This site lists the topics of discussion for the David Wilson Science and Technology discussion groups at the Jenks Center in Winchester MA. We meet every second and fourth Fridays at 10:30 to noon (except August).
Please Note: this meeting will start at 9:30am ET.
On December 10th, we will continue our conversation regarding approaches to meet the growing electric energy demand when Jacopo Buongiorno of MIT’s Department Nuclear Science and Engineering joins us by Zoom. Dr. Buongiorno will speak on Nuclear Batteries: A New Way in Energy. The concept of the Nuclear Battery, a standardized, factory-fabricated, road transportable, plug-and-play micro-reactor is introduced. Nuclear Batteries have the potential to provide on-demand, carbon-free, economic, resilient and safe energy for distributed heat and electricity applications in every sector of the economy. The cost targets for Nuclear Batteries in these markets are 20-50 $/MWht (6-15 $/MMBTU) and 70-100 $/MWhe for heat and electricity, respectively. He will present a parametric study of the Nuclear Battery’s levelized cost of heat and electricity, suggesting that those cost targets are well within reach. The expected cost of heat and electricity from Nuclear Batteries is expected to depend strongly on core power rating, fuel enrichment, fuel burnup, size of the onsite staff, fabrication costs and financing. Notional examples of cheap and expensive Nuclear Battery designs are provided.
Jacopo Buongiorno is the TEPCO Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Director of Science and Technology of the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory. He teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in thermo-fluids engineering and nuclear reactor engineering. Jacopo has published 90 journal articles in the areas of reactor safety and design, two-phase flow and heat transfer, and nanofluid technology. For his research work and his teaching at MIT he won several awards, among which the ANS Outstanding Teacher Award (2019), the MIT MacVicar Faculty Fellowship (2014), the ANS Landis Young Member Engineering Achievement Award (2011), the ASME Heat Transfer Best Paper Award (2008), and the ANS Mark Mills Award (2001). Jacopo is the Director of the Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (CANES). In 2016-2018 he led the MIT study on the Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World. Jacopo is a consultant for the nuclear industry in the area of reactor thermal-hydraulics, and a member of the Accrediting Board of the National Academy of Nuclear Training. He is also a member of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) Space Working Group, a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society (including service on its Special Committee on Fukushima in 2011-2012), a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, past member of the Naval Studies Board (2017-2019), and a participant in the Defense Science Study Group (2014-2015).
Get charged up and join us to hear Dr. Quinn Horn on battery technology!
Abstract:
Prior to Alessandro Volta’s invention of the battery in 1799, the only type of electricity known to science was what we now call static electricity. The battery was the first source of reliable direct current electricity, and Volta’s invention ushered in a massive wave of scientific and technical advancements in the 19th century. World changing technologies like the telegraph, the electric motor and the economical extraction of aluminum metal from ore were all enabled by the battery. Fast forward to the end of the 20th century and we see an analogous impact from the commercial introduction of the lithium-ion battery in 1991. We now drive electric vehicles, carry the equivalent of a super computer in our pockets and light our homes at night with the stored energy of the sun, all thanks to lithium-ion batteries. However, despite the fact that for nearly two centuries battery R&D and manufacturing were centered in the US and Europe, the lithium-ion battery was commercialized in a country that as of the late 20th century had virtually no experience with battery technology: Japan. In this presentation we will explore the history of the development of the lithium-ion battery and how geopolitical events, industrial accidents, and a few questionable corporate decisions, led to the rise of Japanese dominance in battery technology.
Bio:
Dr. Quinn Horn obtained his PhD in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from Michigan Technological University. He led the Microscopy and Materials Group at Energizer/Eveready Battery Company prior to joining Exponent, Inc in 2004. At Exponent, Dr. Horn consults on battery technology issues related to performance, reliability, safety and intellectual property.
