To keep keeping you on your toes, American Scientist will host Pizza Lunch on a Wednesday again this month, rather than on a Tuesday. And it promises to be another good one.

Come hear Anne Pusey, chair of evolutionary anthropology and a James B. Duke professor at Duke, speak at noon Wed., Feb 23 at Sigma Xi. Her talk: Friends or Foes: Social Relationships Among Female Chimpanzees. Pusey has studied competition, cooperation and social bonds in multiple species. Most of her work focuses on our close evolutionary cousins, the chimpanzees. Early in her career, Pusey observed juvenile and adolescent development under the direction of Jane Goodall at Tanzania’s Gombe Stream Reserve. She still has ties. Her research team maintains and digitizes data collected at Gombe, where Goodall started observing chimpanzees more than 50 years ago.

Thanks to a grant from the N.C. Biotechnology Center, American Scientist Pizza Lunch is free and open to science journalists and science communicators of all stripes. Feel free to forward this message to anyone who might want to attend. RSVPs are required (for the slice count) to cclabby@amsci.org

Directions to Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society in RTP, are here: http://www.sigmaxi.org/about/center/directions.shtml

Our next pizza lunch features Alper Bozkurt, an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University.

He makes “biobots” — cockroaches and trained dogs wirelessly guided by microsystems that provide neural stimulation and physiological monitoring. The result is a “cyber-physical working animal.”

Bionic-equipped trained dogs and untrained insects.

Noon, Thursday, Sept. 17

At the Frontier in RTP Park Center (across NC-54 from the former location at Sigma Xi) 800 Park Offices Dr., Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

CYBER-ENABLED BIONIC ORGANISMS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SENSING AND SEARCH-AND-RESCUE

Abstract:

The present day technology falls short in offering autonomous mobile robots that can function effectively and efficiently under unknown and dynamic environmental conditions. Insects and canines, on the other hand, exhibit an unmatched ability to navigate through a wide variety of environments and overcome perturbations by successfully maintaining control and stability. In this talk, Dr. Alper Bozkurt will present how microsystems based neural stimulation and physiological monitoring systems are used to wirelessly navigate cockroaches and train dogs to enable cyber-physical working animals. These biobots can potentially assist humans in environmental sensing and search-and-rescue applications to pinpoint hazardous material or to find earthquake victims. This is one of the on-going efforts under Integrated Bionic MicroSystems Laboratory (iBionicS Lab) which has a vision to introduce conceptually novel neural engineering methodologies and systems to interface artificial systems with biological organisms towards the next generation bionic cyber-physical systems. Such cyber-physical systems would be the building blocks of a new era where everything is connected to each other through the Internet of Things.

Biography:

Alper Bozkurt is currently an Assistant Professor in Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University. He received a doctorate degree from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY (advisor: Prof. Amit Lal) and master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Bozkurt is the founder and the director of Integrated Bionic MicroSystems Laboratory at NC State where his current research interests include development of microscale sensors, actuators and methodologies to unlock the mysteries of biological systems with an aim of engineering these systems directly or developing new engineering approaches by learning from these. These cell level and organism level biological systems include metamorphic sensory neurons, developing motoneurons, Madagascar hissing cockroaches, Carolina sphinx moths, canines, lemurs and humans. His recent research achievements with biobots were covered by several media agencies including BBC, CNN, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Science Channel, Newsweek and Reuters. In parallel to his studies, he also worked as an official consultant for the Disney movie “G-Force” produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and participated to Smart America Challenge organized by the White House Presidential Innovation Fellows. Dr. Bozkurt is a recipient of the Calhoun Fellowship from Drexel University, Donald Kerr Award at Cornell University, Chancellor’s Innovation Award and William F. Lane Outstanding Teacher Award at North Carolina State University and the best paper award from The US Government Microcircuit Applications & Critical Technology Conference and IEEE Body Sensor Networks Conference. Dr. Bozkurt is also the testbed leader under The National Science Foundation Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Advanced Self-Powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST).

Magnificent Saturn, as seen by the late Cassini spacecraft. (NASA-JPL)

Earth is the best studied planetary body in the Solar System, but it’s by no means the only one that’s interesting. From roiling clouds of sulfuric acid on Venus, to jets of organic-rich water at Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and the frozen wastes of Pluto, recent spacecraft missions have returned fascinating new insights into the diverse array of our neighboring planets and moons. In this talk, we’ll take just a glimpse at the rich tapestry of processes, landforms, and phenomena that shape the bodies of the Solar System, and how these new insights tell us more about our own world.

Noon, Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2017

The Frontier, 800 Park Offices Drive in RTP

Speaker: Paul Byrne is a planetary geologist who cut his (professional) teeth on the giant volcanoes on Mars. He was involved with NASA’s mission to Mercury, and has since studied worlds across the Solar System. A professor of planetary science at North Carolina State University, Paul now leads the Planetary Research Group there to expand our knowledge of Earth to other planets, and vice versa.

Please RSVP on EventBrite – https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-tour-of-solar-system-geology-tickets-37735738610