Woods Lecture Series 2024-2025
Fall 2024
Gene Spafford
The Future of Cybersecurity: A Personal Perspective
Wednesday, September 18, 2024, 7:30 PM
Schrott Center for the Arts
Despite decades of technological advances and billions of dollars spent on defenses, cybersecurity incidents are getting worse, both in quantity and magnitude. In this talk, Eugene H. Spafford will explore two important components of the cybersecurity ecosystem: people and their priorities. Spafford will discuss current hindrances to cybersecurity progress and why he believes we will only make significant inroads into improving our collective security after substantial changes in attitudes and investments.
Natali Valdez
Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era
Thursday, October 3, 2024, 7:30 PM
Shelton Auditorium
Current large-scale pregnancy studies selectively draw on epigenetics to connect behavioral choices, such as diet and exercise, to health risks for future generations. As the first ethnography of its kind, Weighing the Future examines the sociopolitical implications of ongoing pregnancy trials in the United States and the United Kingdom. This talk explores the significance of translating epigenetic ideas into prenatal healthcare from a qualitative perspective.
Spring 2025
Kate Clancy
Period: The Real Story of Menstruation
Thursday, January 16, 2025, 7:30 PM
Shelton Auditorium
Menstruation is something half the world does for a week at a time, for months and years on end, and yet it remains largely misunderstood. In Period, Kate Clancy counters the false theories that have long defined the study of the uterus, exposing the eugenic history of gynecology while providing an intersectional feminist perspective on menstruation science.
Blending interviews and personal experience with engaging stories from her own pioneering research, Clancy explores a host of timely issues surrounding menstruation, from bodily autonomy, menstrual hygiene, and the COVID-19 vaccine to the ways racism, sexism, and medical betrayal warp public perceptions of menstruation and erase it from public life.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
The Edge of Space-Time
Tuesday, February 18, 2025, 7:30 PM
Schrott Center for the Arts
What is space-time? What’s inside? And why does it matter whether or not we understand the fundamental nature of our universe? This talk by theoretical physicist Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein explores our universe from the boundaries of what we know and considers how these questions are deeply human ones that will always capture our imaginations.
David Gruber
Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) and the Journey to Listen to and Translate Whale-Speak
Thursday, March 20, 2025, 7:30 PM
Schrott Center for the Arts
Sperm whales have highly developed neuroanatomical features, cognitive abilities, social structures, and discrete click-based encoding that can be excellent models for advanced tools that can be applied to other animals. This talk will detail advancements in the understanding of the communication of whales that can be built upon as a template to decipher other forms of animal and non-human communication. Recent findings by the Project CETI team will be presented as well as the development of minimally-invasive listening technology for investigating non-human communication and behavioral research.
Steven Brusatte
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
Thursday, April 17, 2025, 7:30 PM
Shelton Auditorium
Where did dinosaurs come from? How did they go extinct? In this talk, University of Edinburgh professor and paleontologist Steve Brusatte, consultant for the Jurassic World film franchise and author of the book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, will recount the complete story of the dinosaurs and how some of them live on as today’s birds. As we Homo sapiens already begin discussing planetary extinction, dinosaurs are a timely reminder of what humans can learn from the magnificent creatures that ruled the earth before us.