January 10, 2025

@ Northeastern University

Dr. Draguna Varbie, Chief Data Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Step into the world of smart homes with Draguna Vrabie as she reveals how AI is changing the way we live. From energy-saving systems that learn your daily routines to devices that respond instantly to your needs, AI is making homes more intelligent and efficient than ever. Draguna will break down how her research is pushing the boundaries of smart technology, helping to create homes that are safer, greener, and more convenient. Whether it’s optimizing energy use or making everyday tasks easier, learn how AI-driven innovation is shaping the next generation of living spaces.

November 8, 2024

@ CoMotion, UW

Prof. James Davenport, Associate Director, DIRAC Institute, University of Washington 

Located in northern Chile, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will be the most ambitious survey telescope ever constructed, and is slated to begin operations in mid 2025. Over its 10 year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) program, Rubin will map the entire visible sky, cataloging over 40 billion stars and galaxies. In the first months of operation, Rubin will double the number of asteroids and “minor bodies” tracked in our own Solar System. The University of Washington has been a founding partner of the Rubin Observatory project for nearly 20 years, and its DIRAC Institute hosts experts in both science and software development. This talk will cover the wide range of astrophysics we expect the Rubin/LSST to advance, and the prospect of revealing exciting but unknown mysteries that will drive the next decade of discovery.

October 11th, 2024

@ Accenture Kirkland

Ryan Calkins, Commissioner, Port of Seattle & Advisor, Offshore Wind and Maritime Infrastructure, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

Explore the transformation of maritime ports through electrification and clean technology innovations. This presentation will dive into how electrifying port operations reduces emissions, enhances efficiency, and sets the stage for a sustainable future in global shipping. Join us to discover the challenges and opportunities in powering the ports of tomorrow.

September 13, 2024 (@ Slalom Hawk Tower):

Dr. Michael Metzger, Assistant Professor, Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI)

Cancer cells can evolve as they divide and spread through the body, but cancers normally do not live longer than their hosts. In rare cases, (in Tasmanian devils, dogs, and many species of bivalves), cancer cells can jump from one animal to another, spreading for centuries or even millennia as infectious cells that blur the line between metastatic cancer and infectious disease. The Metzger Lab studies these contagious cancers in clams, cockles, and other bivalves to determine how they spread through the environment, how they continue to evolve, and how the clams themselves are evolving to become resistant to the cancers.

February 14, 2025 (@ Perkins Coie):

Dr. Shen Ren, Assistant Teaching Professor, Seattle University

Organ transplantation is the most effective treatment for patients suffering from acute and chronic organ failure, yet the shortage of viable organs results in long waiting lists. Current preservation methods can only keep organs viable for up to 24 hours, making timely transplants challenging. Cryopreservation, a cutting-edge technology that preserves biomaterials at low temperatures to halt biological and chemical reactions, offers a promising solution. Dr. Ren's team is at the forefront of this field, developing a novel electromagnetic-based rewarming technology that aims to extend organ viability to years, ultimately improving access to transplantation and saving lives.

March 14, 2025 (@ EPAM Bellevue):

Dr. Shanu Sushmita, Assistant Teaching Professor and Researcher, Northeastern University

Join Dr. Shanu Sushmita as she explores the transformative power of artificial intelligence, particularly natural language processing (NLP), in various sectors, with a focus on healthcare. With over a decade of experience in machine learning and data science, Dr. Sushmita will discuss how NLP is reshaping the way healthcare providers and payers analyze and utilize data to improve clinical care, enhance patient outcomes, and make strategic decisions. Discover the latest advancements in NLP technology, its applications in health analytics, and the ways it can enhance user experience across industries.

April 11, 2025 (@ TBA):

Dr. Alice Kane, Ling/Obrzut Assistant Professor, Institute for Systems Biology

Dr. Alice Kane, the newest faculty member at ISB, invites you to explore the complex biology of aging and frailty. This session will cover her research on understanding the significant variability in health outcomes among individuals as they age, focusing on both male and female perspectives. Dr. Kane will highlight her analysis of a unique longitudinal dataset from aging mice, aimed at predicting health and function across the lifespan. Join us to learn how this research can lead to new insights and interventions to promote healthier aging for all.

May 9th, 2025 (@ Russell Investment Center):

Dr. Anand Jayakaran, Professor & Green Stormwater Infrastructure Specialist, Washington State University

One of the biggest challenges facing aquatic ecosystems today is the disruption of natural water cycles due to human activities, which has led to more water and pollutants flowing into streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans. In this talk, Dr. Jayakaran will discuss how he and others are working to restore urban water systems using nature-based solutions. Recent research shows these approaches can reduce the harmful effects of stormwater on fish. Ani will focus on one such solution—permeable pavements—and explain recent breakthroughs that make them a practical way to manage stormwater in cities.

June 13, 2025 (@ K&L Gates):

Alex Gagon & Julian Sachs of Banyu Carbon, Professors at University of Washington

Join us as we delve into Banyu Carbon’s groundbreaking work in carbon management. This session will highlight their unique solutions for capturing and utilizing carbon emissions, showcasing the importance of sustainability in combating climate change. Learn how Banyu Carbon is paving the way for a resilient and eco-friendly future.

June 14, 2023: Dr. Brandon Hopkins, Assistant Research Professor, WSU

Honey bees are critical to producing around 70% of foods consumed worldwide, but colony losses in recent decades have beekeepers and farmers concerned for their crops. Beekeeping is an age-old practice that has greatly lagged behind other agricultural industries. However, our team is taking advantage of new technologies and easier access to tools to improve honey bee health, reduce the pressure of pesticides, and uncover the causes of colony losses each year. Washington State University’s Dr. Brandon Hopkins will provide a brief overview of some of the technological advances his group has made, and existing technologies they are using in innovative ways, to support beekeepers, offer insight to the causes of colony losses, and to generate new information that is directing policy changes nationwide.

