Month: October 2020 (Page 1 of 2)

Robert Thorson is a professor and interim Head of geosciences at the University of Connecticut. Thor graduated from college in 1973 and left for Alaska to train as an exploration geologist. After earning an MS degree from the University of Alaska in 1975, he worked as a full-time geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey until 1979. He earned a PhD from the University of Washington in 1979, and in 1984, moved to New England to join the faculty of the University of Connecticut in the Department of Geology & Geophysics. During his first twenty years at UConn, his appointment was with the Department of Geology & Geophysics, where he ran a grant-funded research lab with graduate students, and where his undergraduate teaching responsibilities included glacial geology, surface processes, dinosaurs, and introductory geology.

Thor’s academic career took an unexpected turn in 2002 with the publication of his first book on signature landforms:  Stone by Stone: The Magnificent History in New England’s Stone Walls. This nonfiction bestseller won the Connecticut Book Award. In addition to writing books, Thor has contributed many newspaper articles on science policy, environment, and education. His third book on stone walls, Exploring Stone Walls published in 2005, was the first-ever field guide to the phenomenon. Additionally, he has published two scholarly books on Henry David Thoreau for Harvard University Press. His last book, The Guide to Walden Pond, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2018, is the first guide to this international shrine, a place visited more than half a million times each year.

Arranged by Bryan Hooper

Bryan’s notes on the talk:

Professor Robert Thorson spoke about a subject he has studied and written about for many years, the stone walls of New England.  Gary Banks found his book, “Stone by Stone,” on the Amazon website, and the notes accompanying it are reproduced below since they cover the essence of the talk given to us by Thor:

“There once may have been 250,000 miles of stone walls in America’s Northeast, stretching farther than the distance to the moon. They took three billion man-hours to build. And, even though most are crumbling today, they contain a magnificent scientific and cultural story―about the geothermal forces that formed their stones, the tectonic movements that brought them to the surface, the glacial tide that broke them apart, the earth that held them for so long, and about the humans who built them.
Stone walls tell nothing less than the story of how New England was formed, and in Robert Thorson’s hands they live and breathe. “The stone wall is the key that links the natural history and human history of New England,” Thorson writes. Millions of years ago, New England’s stones belonged to ancient mountains thrust up by prehistoric collisions between continents. During the Ice Age, pieces were cleaved off by glaciers and deposited―often hundreds of miles away―when the glaciers melted. Buried again over centuries by forest and soil buildup, the stones gradually worked their way back to the surface, only to become impediments to the farmers cultivating the land in the eighteenth century, who piled them into “linear landfills,” a place to hold the stones. Usually, the biggest investment on a farm, often exceeding that of the land and buildings combined, stone walls became a defining element of the Northeast’s landscape, and a symbol of the shift to an agricultural economy.
Stone walls layer time like Russian dolls, their smallest elements reflecting the longest spans, and Thorson urges us to study them, for each stone has its own story. Linking geological history to the early American experience, Stone by Stone presents a fascinating picture of the land the Pilgrims settled, allowing us to see and understand it with new eyes.”

The recording of Professor Thorson’s talk can be found at: https://youtu.be/KKpODRT5pTg.

Dr. Una Ryan has extensive experience leading public, private and non-profit companies, and will be speaking to us about the role of science as the foundation for making sound investments. She is a limited partner at Breakout Ventures and at Lionheart Ventures. Una focuses on women-led ventures as Managing Director of Golden Seeds, and as a partner in Astia Angel. She has a portfolio of approximately 35 early-stage companies in the San Francisco Bay Area and Boston, and currently serves on the boards of Cortexyme, RenovoRx , and Elemental Machines. She was Chair of The Bay Area BioEconomy Initiative, an industry organization committed to fostering innovation and collaboration in the Bay Area, and was formerly on the board of BIO, BayBio and Chair of MassBio. Una also serves on the Boards of Cambridge in America and Bristol University US Foundation.

Dr. Ryan was President and CEO of Diagnostics for All, Inc. (DFA), developing inexpensive diagnostics for the developing world, President and CEO of Waltham Technologies Inc., a cleantech company, and President and CEO of AVANT Immunotherapeutics, Inc, now Celldex, developing vaccines and immunotherapeutics for infectious diseases and cancer.  At AVANT, Una oversaw four mergers and, after completing the merger with Celldex, became a serial entrepreneur and investor. Continuing a career of translating science to successful businesses, she is also translating science to art, and founded ULUX to bring new perspectives on science to the art world.

Dr. Ryan holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University and BS degrees from Bristol University. She received an Honorary D.Sc. from Bristol University in 2009. Her academic career included Professorships of Medicine at University of Miami, Washington University, St Louis and Boston University. She held the titles of Howard Hughes Investigator, Established Investigator of the American Heart Association and NIH MERIT Awardee. She has received numerous awards including the Albert Einstein Award (2007) for outstanding achievement in the life sciences, the Cartier Award (2009) and World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer (2011). In 2002 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II awarded Dr. Ryan the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

Arranged by Flemming Heilmann

Bryan Hooper’s notes on the talk:

Dr. Una Ryan led us through her fascinating life story, encompassing survival in escaping from Singapore during WWII, a relatively genteel upbringing in Oxford, England, and an extremely successful career involving academia, business and art. The electron microscope binds these last three phases together.

