Milstein Program announces spring calendar of events

The Milstein Program in Technology & Humanity has announced its calendar of events for Spring 2022, with a number of talks open to the public.

Christopher Csíkszentmihályi, associate professor of information science, will offer  a talk “Life in the Slash” at 5 p.m. Feb. 16 in 132 Goldwin Smith Hall. He is the founder of the MIT Center for Future Civic Media, the MIT Media Lab's Computing Culture group and the Rootio Project, a free, sociotechnical community radio platform.

Cindy (Hsin-Liu) Kao, assistant professor of human-centered design in the College of Human Ecology and director of the Cornell Hybrid Body Lab, will give a talk, entitled “Skin Deep: Crafting Tech onto the Body,” at 5 p.m., Feb. 23 in 230 Rockefeller Hall. The lab designs soft, wearable technologies and on-body interfaces. Her projects include DuoSkin, which uses gold metal leaf attached to the skin that can control mobile devices and display and store information. Her work has been exhibited at the Pompidou Centre (Paris), Ars Elecontrica (Linz), the Boston Museum of Fine Art and on the New York Fashion Week runway.

In his capacity as the Digital Humanities Club’s faculty advisor, Matthew Wilkens, associate professor of information science, will speak at 5 p.m. March 9 at the Abby and Howard Milstein Auditorium on "Mining for Meaning: The Novel as Data Set." Wilkens will talk about his work with literary text mining, geolocation extraction, genre detection, and the cross-pollination of critical and social-scientific methods.  He is the director of the Textual Geographies project, a co-investigator of the Text Mining the Novel project, a founding editorial board member of the Journal of Cultural Analytics and the author of "Revolution: The Event in Postwar Fiction." 

On April 15 at 5 p.m., Michael Milstein ‘11, the advisory board chair of the Milstein Program, will give a talk. Milstein is the CEO of Boylan Bottling Co. and co-founder and chairman of Grand Central Tech, a community of startup businesses and strategic partners in New York City.

James Balog, an environmentalist, photographer, filmmaker, scientist, and an A.D. White Professor-at-Large from 2020-2026 will give a talk April 19 at 5 p.m. His work focuses on the physical and human impacts of anthropogenic climate change, which he hopes will catalyze public discussion of the causes and consequences of climate change. This is the mission of the Earth Vision Institute, which he founded.

And finally, at 5 p.m. on April 20, Diane Levitt, senior director of K-12 education at Cornell Tech, will talk about computational thinking. 

All of the events will be in person for members of the Cornell community.

During the spring semester, students in the Milstein Program are also able to attend special MStudio short courses, which provide an immersive, skills-based learning experience taught by leading members of their respective industries. This semester’s offerings include an audio production course taught by Mary Lorson, member of Madder Rose and Saint Low; a documentary-style video production course taught by Deborah Heard, president of PhotoSynthesis Productions; and an improv theater course taught by Fred Brown of Ithaca Improv. 

The semester will conclude on May 6 at 5 p.m. with the Milstein Expo, a showcase for Milstein Program students’ year-long projects.