May 10, 2024: Dr. Jay Shendure, Professor - Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington

In this talk, Dr. Shendure will describe our ongoing efforts to develop and apply new technologies aimed at reconstructing the entirety of mouse embryonic development at single cell resolution. A first approach that he is pursuing involves single cell profiling of whole embryos at successive timepoints, resulting in “snapshots” that must be pieced together analogous to a timelapse movie. A complementary approach that Dr. Shendure is also pursuing involves time-resolved molecular recording, essentially leveraging DNA as a substrate to write information that informs the reconstruction of cell lineage and other molecular events as they transpired over the course of a single embryo's development. Under these two strategies, Dr. Shendure will discuss progress and challenges towards the long-term dream of comprehensively modeling the entirety of mouse prenatal development, from a single cell zygote to a free-living pup.

April 12, 2024 (@ DH Seattle): Dr. Chris Whidbey, Assistant Professor, Seattle University

Over the last 20 years, developments in tech have resulted in complete genome sequences from hundreds of thousands of organisms across the Earth. With all of this information, the roadblock has become identifying what genes are truly important to for a given system. Dr. Chris Whidbey will present an approach to solving this problem called activity-based protein profiling (ABPP). By combining chemistry and biology, ABPP can fish out the functionally active gene products from a sample. He will discuss his team’s work using ABPP to identify the important genes in human microbiomes and how ABPP can be used to discover new biological tools.

March 8 (@ Northeastern University Seattle): Dr. Alice Long, Associate Member, Principal Investigator - Long Lab, Benaroya Research Institute

For over a century, the only treatment for type 1 diabetes (T1D) has been insulin—a lifesaving therapy that addresses symptoms of the disease, but not the root cause. In 2022, the FDA approved the first ever therapy to target the root cause of an autoimmune disease: teplizumab. Teplizumab can actually delay the onset of T1D for up to 2 years. This is a paradigm-shifting feat—not just for treating T1D, but all autoimmune diseases. The approval is the result of decades of research from researchers across the world, including Dr. Alice Long of Seattle’s Benaroya Research Institute (BRI). Teplizumab is the result of collaboration within BRI and across the globe, and proof that BRI’s ultimate goal is possible: We can change the course of autoimmune diseases before they start.

February 9, 2024: Dr. Anna Kuchina, Assistant Professor, Institute for Systems Biology

Scientists have long been fascinated by the individuality and social lives of bacteria. It turns out that even when they share the same genes, bacteria can behave in diverse ways, helping each other survive through sharing tasks or hiding each other from harm. They collaborate to form biofilms, resilient communities that make infections tough to treat. Dr. Kuchina is delving into this microbial world using cutting-edge genomic technology. By studying the behavior of individuals within bacterial communities, she aims to develop strategies to combat stubborn infections and improve the health of our gut microbiota, the complex community of microorganisms in our digestive system.

January 12, 2024: Dr. Steve Brunton, Professor, University of Washington

Turbulence is all around us. We’re surrounded by fluids, and they play a crucial role in our health, transportation, energy, and defense systems. However, understanding how these fluids behave in real-life situations can be complicated as fluid movements are complex, evolving on different scales in space and time. This makes it challenging and expensive to study and predict accurately. Fortunately, recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence offer promising solutions. In this talk, Dr. Steve Brunton will dive into how these technologies are being used to make sense of and control the unpredictable behaviors of fluids. Dr. Brunton will also highlight recent breakthroughs and the importance of making these computer solutions interpretable by humans and applicable across diverse contexts.

November 3, 2023 (@ Seattle University): Dr. Allison Myers-Pigg, Earth Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Wildfires change the landscape, altering the types of materials transported to rivers. They also change how materials are transported, both of which can impact local water quality. Dr. Myers-Pigg will discuss ongoing research on how nutrients and other materials change over time and space post-wildfire in river systems across the Pacific Northwest. Understanding what causes these changes can help us to better be able to predict the influence of wildfires on watersheds.

October 13, 2023: Dr. Joshua Heyne, Director of the Bioproducts, Sciences, & Engineering Lab, WSU Tri-Cities

Aviation connects people across continents and oceans like no other technology has. As the world mobilizes to a net-zero economy, the aviation industry has pledged to eliminate its radiative impact on the planet similarly. Aviation, unfortunately, is particularly hard to decarbonize due to the energetics of flight, safety standards, current airline operations and market, the service life of aircraft, and the time needed to design, build, and certify new hardware. Here, an overview of one sustainable aviation path with sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) will be highlighted. Pathways for SAF production, current commercialization plans in the US and Washington State, and ongoing efforts to quantify and eliminate the impact of aviation on the environment will be emphasized.

September 8, 2023 (@ Russell Investments Center): Dr. Aimee Dudley, Senior Investigator & Director of Educational Outreach, PNRI

September is Newborn Screening Awareness Month. Newborn screening (NBS) is a successful public health program that can prevent illness and death by pre-symptomatically identifying rare, serious, and treatable diseases that can appear in the newborn period. Unfortunately, the positive impact of NBS is currently limited to a set of ~35 conditions that can be screened biochemically. While genome sequencing could rapidly screen for most of the hundreds of inherited diseases that arise in the newborn period, sequencing frequently returns variants of uncertain significance that cannot be used for diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Dudley will describe how her lab is using high throughput methods in Baker’s yeast to determine the functional impact of genetic variants in genes associated with a set of devastating, but treatable inherited metabolic diseases.

SUPPORTING SPONSORS:

Accenture

Clark Nuber

McKinsey & Company

Slalom

ENGAGING SPONSORS:

WRF Capital