On October 22nd, we will continue our conversation regarding energy conversion when Kerry Emanuel of MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences joins us by Zoom. Kerry is known for his views as a climate scientist for nuclear energy. His essay on Nuclear Salvation from the 50th Anniversary issue of The Bridge is given in the following link:
Bob Lewis will join us again, this time to talk about Henry Knox and George Washington’s Artillery Logistics. Henry Knox was George Washington's Chief of Artillery. When General George Washington took command of the Continental Army in Cambridge July 2, 1775, the Army needed a victory. The militias that had responded to the alarm of Paul Revere and others had forced the retreat of the British Regulars from Concord to Boston, and now surrounded the British army in Boston. Washington needed cannons to drive the British out of Boston. Henry Knox had come to Washington’s attention during an inspection of fortifications designed by Knox near Roxbury. Washington consulted Knox for advice in November 1775 on the acquisition of artillery to drive the British out of Boston. Knox proposed a plan to transport the cannons captured at Fort Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys to the siege lines around Boston. Washington endorsed the plan and Henry Knox began the 300 mile trek to Fort Ticonderoga in November 1775. This is the story of that incredible and successful effort in the dead of the winter of 1775 to haul 120,000 pounds of cannons down Lake George and the Hudson River, and then over the Berkshires to Cambridge and George Washington.
Retired Navy Captain and Navy pilot Bob Lewis spent seven years with the U.S. Navy as an Aircraft carrier-based Patrol Plane Commander, serving on the aircraft carriers WASP, INTREPID, and SARATOGA. As a Naval Reserve officer, he flew P-2s and P-3s and commanded his Naval Reserve unit. In his 30 years as an engineer with the MITRE Corporation, he spent 7 years in Germany at Headquarters, US Army Europe, helping to develop joint communication systems to integrate the Army, Air Force and Marines. He later returned to Germany to lead the communications engineering effort for an alternate command post in Romania. Bob is a gifted narrator and story teller and has met with us earlier this year to talk about The Pursuit of the Battleship Bismarck and the efforts of Norwegian commandos in Preventing Hitler From Building the Atomic Bomb.
We will continue to discuss energy generation and storage at our September 24th meeting. At this meeting we will begin (a) with conversation associated with the presentation by Dan Nocera on solar energy, and then (b) review the essays from the 50th Anniversary issue of The Bridge by Sara Kurtz on Accelerating the Growth of Solar Energy, and Rebecca Saive on Entering the Solar Era: The Next 50 years of Energy Generation. John Brown and I will moderate the discussion. The latter may be found on pages 98-101 and 134-137, respectively, of the Anniversary issue or in the following links:
Our first meeting of the Fall is scheduled for September 10th: Dan Nocera of Harvard University will speak on Transforming Society to a Solar Powered World. The global energy challenge is of wo worlds: a world with a large energy infrastructure already in place (the legacy world) and a world with little to no energy infrastructure (the nonlegacy world). Consequently, in addressing the energy challenge, research must be cognizant of these two different energy worlds as they give rise to different targets. In the legacy world, the fastest path to implementing renewable energy is to integrate discovery with the established infrastructure. This talk will touch on the creation of the coordination chemistry flow battery, which allows for massive grid storage. The research path from bench to large scale manufacturing will be presented. On the other end of the spectrum is the non-legacy world. As will be shown, it is the non-legacy world that will drive future global energy need. Thus, this is the most important target for renewable energy to mitigate global carbon emissions. Two inventions will be presented: Artificial Leaf and the Bionic Leaf. These two inventions rely only sunlight, air and water to create distributed and renewable systems to produce fuel and food within a sustainable cycle for the biogenic elements of C, N and P. These discoveries are particularly useful to the poor of the world, where large infrastructures for fuel and food production are not tenable.
