Inspiring People: Stories of Innovation and Service

Hipparchus of Nicaea (c. 190 – c. 120 BCE) is considered the greatest ancient astronomical observer. The lost Star Catalogue of Hipparchus is the earliest known attempt to record accurate coordinates of many celestial objects, observable with the naked eye. However, evidence for the contents of Hipparchus' Star Catalogue has been scarce.

Four years ago, members of our speaker's multidisciplinary team performed multispectral imaging of the ancient Greek palimpsest known as the Codex Climaci Rescriptus (CCR), revealing new evidence for Hipparchus' Star Catalogue. These recent breakthrough findings are exciting, but there are about 11 folios in the CCR, and significant sections had yet to be uncovered. In February the team employed X-ray fluorescence imaging at the Stanford synchrotron combined with advanced data analysis to generate high-resolution maps of the missing sections of the overwritten Hipparchus Star Catalogue. Uwe will describe the experiment and show some of the astonishing new findings leading to a better understanding of one of the most influential astronomers of antiquity.

Our speaker, Uwe Bergmann, got his PhD in Physics from Stony Brook University and is the Martin L. Perl Professor in Ultrafast X-ray Science in the Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research activities focus on the development and application of novel synchrotron and X-ray laser techniques. His scientific interests include studies of the structure of water and aqueous solution, active centers in metalloproteins with focus on photosynthetic splitting of water, hydrocarbons and fossil fuels, functional 2D materials and magnetic membranes, and imaging of ancient materials and fossils. Bergmann has done his graduate research at the National Synchrotron Light Source and since worked at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, the Linac Coherent Light Source, and at the Stanford PULSE Institute at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

For More Info: https://bergmann.physics.wisc.edu/

At least a billion people around the world need glasses they cannot get, not because the technology is complicated, but because the global eyewear supply chain was never designed to reach them.

GoodVision Executive Director Matt Gianino and GoodVision founder and inventor Martin Aufmuth trace the cost, complexity, and carbon footprint of how glasses are made and sold today, then show how a portable, electricity-free bending machine and $1 in materials are serving the communities a $180 billion industry has left behind.

Martin is a mathematics and physics teacher from Erlangen, Germany, who has relied on glasses since childhood. In 2010, reading Paul Polak's book "Out of Poverty," he was struck by the argument that a pair of affordable glasses could be one of the most transformative inventions for people living in poverty, and spent two years experimenting in his basement until he had developed both a spring steel eyeglass frame and the hand-powered bending machine to produce it. In 2012, he loaded the machine onto a bicycle and ran the first GoodVision eye camps in Uganda. What began in a basement in Erlangen now operates in 11 countries, with more than 1 million pairs of glasses delivered to communities that the conventional eyewear supply chain was never designed to reach.

Matt is the Executive Director of GoodVision USA, the American nonprofit arm of GoodVision International. He has more than 20 years of nonprofit leadership experience across the United States and internationally, and is guided by the conviction that where we are born should not limit what we are able to become. His approach centers on building systems that communities can lead themselves, rather than programs that depend on outside intervention.

At GoodVision USA, he is building the community of donors, partners, and advocates whose support will scale this work to every community around the world that needs it.

To learn more, go to:

https://goodvisionusa.org/

To watch how GoodVision's glasses are made, go to:

https://youtu.be/_SjRqCmx6gA?si=CU4RfuRKR_nKHywP

Tiffany Loeffler, is the Founder and Executive Director of The Alliance: Defending the Cause of Kids & Families, a united movement of more than 100 agencies, nonprofits, and churches serving vulnerable children and families throughout the Greater Sacramento Area.

Since 2010, Tiffany has been a dedicated advocate for at-risk youth and is deeply passionate about collaboration, firmly believing that meaningful partnerships are the key to preventing and healing childhood trauma.

Tiffany and her husband, Matt, are parents to three children, two of whom were adopted from Haiti in 2017 following a remarkable six-and-a-half-year international adoption journey. In addition to her nonprofit leadership, Tiffany has worked in the healthcare field since 2007.

She holds a degree in biology and a Doctorate in Physical Therapy and continues to treat patients in private practice, bringing the same compassion and commitment to care that defines her leadership in the nonprofit sector.

Leveraging Collaboration to Prevent & Heal Childhood Trauma explores how meaningful, cross-sector partnerships can transform outcomes for vulnerable children and families.

