Stanford Radio

Guest Ted Lempert, a former member of the California State Assembly, discusses key ways parents and others can build coalitions that support children’s health, education, and welfare.

Originally aired on November 20, 2021, on SiriusXM.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E165 | Chelsea Finn: How to make artificial intelligence more meta

An expert on AI and robotics says that the latest trend in her field is teaching AI to look inward to improve itself.

In one of computer science’s more meta moments, professor Chelsea Finn created an AI algorithm to evaluate the coding projects of her students. The AI model reads and analyzes code, spot flaws and gives feedback to the students. Computers learning about learning—it’s so meta that Finn calls it “meta learning.” Finn says the field should forgo training AI for highly specific tasks in favor of training it to look at a diversity of problems to divine the common structure among those problems. The result is AI able to see a problem it has not encountered before and call upon all that previous experience to solve it. This new-look AI can adapt to new courses, often enrolling thousands of students at a time, where individual instructor feedback would be prohibitive. Emboldened by results in class, Finn is now applying her breadth-over-specificity approach to her other area of focus, robotics. She hopes to develop new-age robots that can adapt to unfamiliar surroundings and can do many things well, instead of a few, as she tells host Russ Altman and listeners to this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast. Listen and subscribe here.

Full title: Headline: Rich Jarolovsky, Stanford Alum and Pioneering Journalist Talks Print vs. Digital and the quest for digital news that can be trusted.

Description: What's the future of journalism? Are content aggregation sites the solution? Who can you trust? Journalist and digital media guru Rich Jarolovsky talks about industry growth and trends in the digital era.

Originally aired on November 13, 2021.

Eric Hanushek, who recently was awarded the Yidan Prize for his research in education, explains how research can bolster educational attainment globally.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on November 6, 2021.

Online education is experiencing a revival but pitfalls remain. Matthew Rascoff, vice provost for digital education at Stanford, explains what’s ahead.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on November 6, 2021.

It was the stuff of Silicon Valley dreams. Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford University to launch the blood testing disruptor Theranos and built it to a $9 billion valuation. But the tech adage “fake it until you make it” didn’t quite work for this medical device startup, and charges that the devices didn’t work mounted. Holmes and Ramesh Balwani, her onetime business and romantic partner, were indicted with 12 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. In this episode, Stanford Law School Professor Robert Weisberg, a criminal law expert, discusses the trial, which began in September, the prosecution, the defense, and the larger implications of the case.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on November 6, 2021.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E164 | Kayvon Fatahalian: How the pandemic changed the virtual world

An expert in computer graphics tells how the rapid shift online brought on by COVID-19 has inspired a revolution in the tools of his trade.

For experts in digital graphics and visual perception, like computer scientist Kayvon Fatahalian, the recent pandemic has been a call to arms. Fatahalian says he and others in the field felt an urgent responsibility to harness their background in computer graphics and interactive techniques to improve life for people across the globe. He says new, virtual tools have proved better than past, real ones in improving certain aspects of our everyday lives.

His job as a computer scientist is to make those experiences more successful, more of the time. His role as a teacher is a case in point. While the virtual world is not a replacement for face-to-face interaction between students and instructors, Fatahalian notes there are many aspects of the live virtual lecture experience that enable more students to participate, and participate more frequently than in a physical classroom.

Fatahalian is now busier than ever discovering where and how the virtual world excels and creating new tools to meet the evolving need, as he tells listeners to this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast with host Russ Altman. Listen and subscribe here.

Full title: Ivan Maisel, sports writer & Stanford alum tells the story of unfathomable tragedy – the loss of his son to suicide in the best seller, “I Keep Trying to Catch His Eye: A Memoir of Loss, Grief, and Love.”

Description: It was a call that would alter his life forever. In his deeply emotional memoir, longtime ESPN writer Ivan Maisel reflects on the suicide of his son Max and delves into how their complicated relationship led him to see grief as love.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on October 30, 2021.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E 163 | Kuang Xu: How to make (and keep) genetic data private

An expert in genetic privacy says there’s a fine line between one’s right to know and another’s right to not know.

One underappreciated fact about the explosion in genetic databases, like consumer sites that provide information about ancestry and health, is that they unlock valuable insights not only into an individual’s past and future, but also for that individual’s entire family. This raises serious concerns about privacy for people who have never submitted their genetic information for analysis, yet share much the same code as one who did.

Today’s guest, Kuang Xu, is an expert in how genetic information can and should be used. He says that the DNA problem weighs heavily on privacy experts in fields ranging from law and engineering to public health and criminal justice. The fundamental question is: Can we create methods for accessing genetic data while maximizing the privacy of all involved?

The problems will only grow more intense as time and data accumulate, Xu says, unless we resolve them now, as he explains on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast with host Russ Altman. Listen and subscribe here.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E 162 | Eric Appel: Gels are changing the face of engineering ... and medicine

An expert in gels explains why these “Goldilocks” materials are the among the most promising areas of research today.

Readers of Eric Appel’s academic profile will note appointments in materials science, bioengineering and pediatrics, as well as fellowship appointments in the ChEM-H institute for human health research and the Woods Institute for the Environment. While the breadth of these appointments does not leap to mind as being particularly consistent, the connections quickly emerge for those who hear Appel talk about his research.

Appel is an expert in gels, those wiggly, jiggly materials that aren’t quite solid, but not quite liquid either. Gels’ in-betweenness is precisely what gets engineers like Appel excited about them. Appel has used gels for everything from new-age fire retardants that can proactively prevent forest fires to improved drug and vaccine delivery mechanisms for everything from diabetes to COVID-19. Hence the appointments across engineering and medicine.

Listen in with host and bioengineer Russ Altman as Appel explains to Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast why gels could be the future of science. Listen and subscribe here.