Friday, July 18

6:00-8:00 PM

2nd floor 18+

Monsters invade Los Altos!

We’re  collaborating with BAASICS to bring a night packed with art, science and monsters!  Enjoy a glass of wine as we explore topics ranging from Zombies to ZomBees.

6:00-6:45

Take a look under the microscope as we examine the behavior of insatiable fruit flies from the Scott Lab at UC Berkeley  The transgenic flies, having had a group of neurons in the brain chronically inactivated, don’t know when to stop.

Explore the monsters in your mouth.  Kiss a petri dish and come back later for an intimate look at the bacteria in your mouth.

6:45-7:30

Presenters for the evening include:

George Pfau    

Zombies, Identified

John Hafernik, PhD     

ZomBees Take Flight in the Dead of Night

Joe DeRisi, PhD and his malaria research team at UCSF/HHMI (video presentation )    

Malaria

Georgeann Sack, PhD

Monster Songs

Original monster music, written and performed live by Georgeann Sack.  Ongoing- in between presentations.

 

BAASICS, is a San Francisco based nonprofit organization dedicated to exploring contemporary topics through the lenses of art and science.

---

Who are the presenters?

George Pfau grew up in San Francisco, received a Bachelor’s Degree from New York University, and in 2010, an MFA from CCA. Pfau has worked as Instructor of Art at San Francisco University High School, and Mentor at CCA, and tutor at 826 Valencia. At CCA, he wrote a thesis entitled “Zombies, identified,”which was later developed into the essay “Feverish, Homeless, Cannibal”and published in the book Zombies in the Academy. Pfau’s artwork deals with the notion of the human body as a permeable screen, in-flux with its surroundings. Stemming from his writing, drawing, and graduate thesis work at the California College of Arts, he locates these idea within the historical and pop-cultural framework of “zombies.”He approaches “zombie”as an entry point into conversations about legibility, inbetweenness, contradiction, binaries, identity, and death. Much of the art stemming from these ideas is an investigation of how human beings recognize one another, and what assumptions occur when a person or group comes into focus.

Dr. John Hafernik is Interim Director of the Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies and Professor of Biology at San Francisco State University. He also served as President of the Board of Trustees of the California Academy of Sciences from July 2008 until June 2014. Dr. Hafernik became fascinated with insects as a young boy growing up in Texas. He moved to the Bay Area in 1970 to pursue his doctorate in entomology at UC Berkeley. Currently, he is investigating the impact of a new parasite of honey bees, which he discovered on the SF State campus, on hive health. He is co-founder of ZomBee Watch, a citizen science project that has been featured by Scientific American, Discovery Channel, KQED, and many other media outlets.

Dr. Joseph DeRisi employs an interdisciplinary approach to his work, combining genomics, bioinformatics, biochemistry, and bioengineering to study parasitic and viral infectious diseases in a wide range of organisms. Dr. DeRisi was one of the early pioneers of DNA microarray technology and whole genome expression profiling and is nationally recognized for his efforts to make this technology accessible and freely available. Today, he uses this approach to study the activity of the full range of malaria genes and has generated provocative insights in many emerging viral diseases. He is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

Dr. Georgeann Sack is a neuroscientist by day and science communicator by night. She is a postdoc at UC Berkeley, Associate Content Producer for BAASICS, and Outreach Director for the Berkeley Science Review.