UC San Diego – Page 36

Fresh Year, Fresh Content – January 2013 Highlights

FOUNDERS’ DAY DELIVERED

To celebrate UC San Diego’s 52nd year, the campus invited six dynamic faculty members to share their inspirations for research and education with the audience at the Founders’ Symposium, part of the Founders’ Day celebration held in November.

If you couldn’t get to campus for the festive occasion, don’t worry because UCSD-TV is presenting the talks on TV and online this month.

Watch UC San Diego Founders’ Symposium.

SAN DIEGO OPERA SEASON PREMIERE!

UCSD-TV is thrilled to bring you another season of programming from San Diego Opera, which kicks off its 2013 season in January with Donizetti’s sparkling comedy “Daughter of the Regiment,” updated to the WWII era.

Get the history of the work from San Diego Opera’s Nick Reveles on “OperaTalk!,” go inside the performers’ creative process with “Stars in the Salon,” and venture behind the curtains with “Opera Spotlight” before the debut performance on January 26.

You can also catch up with previous San Diego Opera seasons at our opera website!

COASTAL COLLISION GOES OUT WITH A BANG

We finish off “The Atlantic Meets the Pacific” series this month with even more fascinating conversations with cutting-edge thinkers and researchers. Topics range from the future of wireless medicine to learning to play the guitar later in life. Watch them all — and videos from the 2011 event — at “The Atlantic Meets the Pacific” series page.

Also new in January:

Health & Medicine

Aging and Driving: A Complex Combination

Infant Care — Health Matters

Science

Ocean Acidification: Can Corals Cope?

Public Affairs

Rachel Carson’s Legacy: Finding the Wisdom and Insight for Global Environmental Citizenship

Humanities

The Evolution of Religion, Society & Consciousness with Ursula Kin — Burke Lecture

Arts & Music

Gabriel Kahane: Come On All You Ghosts — La Jolla Music Society SummerFest 2012

Larry Smarr, Gretchen Rubin Get into Health(care) & Happiness

Our presentations of “The Atlantic Meets the Pacific” forum continue into the New Year, but first we’re wrapping up 2012 with two stellar presentations from the three-day forum held at UC San Diego in October.

Premiering tonight (Dec. 17) at 9pm (and online now) is “The Human Laboratory: One Researcher’s Quest to Personalize Medicine,” a fascinating conversation between Calit2 director Larry Smarr, the subject of a recent piece in “The Atlantic,” and author Mark Bowden, who wrote the screenplay for Katherine Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” and riveting works of non-fiction like “Black Hawk Down.” In this program, Smarr and Bowden talk about Smarr’s determination to understand everything about his own body, and how that kind of knowledge will become standard in the future of healthcare.

And what better to way to complete the year than with a look at the science and philosophy of happiness with none other than Gretchen Rubin, author of the bestseller “The Happiness Project.” In “Don’t Worry, Be Happy Now: The Science and Philosophy of the Happiness Movement,” Rubin chats with James Fallows, National Correspondent for The Atlantic, about finding contentment in everyday life. That program premieres Dec. 28 at 7pm, but you can start your happy journey early by watching it online now.

Surf's up! But why?

Every summer, the California surfing community enjoys the arrival of a long, regular swell from the southwest. The origin of the swell is in the winter storms of the southern hemisphere, some in the Indian Ocean, half way around the Earth.

In the latest program from Birch Aquarium’s Perspectives on Ocean Science series, join internationally renowned Scripps professor Walter Munk to learn how World War II and measurements of Guadalupe Island led to this discovery and what it means for surfers today.

Watch “Where the Swell Begins” tonight (Dec. 12) at 8pm on UCSD-TV, or online now.

Conversations about Crowd-sourcing

It’s hard not to be inspired by our latest “The Atlantic Meets the Pacific” guests, both of whom have spearheaded crowd-sourcing endeavors that have changed the way people think of and use social networking. Tune in tonight (Dec. 10) starting at 8pm for some fascinating conversation with microlending pioneer Jessica Jackley and Change.org founder Ben Rattray.

But don’t stop there. There’s plenty more at “The Atlantic Meets the Pacific” series page.

Just a Dream and a Laptop: Microlending, the Developing World and the Future of Entrepreneurship with Jessica Jackley
Jessica Jackley describes her path to success as the co-founder and CEO of ProFounder, a pioneering crowd-funding platform for budding entrepreneurs that provides tools to access start-up capital. She also co-founded Kiva, the world’s first peer-to-peer microlending website, as she recalls in this interview with Alexis Madrigal, Senior Editor of The Atlantic.

Social Networks for Social Justice: The Power of Technology to do Good with Ben Rattray
Ben Rattray, founder of Change.org, describes to the National Journal’s Ron Brownstein how powerful this crowd-sourcing platform has become as millions of people advance local and global change through online petitions. Rattray points to the selection of Candy Crowley and Martha Raddatz to run the presidential and vice presidential debates as an example of its success, noting that 180,000 people used the site to campaign for female moderators.

Yoshimi's Battle Bridges Science and Art

A groundbreaking science fiction musical is wowing audiences at the UC San Diego-based La Jolla Playhouse. Directed by Des McAnuff, the Tony Award-winning director of Broadway musicals “Jersey Boys” and “The Who’s Tommy,” “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” is a magical tale of love and the struggle for survival set to the music of The Flaming Lips and featuring a 14-foot robot puppet, dancers in “glowing” LED costumes and stunning projections

But beyond the cutting-edge stagecraft, “Yoshimi” is a testament to the intertwined and largely unexplored relationship between science and art. In this sold-out event, leading San Diego medical researchers and La Jolla Playhouse artists, including McAnuff and Artistic Director Christopher Ashley, have a frank and fascinating discussion about the creative ground they share.

Moderated by Daniel Einhorn, medical director of Scripps Whittier Diabetes Institute, the panel also includes Gerald Joyce, professor in the departments of chemistry and molecular biology at The Scripps Research Institute, Thomas Albright, director of the Vision Center laboratory at Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and Pamela Itkin-Ansari, adjunct assistant professor at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute.

Watch “The Art in Science, The Science in Art” on UCSD-TV December 4 at 8:30pm or online now.