Lecture Previews

Google Technical Lecture

Today at 4:30 p.m.

Gates Hillman Complex 6115

Johan Schalkwyk, a scientist at Google Inc., will give an overview of the new Search by Voice function. This new free application from Google was created as an effort to make speech input on mobile devices universal. Schalkwyk will talk about cloud computing, speech recognition, natural language processing, and user interface design, all of which were challenges during the creation of Google Search by Voice.

School of Art Lecture Series Presents: Kim Beck

Tuesday, Feb. 2 at 5 p.m.

McConomy Auditorium, University Center

Kim Beck’s works explore alternative aspects of architecture and landscape. Through her drawings, prints, paintings, and installations, she urges her viewers to reconsider aspects of our built environment — objects such as peculiar street signs, gas station banners, overgrown weeded lots, and self-storage buildings. She takes the everyday and brings it to the center of the stage.

Distinguished Microsoft Tech Talk

Wednesday, Feb. 3

at 5 p.m.

Rashid Auditorium,
Gates Hillman Complex 4401

As former managing director of Microsoft Research Asia and current corporate vice president of Microsoft Research, Harry Shum has assumed the role of leading the core search development of Microsoft. Shum holds over 50 U.S. patents and has published over 100 papers on topics such as computer vision, computer graphics, pattern recognition, statistical learning, and robotics. Shum will talk about joining Microsoft Research in 1996, his 1999 transfer to Beijing, and his 2007 promotion to Microsoft corporate vice president.

Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability: Design as Catalyser of Diffuse Creativity for Sustainable Changes

Wednesday, Feb. 3

at 4:30 p.m.

Giant Eagle Auditorium, Baker Hall A51

Ezio Manzini, professor of design at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy, will talk about social innovation, how citizens are now capable of moving outside the mainstream models of living and producing, and how they are now inventing new and sustainable ones.
Manzini says that this social innovation is driven by diffuse creativity and entrepreneurship, meaning that resources are very abundant, even in the densely populated and highly connected world we are a part of. Continuing on this path, the next model could quite possibly become a director of change.

The Moral and Political Challenges of Climate Change

Thursday, Feb. 4

at 4:30 p.m.

Gregg Hall, Porter Hall 100

Dale Jamieson, director of environmental studies and professor of environmental studies and philosophy at New York University, says that in order to see anthropogenic climate change as involving moral wrongs and global injustices, we need to revise some central concepts about these very domains. Also, he believes climate change threatens another value — respect for nature — that can’t easily be taken up by global justice concerns or moral responsibilities.