.  He’s received several other awards for valor, life-saving, and distinguished service throughout his career.

His first book, War in the Woods: Combating the Marijuana Cartels on America’s Public Lands was published in 2010 with his second book, Hidden War: How special operations game wardens are reclaiming America’s Wildlands from the drug cartels available worldwide in early 2019.  John also recently co-authored a national cannabis issue book, Where There’s Smoke released in 2018. 

Nores has also written articles for Recoil, Sure Fire’s Combat Tactics, Gun Digest and American Patriots: Unsung Heroes, Nosler and KUIU Ultralight Hunting.

In 2013 John co-developed the Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET) and Delta Team, the CDFW’s first comprehensive wilderness spec ops tactical unit and sniper element, aimed at combatting the marijuana cartel’s decimation of California’s wildlife resources. 

The MET has been featured on Fox News, NBC Investigative Reports, CNN, and Dan Rather Reports.  Lt. Nores and his team are featured in three seasons of National Geographic channel’s award-winning game warden reality TV series, “Wild Justice,” highlighted in the Sportsman Channel’s award-winning Patriot Profiles: Life of Duty documentary TV series and featured in and co-hosts Pursuit Channel’s Modern Shooter TV series. 

After five years of operations, the MET and their lead apprehension K9 Phebe, were recognized for their environmental crime fighting and public safety protection efforts in California’s Capitol through Resolution Award ceremonies in the Assembly and Senate in 2017. 

Specializing in public and private land Drug Trafficking Organization narcotics tactics and related environmental crime enforcement and training for the last 15 years, John has presented for the California Narcotics Officers Association (CNOA), the Nevada Narcotics Officers Association (NNOA), and numerous other conventions and conferences all over the Country. 

Nores is an annual Safari Club International (SCI) convention seminar speaker, a national and international conservation tactics instructor and has taught rifle, handgun, shotgun and basic and advanced sniper craft for the last 25 years. 

John is a tactical surveillance, and covert and overt special operations instructor and operator throughout California.  Nores has allied with the U.S. Secret Service in rural and urban protection details for former U.S. President Barack Obama and former Israeli President Shimon Peres and in 2007, John co-developed and instructed at an overt and covert wildlife investigators school in Cambodia. 

Nores is a worldwide conservationist, back packer,  two-time Ironman triathlete finisher and two-time Baja 500 Ironman ATV race finisher.  John’s Baja team (J&J Ironman Racing) has raced to support and fundraise for El Oasis children’s orphanage since their first race event in 2006.

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. 

 

Compass and a Camera - photography of Viet Nam War

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.