Daniel G. Nocera is the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy at Harvard University. He moved to Harvard in 2013 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and was Director of the Solar Revolutions Project and Director of the Solar Frontiers Center at MIT. Nocera is recognized for his discoveries in renewable energy, originating new paradigms that have defined the field of solar energy conversion and storage. Nocera created the field of proton coupled electron transfer (PCET) at a mechanistic level by making the first measurement that allowed an electron and proton to be timed. On this experimental foundation, he provided the first PCET theory. Within this framework, he is the inventor of the Artificial Leaf and the Bionic Leaf, discoveries set the stage for the large-scale deployment of distributed solar energy for fuels and food production. Nocera has been awarded the Leigh Ann Conn Prize for Renewable Energy, Eni Prize, IAPS Award, Burghausen Prize, Elizabeth Wood Award and the United Nation’s Science and Technology Award for his discoveries in renewable energy. On this topic, he has also received the received the Inorganic Chemistry, Harrison Howe, Remsen and Kosolapoff Awards from the American Chemical Society. He has received honorary degrees from Harvard University, Michigan State University and the University of Crete. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Indian Academy of Sciences, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was named as 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time Magazine and was 11th on the New Statesman’s list on the same topic. He is a frequent guest on TV, radio and is regularly featured in print. His latest feature in Leonardo DiCaprio’s film, “Ice on Fire” premiered at Cannes Film Festival in May 2019 and was released internationally in June 2019. Nocera has supervised 168 Ph.D. graduate and postdoctoral students, 73 of which have assumed faculty positions, published over 500 papers, given over 1100 invited talks and 133 named lectureships. Nocera founded Sun Catalytix, a company committed to developing energy storage for the wide-spread implementation of renewable energy. His advanced technologies in energy storage are now being commercialized and implemented by the Lockheed Martin, the largest engineering company in the world. A second company, Kula Bio, is focused on the development of renewable and distributed crop production and land restoration by replacing the biogenic elements from air (C, N) and wastewater (P).
Eddie Robins will speak on The Past, Present, and Future of Energy Production: A Civilizational Perspective. Humans have existed on the Earth in their current form for perhaps a half-million years, but it has been only in the past eight thousand years or so that civilizations have arisen and flourished. This is no coincidence. In these latter years, the world has exhibited an unusual climate along with an unprecedented stability, enabling relatively easy and consistent access to resources such as wood, water, oil, gas, metals, animal species to both work our fields and machines and provide fats to light homes and cook our food. Relatively reliable wind patterns have enabled ships to use wind power and navigate across oceans to colonize distant continents and islands. This use of wind energy for transportation is really an example of the more general case: Energy production is geared to service applications that humans demand. Those applications are changing, part of it being driven by the changing climate and its related issues, but also by the kinds of future demands that are evolving. Technology advancement is making the production and use of energy cheaper and more efficient, and new horizons are opening up, including potentially space travel and off-world colonization. We will explore the symbiotic connection of energy and its sources to its utilization, how it was in the past, how it is today, and, finally, how energy's future is being shaped and readied for the world of tomorrow.
Dr. Eddie Robins has had a forty-year career in scientific and technological roles across a number of industries and within academic institutions, as well as joint academic-industry collaborations. His academic pursuits have included the fields of atomic physics, nuclear fusion, surface/interface and semiconductor physics, software and algorithm development, complex systems & computer simulations, medical devices, telecommunications, and advanced data storage systems. He has worn a number of hats including teacher and researcher at the University level, industry scientist, R&D manager, consultant to large government and corporate organizations in technical and strategic planning roles, as well as advised and participated in a number of technological start-ups. His industry roles have spanned from simple Scientist to VP and Chief Scientist and industry consultant. At EMC (which is now part of DELL), his final sojourn, he served as a Reliability and Complex System Simulation Engineer and Individual Contributor, as well as internal consultant. He has authored many scientific, technical and industry studies, and is author of several patents ranging from Bayesian decision analysis, to reliability and data management in data storage systems. He received his bachelor degree in physics from Imperial College. London (1971), a Masters from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST - now part of the Victoria University of Manchester, UK) in 1973, and a Ph.D. (1977) from the same institution.
A Piece of Personal Philosophy: Dr. Robins considers science as a way of thinking that enables us to understand the world as best we can, and accept it for what it is, so we can make decisions as well as we can. He is not unaware of the limitations of its approach, but that being said, truth is truth: Wanting it to be different does not change the reality. Unfortunately - or fortunately - we do not have that power, but we can choose how we take it, and what we do with it.