This presentation highlights the innovative model of The Alliance, which unites and mobilizes more than 100 organizations across the Greater Sacramento region to work toward a shared vision of prevention, early intervention, and healing. Attendees will gain insight into how coordinated efforts spanning nonprofits, schools, service providers, and community leaders can reduce duplication, close service gaps, and create a more responsive and compassionate system of care.

This talk also offers an honest look at the challenges that come with collaboration, including aligning priorities, building trust, and navigating complex systems. Through real-world examples and lessons learned, participants will better understand what it takes to move from siloed efforts to true partnership, and why the impact is worth it. Ultimately, this presentation demonstrates that while collaboration is not always easy, it is one of the most powerful tools we have to prevent and heal childhood trauma at scale.

To learn more, go to:

The Alliance website: https://www.defendingthecause.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheAllianceDTC
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thealliance_dtc/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alliance-defending-the-cause-of-kids-and-families-bb1497228/

Dr. Jaime Banks: Millions of people now use artificial intelligence for emotional connection, treating them as confidants, collaborators, friends, or romantic partners.

Public discourse is dominated by dystopian narratives and alarmist headlines about these AI companions, while the scientific data about user experiences paints a different picture. In this presentation, Dr. Jaime Banks will examine how "moral panics" may be distorting our understanding of AI companionship. Acknowledging the imbalanced public narratives, we will cover what current science actually suggests about these relationships' positive and negative impacts and where there are open questions about how AI can meaningfully advance humans' wellbeing.

Our speaker, Jaime Banks (Ph.D., Colorado State University), is the Katchmar-Wilhelm Endowed Professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and Director of the iSchool’s LinkLab.

Her research is animated by questions of human-technology relations, especially those with AI, social robots, and videogame avatars. Her current work, funded by the NSF and Army Research Office, focuses on the dynamics of realizing benefits from AI companionship and on how humans judge AI when it behaves badly.

To see Dr. Banks' recent publications, go to:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=e2LNDdIAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate

Syracuse U iSchool's 'Infoversity' podcast with Dr. Banks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scbERi7PJFQ

Imagine being unable to ride your bike, what would you miss the most? Would you miss feeling the wind in your hair? When we ask people what they associate riding a bike with, they all say the same word…

Ole is the founder of Cycling Without Age and an Ashoka Fellow, and Pernille is a cycling activist.

To learn more, go to:

Website: https://cyclingwithoutage.org/

Finn Larsen paradise is right here on earth: https://vimeo.com/134717099

Ice fishing on three wheels: https://youtu.be/hUwzykY_QJM

The right to relate, the story behind Cycling Without Age:

The world faces a problem of accelerating water scarcity combined with the considerable limitations of conventional coastal desalination.

The Norwegian company Flocean, backed by strong US partners such as Xylem and Burnt Island Ventures, introduces a new approach to seawater desalination designed for resilient, low-impact, and cost-competitive drinking water supply.

To the rescue is a subsea desalination system: operating at 400–600 meters depth where seawater is naturally clean, cold, and already pressurized. By leveraging these conditions, the system cuts energy use by ~30–50% versus conventional sea water reverse osmosis, reduces pre-treatment needs and coastal land requirements, and avoids chemicals and concentrated brine discharge. This presentation covers the path to scale—standardized, modular plants delivered as ""water-as-a-service,"" including the first commercial deployment, Flocean One, in the second quarter of 2026.

Our speaker, Alexander Fuglesang, is an ocean technology entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Flocean, a Norwegian company developing subsea desalination systems that turn deep ocean water into drinking water. He holds a business degree from the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) and previously worked as a venture capitalist in London.

Raised around advanced pumping systems and a large industrial workshop, he developed a deep understanding of rotating machinery. His connection to the ocean is equally deep: he has training in marine biology, has sailed across the Atlantic, and is an active seaplane pilot and scuba diver.

To learn more, go to:

https://flocean.green

Grain of Hope is an initiative started by six people in rural Australia to ship 500 tons of wheat to Sudan in response to the hunger crisis there.

If successful, it will feed thousands of people and test a powerful idea - that progress doesn’t have to begin with scale or big institutions. Sometimes it can begin quietly, with a handful of ordinary people who refuse to look away.

Both guests are from Leeton, a small rural town in the heart of the Riverina on Wiradjuri Country, about five hours west of Sydney.

They are part of the six-person founding team behind Grain of Hope, which is sending 500 tons of Australian wheat to Sudan in response to the global hunger crisis.

Rob Houghton is a third-generation irrigator, and his property produces chickpeas, popcorn, cereal crops and cotton.

Ken Dachi is the Multicultural Affairs Advisor at Leeton Shire Council where he stewards settlement programs for refugees and migrants. He’s previously worked in international development and is originally from Kenya.

