The Stanford Office for Science Outreach, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts, and Stanford Continuing Studies join together to invite you, your friends, and family (high school age and up) to campus this summer to experience the wonders of art and science. Come around 5:00 pm and wander through the acclaimed Cantor Museum, then buy dinner and/or drinks at the Museum's Cool Café, and join us at 7:00 pm on lawn chairs outside of Cantor for a fascinating glimpse into the world of scientific research. On five Thursday evenings throughout the summer, Stanford will present lectures from its top researchers on subjects ranging from an environmental success story to the unraveling of mysteries of the human body, the earth, and ancient texts. The lectures will be delivered in lay terms that the general public can understand. Plenty of time will be made available for questions and answers following each talk. Both entrance to the Cantor Museum and the lecture series are free to the public. Several hundred people can be accommodated. An organic buffet BBQ dinner will be available for purchase at the Cool Café in the Museum from 5:00 until 8:00 PM, with both meat and vegetarian options, along with wine, beer, soft drinks, desserts and coffee (cash only).
OUTDOOR SCIENCE TALK 5
Human Embryonic Stem Cells: Science, Ethics, and Politics
Human embryonic stem cells are among the most promising, most complicated, and most controversial areas of contemporary biomedical research. Professor Julie Baker's lab is working to create and understand human embryonic stem cells; she will describe the scientific challenges of this work and the medical and scientific reasons these challenges are worthwhile. Professor Hank Greely serves on Stanford and California committees that are working to ensure stem cell research proceeds ethically. He will discuss the difficult issues that need to be resolved, not just about what kind of research should be done but how that research should be done—and the political complications these issues raise.
JULIE BAKER - Assistant Professor, Genetics
Professor Baker's primary research focus is to understand how cells contained in human embryos gain the specialized functions that enable the formation of healthy organ systems. She is particularly interested in the formation of the liver, lung and pancreas. To answer these questions in the human, she is pioneering Stanford efforts to generate new human embryonic stem cell lines from normal embryos and those carrying mutations in genetic disease loci.
HENRY T. (HANK) GREELY - Professor of Law and Professor, by courtesy, of Genetics
Professor Greely specializes in legal and social issues arising from advances in the biosciences and in health law and policy. He has written on issues concerning genetic testing and discrimination, the ethics of human genetics research, human stem cell research, and ethical and legal issues in neuroscience, among other things. He chairs the steering committee of the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics and directs the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences and the Stanford Program on Stem Cells and Society.