Friday, June 11th, 10:30 am:The Future of Weather Forecasting
Our next meeting is scheduled for June 11, when AccuWeather Founder and CEO Dr. Joel Myers will speak with us on the topic of his essay from The Bridge entitled “The Future of Weather Forecasting.” Dr. Myers will first review the evolution of weather forecasting and how it has accelerated in fewer than 60 years from vague, general two-day forecasts to detailed, highly accurate, weather forecasts for pinpointed locations, extending weeks into the future. He will also highlight the roles of the three key sectors of The Great American Weather Enterprise – government, academia and commercial companies – and the quantum leaps achieved in saving tens of thousands of lives and preventing hundreds of billions of dollars in property damage as well as significant savings to business, industry and people in the U.S. and worldwide. As we will learn, twin pillars of the Enterprise’s success stand on the establishment of private-public-academic partnerships as well as on the innovations of the commercial weather sector due to a heady mix of ingenuity, creativity, vision and guts. The game-changing results: weather forecasts delivered with greater accuracy and detail, superior communications and displays and an increasing focus on weather’s impact to people and businesses, enabling them to make better decisions. However, America’s modern weather forecasting history packs its share of drama. Dr. Myers will trace this epic tale from its WWII origins, when government dominated the field, to the headwinds AccuWeather faced from government, parts of academia and business competitors, to hard-fought strategic alliances among the three sectors that have enabled the U.S. to produce the best weather forecasting services in the world.
Dr. Joel N. Myers is recognized as “the father of commercial meteorology,” the man who transformed weather into an industry and led the applications of weather forecasts to far-reaching societal and commercial benefit. Dr. Myers received three degrees from Penn State, taught its advanced forecasting class for 21 years, and served as a Penn State Trustee for 40 years. While a graduate student at Penn State in 1962, Dr. Myers started AccuWeather at his kitchen table.SP Over the nearly six decades since, he has guided AccuWeather through continuous innovation and growth to where it is today – the world’s most used and respected global weather information source. Every day over 1.5 billion people worldwide, more than half of the Fortune 500 companies, and thousands of other businesses and government agencies globally rely on AccuWeather’s forecasts and warnings to help them plan their lives, protect their businesses, and get more value from their day.
On May 28th we will consider essays from the 50th Anniversary issue of The Bridge by MIT’s Rod Brooks on The Future of Artificial Intelligence and by Bob Brown and Ken Lutchen on Organizing Academic Engineering for Leading in an Entangled World.
Bob Brown is the President of Boston University and a former resident of Winchester.
Retired Navy Captain and Navy pilot Bob Lewis returns to the Wilson Forum on May 14th, this time to speak about The Hunt for the German Battleship Bismarck.
Bob spent seven years with the U.S. Navy as an Aircraft-carrier- based Patrol Plane Commander, serving on the aircraft carriers WASP, INTREPID, and SARATOGA. As a Naval Reserve officer, he flew P-2s and P-3s and commanded his Naval Reserve unit. In his 30 years as an engineer with the MITRE Corporation, he spent 7 years in Germany at Headquarters, US Army Europe, helping to develop joint communication systems to integrate the Army, Air Force and Marines. He later returned to Germany to lead the communications engineering effort for an alternate command post in Romania.
On April 9th, our discussion will focus on two essays:
(1) Joe Allen and John Macomber on Healthy Buildings. Both writers are faculty members at Harvard, Joe in the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and John in the Harvard Business School. John is the former Chairman and CEO of the George B.H. Macomber Company, a large regional general contractor, and
(2) Norm Augustine on Bringing Space Down to Earth. Norm was the Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin. These essays are found on pages 11-17 of the 50th Anniversary Issue of The Bridge..
My Life With Technology, Past, Present, And Future presented by Tim Cumings
Presentation Outline: I. Introduction II. Braille, the door to literacy III. More high-tech and low-tech ways to access printed material IV. Orientation and mobility V. Personal note-taking from a blindness perspective VI. Computers, DOS and beyond VII. The smart phone revolution
Bio: I grew up in Winchester, graduated from Boston University in 1985 with a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism, and completed my master's degree in theology in 1989.
In 1990 I joined the Visually Impaired Blind Users Group, part of the Boston Computer Society. I later served as president and am currently the webmaster. I worked for twenty years as a customer service representative at Eversource.
Since 2014 I have worked at Perkins School for the Blind as an assistive technology trainer and currently as a customer service representative.
In 2015 I joined Blind Information Technology Specialists, an affiliate of the American Council Of The Blind, served as a board member, and chair the presentations committee.
In my spare time I enjoy karaoke and digital audio editing.
The presentation was recorded with Tim's permission.