To learn more, go to:

https://fixthenews.com/p/grain-of-hope

To donate to the cause, go to:

https://myriadaustralia.org/services/donate/grain-of-hope/

#hunger #Sudan

The American Cave Conservation Association (ACCA) moved from Richmond, Virginia to the tiny hamlet of Horse Cave, Kentucky in 1986, with the goal of restoring Hidden River Cave and building a national cave education center. At the time, Hidden River Cave was considered the most polluted cave in America.

ACCA President David Foster will discuss the challenges of taking on a major environmental cleanup and building an educational facility in rural Kentucky. The project involved raising millions of dollars over several decades and negotiating the ups and downs of local politics, as well as the challenges of surviving and getting the job done in a low-income community.

David Foster is the President/CEO of the American Cave Conservation Association, and has worked with the ACCA since 1984. He helped pioneer the development of bat gates, which are protecting federally-endangered Gray bats, Indiana bats, and Big-eared bats at hundreds of cave sites across the U.S. He designed cave management training programs for federal and private land owners, developed widely used education programs and materials, and has cleaned up dumpsites in cave areas throughout Kentucky.

David is best known for his work in restoring Kentucky's Hidden River Cave and solving the waste treatment problems that had plagued the cave for decades. Dave directed the planning and development of the American Cave and Karst Center, a national cave education facility which includes the American Cave Museum and the restored Hidden River Cave in downtown Horse Cave. The cave restoration has been featured in Reader's Digest and the New York Times, and is considered one of the best cave restoration success stories in the world.

To learn more, go to:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hiddenrivercave

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenrivercave

"In this talk, District Governor Geeta Kadambi speaks to what matters about the work of Rotary. Our district includes 63 clubs, and eleven are more than a century old.

The world changes, and yet Rotary keeps building communities, finding solutions, and training leaders, all under the banner of the Rotary motto, Service Above Self.

As people of service, Geeta encourages us not simply to have an impact with our service, but also to make the stories of this service all the more visible to people locally and globally. Invisibility cannot be a strategy for the future; people want to belong and know that their contributions matter.

So we are challenged to know what we care about and what problems we would like to solve. This is the conversation we can have with each other and all those seeking meaning in how they use their time.

For the bio here, we'll do something a bit unusual with this recording, and bring in Aggie Freeman, one of our newest members (though not new to Rotary) to share her story of knowing Geeta:

"It is truly my pleasure—and on a personal level, a very special privilege—to introduce our 2026–2027 District Governor, Dr. Geeta Kadambi, at today's e-Club zoom meeting.

"Geeta and I share a Rotary connection that goes back more than a decade. Geeta joined the Niles Rotary Club of Fremont in 2015, just one month before I did. That is where we first met and began our Rotary journeys. It makes today's opportunity to introduce her as our District Governor especially meaningful to me.

"Geeta's Rotary journey since then has been remarkable. She went on to become Charter President of the Rotary Club of Fremont Bridge and has served District 5170 in numerous leadership roles, including District International Service Chair, District Membership Co-Chair, and Area/Assistant Governor. She chaired the Avenues of Service event in 2023 and was recognized that same year as District 5170 Rotarian of the Year.

International service has been an important part of Geeta's Rotary life. Her areas of particular interest include disease prevention, education, clean water, and preventable blindness, and she has participated in 11 Rotary Global Grants around the world.

Can a city be sexist? Definitely.

For decades, urban design policies have overlooked the needs of women and other marginal groups.

The French city of Nantes is trailblazing efforts to make itself a "non-sexist" city, from redesigning public spaces like school playgrounds and installing breastfeeding stations, renaming streets after women, reallocating spending and inaugurating France’s leading center to counter gender-based violence.

Our speaker, solutions journalism reporter Peter Yeung, recently visited Nantes to see how efforts were progressing and to what extent other cities can learn from it.

Peter Yeung is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Paris, France, who covers a broad range of beats including climate, global health, migration, human rights, biodiversity, Indigenous cultures, and cities, often through a critical, solutions-orientated lens. He specializes in on-the-ground reporting about under-covered issues involving and giving a voice to the world’s most marginalized groups.

Peter has worked and written for a number of leading media outlets including The Guardian, National Geographic, The BBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, The LA Times, Reuters, The Financial Times, Wired, CNN, The Atlantic, and Bloomberg.

To learn more, go to:

https://reasonstobecheerful.world/nantes-france-non-sexist-city/

https://www.peter-yeung.com/