Event Videos

Join us for a fireside chat with Gokul Rajaram!

Gokul has served on the executive team at DoorDash since November 2019, after Doordash acquired Square’s food delivery business, Caviar. Prior to DoorDash, he worked as the Product Engineering Lead from July 2013 to October 2019 at Square, where he led several product development teams and served on Square’s executive team.

Before Square, he served as Product Director of Ads at Facebook from August 2010 to July 2013, where he helped Facebook transition its advertising business to become mobile-first. Earlier in his career, Gokul served as a Product Management Director for Google AdSense, where he helped launch the product and grow it into a substantial portion of Google’s business. Gokul has served as a Director of Coinbase since August 2020, Pinterest (PINS) since February 2020, and The Trade Desk (TTD) since May 2018.

Last month a weather driven sequence of events left millions without power for multiple days in Texas, America’s energy heartland.  The last two years have also exposed vulnerabilities in California’s power supply infrastructure, with both elective Public Safety Power Shutdowns and capacity-driven forced rolling blackouts.  Is California on a path to have a Texas sized power disaster?

Though there are important differences, there are many similarities between Texas’ power infrastructure and California’s: from wholesale market design, to high amounts of renewable generation, to the fact that both markets have experienced generation capacity shortages recently.  Furthermore, many of the trends that exist in both markets, coupled with trends in weather patterns, may exacerbate the capacity issues experienced recently.  So far California has been spared from a Texas-sized failure, but industry experts disagree as to whether California is equally vulnerable or possibly headed in that direction.

Our discussion will illuminate the key factors that led to the Texas blackout and relate those factors to how California is currently situated and where the state is expected to be in the near future.  We will also cover the various mechanisms that can be used to improve power infrastructure resiliency, e.g., revised incentives/regulations, energy storage, distributed generation, smarter grids, and demand-side management.  Tune in to hear a broad range of viewpoints on these issues from our panel of experts, moderated by an experienced industry analyst.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the goal of no more than a 2 degrees C. rise in global temperatures established by the Paris Agreement will not likely be met in a reasonable time frame.  Post-pandemic global emissions are expected to continue to rise as more fossil fuel plants, including coal, are still being planned or placed into service for the foreseeable future, while countries that are reducing emissions are missing their goals.  And while proposals for taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere are emerging, it will take decades for these to prove themselves and scale up to the levels required.  Meanwhile, deforestation, severe droughts, raging fires and more powerful hurricanes appear to be happening faster than expected.

With this as a backdrop, Dr. Keith argues that solar geoengineering may be a viable option in that it could be implemented fairly easily and at low cost, estimated at $5B per year, yet offset the impact of many decades of carbon emissions.  Research done to date by his team and international colleagues, suggests that the identified risks may prove manageable, but that much more research needs to be done to create a greater assurance that unintended consequences can be understood and controlled.

He will first review the science and technology of solar geoengineering, addressing its effectiveness in reducing climate risks. Then he will describe how solar geoengineering may create new non-climate risks and analyze their potential severity.  Finally, he will discuss how a substantial research program could further reduce risk and uncertainty.  He will then propose a case for integrating solar geoengineering into a climate policy that includes a full range of emissions cuts, major carbon removal approaches and adaptation.  In his proposal, solar geoengineering is positioned as a long-time frame but temporary bridge to buy time to get to net zero emissions and fully implement carbon removal without blowing away the 2 degrees C. goal altogether.

Come join us for lightning talks from the SETI Institute's CEO and 7 scientists working on research relevant to the search for, and understanding of, life beyond Earth.

Is there ice on mars? What can we learn from extreme environments on earth, about extraplanetary environments? How can Earth's policies get ready for potential alien contact? How do teachers and scientists do experiments in space? What will it mean for the galaxy when mining operations extend to Mars and beyond? And what role does machine learning play?

Required materials: 5 pieces of square paper / Level: Beginner

Children's awards
COVID challenge and Handwashing Challenge
Kid’s Camp: Financial Literacy/Investment Game