This evening will feature three presentations:

Summer Praetorius (USGS Geologist) on "The Heliocene"

Ewa Domanska (Stanford Univ & Adam Mickiewicz Univ) on "Prefigurative Art and Micro-Utopias"

Lily Xiying Yang (Virtual Reality Artist) on "Creativity and Activism in Extended Reality (XR)"

Summer Praetorius is a Research Geologist in the Geology, Minerals, Energy, and Geophysics Science Center of USGS. Since joining the USGS in 2016, she has been developing high-resolution paleoceanographic records from the North Pacific to better understand past climate dynamics in this region and interactions with the global climate system.

Ewa Domanska (Stanford Univ & Adam Mickiewicz Univ) is Professor of Human Sciences at the Faculty of History, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland. She has been a recurring visiting professor in the Anthropology Department of Stanford University. Her teaching and research interests include ecocide and genocide studies. Domanska is President of the "International Commission for the History and Theory of Historiography.

Lily Xiying Yang is a member of an Asian American artist collective Lily Honglei, whose practice interweaves East Asian cultural heritages with new imaging technologies including animation, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Yang strives to make voices for underserved communities and marginal groups in societies through artistic creativity and innovations. Lily Xiying Yang's art projects have been exhibited at numerous art venues.

Detailed bios at: www.lasertalks.com

The LASERs (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous), chaired by cultural historian Piero Scaruffi, are an international program of evening gatherings that bring together artists, scientists, inventors and scholars in a variety of disciplines for informal presentations and conversation with an audience.