Early in 1942, Una departed Singapore with her mother on a ship that was later torpedoed. They both survived that experience as well as being refugees for 18 months, but eventually arrived in England where they went to Oxford to live with an aunt. Being raised among the intelligentsia of the colleges exposed Una to academia and she graduated from Bristol University before entering Cambridge to study for her PhD. She remembered several incidents growing up that led to her interest in biology, and increased her understanding of, and interest in, diseases and cures – including the discovery that her grandfather, when surgeon general to the British Army in India, had inoculated a number of hill people against smallpox. Some refused the needle, but he discovered three years afterward that those who had been vaccinated survived another smallpox outbreak that had occurred later. Una’s thesis subject at Cambridge involved attempting to understand the mechanism of color changes in stick insects: access to an electron microscope allowed for detailed examination of cells and led to revelations concerning the inner workings of life. It also helped her develop an appreciation of the incredible artistic beauty of the body.

After Cambridge, Una joined the department of medicine at the University of Miami in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, eventually becoming professor. She researched the blood/air interaction in the lungs, and applied to the National Institutes of Health for a grant for her research; along with the grant came funding for, what else, but an electron microscope. In the process of her work, she isolated the substance controlling blood pressure within the lung cells, angiotensin-converting enzyme, or ACE; understanding that process subsequently resulted in Bristol Meyers Squibb and Merck developing ACE inhibitors to control high blood pressure – an $80 billion business today.

Una still wanted to be involved in going beyond research to fulfill the task of finding cures, so she left academia for the corporate world, joining Monsanto as Director of Health Sciences. She managed research efforts involving five divisions, and learned the usefulness of growth by acquisition. However, she felt the need to be in a smaller operation and then joined an immunotherapy company in Boston, eventually becoming CEO and developing vaccines that to a large extent met her objectives of manufacturing products that were needle-free, temperature stable, single dose and low-cost to produce and buy. After completing a merger of her company with Celldex in 2008, Una became a serial entrepreneur and investor to continue her career of translating science to successful businesses, and also in translating science to art to bring new perspectives on science to the art world.

You can read about the latter venture and see examples of her art on her website at http://www.uluxart.com. Not surprisingly, you will find that her art creations involve images based on – what else? – electron microscope photographs. Here are two of her compositions:

Tree of Life, Blue.  Ribosomal clusters with image of Australian river delta as seen from space.  The composition represents the two most essential elements of life: protein and water.

The video of her talk includes a most interesting Q&A session, and can be viewed on: https://youtu.be/cQTaiTXo-q4.

Ronnie Ellen Maher, Founder and Executive Director of NicaPhoto, is a professional and fine art photographer. Born in Brooklyn, and raised in Norwalk, Connecticut, Ronnie spent more than ten years teaching photography to disadvantaged or “at-risk” youth in various community programs throughout Norwalk, and later in Nicaragua. Ronnie first visited Norwalk’s Sister City, Nagarote, in Nicaragua in 2005 as a volunteer, teaching photography to youth. NicaPhoto was born shortly afterward as a series of photography and writing workshops for youth. For the next 4 years, while working as a professional photographer and teaching in various Norwalk community programs, Ronnie traveled to Nicaragua, teaching photography and connecting youth in the two communities. In 2010, Ronnie redesigned NicaPhoto to be a comprehensive, holistic after school program including education, art and personal development, and since then has been spending most of her time in Nicaragua.

Ronnie has a Liberal Arts Degree from UCONN with a BA in Communications and a minor in Psychology. Prior to studying photography at Maine Media Arts, she worked as a rate analyst and later as a junior level Treaty Underwriter at GenRe. Although it was not a straight path, if you asked her, she would say that everything she has done in her life has helped prepare her for the work she does today.

Arranged by Mike McFadden

Bryan Hooper’s notes on the talk:

Ronnie Ellen Maher, spoke to us from Nicaragua about the programs run by NicaPhoto, the non-governmental organization she founded and runs for disadvantaged children in the city of Nagarote.

Ronnie discovered her interest in photography in high school in Norwalk, where she was raised, and developed that further at Maine Media Workshops. In between working for financial services company, Gen Re, she pursued her hobby, which eventually became a second career. Working in Norwalk as a professional photographer led to Ronnie teaching photography to disadvantaged youths after school in a curriculum designed to stimulate and encourage interest in education, art and personal development. In the course of that program, she made her first visit to Nicaragua in 2005 to lead workshops on photography to children in Norwalk’s sister city, Nagarote.

NicaPhoto was founded in 2010 with a mission to empower disadvantaged children and their families living in the poorest barrios of Nicaragua, allowing them to reach their full potential, and in doing so, to break the cycle of extreme poverty. NicaPhoto started with 12 students and 3 staff as a formal comprehensive after-school project, with subjects covered including photography, tutoring in Math and Spanish, and a healthy hot lunch. The latter was particularly important since Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, with approximately 32% of the population living below the poverty line, and many Nicaraguans struggle daily to obtain sufficient food for their families.

Over the past ten years the curriculum has evolved to cover a wide range of activities including visual arts, dance and chorus, as well as martial arts to encourage discipline and self-esteem, and organic gardening. The garden was made reality once the organization bought a one-acre lot in 2015 and developed it over the next four years along with buildings to house the teaching activities. Waste palettes from a local cement factory provided wood for shop classes, resulting in the production of furniture for the classrooms and fencing for the site. They survived the economic problems of 2018 and have coped with the Covid-19 pandemic with good hygiene practices, taking classes to students, and working closely with parents and their children over the four months they shut down. They even bought a sewing machine to make masks to protect against disseminating the virus, and they introduced dance classes given by U.S. college students via Zoom. They gave computer classes, managed to continue training staff, as well as tutor students, and are about to introduce an aquaponics program to expand their education of food self-sufficiency. In terms of numbers, they now have 150 students and 12 full-time staff.

To learn more about NicaPhoto visit their website, www.nicaphoto.org, and to view Ronnie’s presentation and slide pack, click on the following links:

Presentation Video: https://youtu.be/1WyZQQmJDJ8

Presentation slides: https://dariendma.org/wp-content/uploads/NICAPHOTO-2.0.1-FINAL-3-16-21.pdf