Our next meeting is scheduled for March 12th: Dan Metlay will speak with us on the topic of his essay from The NAE 50th Anniversary Issue of The Bridge – A New Categorical Imperative. The central theme of Dan’s talk is the proposition that future technological innovations almost certainly will differ from past and current ones; they will have a broader reach, intensify social complexity, and deliver more ambiguous and opaque consequences. Consequently democratic control of them will be increasingly problematic. The tests will be twofold: acquiring epistemic insights and sustaining institutional constancy. Dan’s essay begins on page 107 of the anniversary volume (available at https://www.nae.edu/244832/The-Bridge-50th-Anniversary-Issue). Please review in advance of our meeting and come prepared for a full conversation.
bio: Dr. Daniel Metlay recently retired after 24‐years of service on the senior professional staff of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. Prior to joining the NWTRB, he taught organizational theory and public policy in the political science departments of Indiana University, Bloomington, and at MIT. As a Senior Visiting Scholar at the International Institute for Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University and as a Senior Fellow at the B. John Garrick Institute for Risk Sciences at UCLA, he is now working on a book dealing with the institutional and technical challenges of developing a deep‐mined, geologic repository for high‐activity radioactive waste.
Preventing Hitler From Building the Atomic Bomb Presented by Bob Lewis
Video of Bob's talk (February 2020) at the Lexington Veterans Association https://youtu.be/RwC_jrYPmYQ?t=828 - the presentation begins at 13:48 in the recording.
Summary:
As early as the 1930’s, German scientists were studying nuclear fission. Heavy water, a key component in the development of a sustained nuclear reaction, was only produced in the quantities required at the massive Vemork hydroelectric plant in the mountains of Norway. When war broke out and Germany invaded and occupied Norway, the Allies knew they had to deny the Germans access to this key resource.
On Friday, February 26, Bob Lewis, retired Navy Captain and Navy pilot, will describe one of the most important acts of sabotage in World War II, the actions of small teams of Norwegian Commandos who survived months in a snowy wilderness to execute two successful missions that denied Hitler’s scientists the means to build an atomic bomb.
After two failed attempts, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) trained and sent a third team of Norwegian Commandos to destroy the facility at Vemork. Armed with little more than parachutes, skis, light weapons, and explosives, they eluded on skis a huge Nazi manhunt. On February 27, 1943, they blew up a major portion of the heavy water production cells. On February 20, 1944, Norwegian Commandos sank a ferry carrying barrels of heavy water to the Third Reich, effectively ending Hitler’s quest for the bomb.
Bio:
Navy Captain Bob Lewis spent seven years with the U.S. Navy as an Aircraft-carrier- based Patrol Plane Commander, serving on the aircraft carriers WASP, INTREPID, and SARATOGA. As a Naval Reserve officer, he flew P-2s and P-3s and commanded his Naval Reserve unit. In his 30 years as an engineer with the MITRE Corporation, he spent 7 years in Germany at Headquarters, US Army Europe, helping to develop joint communication systems to integrate the Army, Air Force and Marines. He later returned to Germany to lead the communications engineering effort for an alternate command post in Romania.
Our next meeting is scheduled for February 12, 2021. At this meeting, our focus will be on the 50th Anniversary issue of The Bridge. In particular, our discussion will consider the NAE President’s Perspective on Unintended Consequences and the Keynote essay on Temptations of Technocracy in the Century of Engineering. Please read these short pieces and come prepared for conversation moderated by Ron Latanision.
Our first program of the new year will be on Friday, Jan.8, at 10:30 am and will feature Richard Adler who will speak on the application of artificial intelligence to systems such as rockets, power plants, computer networks, and intensive care units, and specifically his work in applying artificial intelligence technology to help automate operations support of the Launch Processing System for NASA’s Space Station fleet, as well as his other work in software.
Richard is a management consultant, software architect, start-up executive, and author. Early in his career, Rich designed and built artificial intelligence applications and tools for distributed computing. More recently, he developed tools and solutions to improve decision-making for problems including competitive marketing, counter-terrorism strategy, and enabling smooth organizational change. Rich took a double major in philosophy and physics at University of Michigan, earned an MS in Physics at University of Illinois at Urbana, and a PhD in the Philosophy of Physics from the University of Minnesota. He has published on topics including causation, knowledge management, component software, expert systems, distributed computing, and counter-terrorism strategies. He recently published the book Bending the Law of Unintended Consequences: A Test-Drive Method for Critical Decision-Making in Organizations (Springer, 2020).
