CHAIRS: Julia Buntaine and Elizabeth Demaray
Program
The Zimmerli Art Museum will become a hub for art and science collaboration when it hosts its first official LASER ( Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous). These international meet-ups are a platform for cross-disciplinary exchange and collaboration across the arts, sciences, and technology. Rutgers’ LASER aims to illuminate the extraordinary research and applied practice taking place across New Jersey in our laboratories, art studios, and classrooms.
This inaugural LASER will bring together students, researchers, and the greater campus community to consider the theme of “Designing with Nature.” The evening will consist of a series of lightening talks detailing work taking place in labs across the Rutgers’ campuses, and end with a Q&A conversation about the intersection of art, science, technology, and design.
Speakers for “Designing with Nature” include:
John Dighton: Director of the RU Pinelands Research Center RUC
John Dighton is interested in forest soil ecology, investigating nutrient requirements of plantation forests, especially fast growing trees and interactions of forest trees with mycorrhizal fungi. After the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, he became interested in the role of fungi in radionuclide acquisition and the impacts of radionuclides on fungi, as well as the role of fungi in ecosystem processes.
Max Häggblom: Chair of the RU Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology RUNB
Max Häggblom is interested in the biodegradation of environmental pollutants, specifically seeking to understand how microbes degrade toxic chemicals and how microbial communities can be stimulated to degrade soil, groundwater and sediment contaminants. His lab’s aim is to provide basic understanding of the environmental fate of anthropogenic pollutants as well as to serve as a base for developing novel bioremediation or biocatalytic processes.
Amy Savage: Assistant Professor, Department of Biology RUC
Amy Savage is a community ecologist whose lab seeks to understand how the interplay among local species interactions, chronic stress, and disturbance shape the diversity, composition, and resilience of ecological communities. Specifically, she studies how different natural and anthropogenic drivers of ecological change influence the structure and dynamics of ecological communities through both direct and indirect pathways, as well as the cascading consequences of this variation for ecosystem processes and services.
The Rutgers LASER Committee
Elizabeth Demaray (Associate Professor of Fine Arts RUC, advisor Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab, RUNB), Julia Buntaine (Innovator-in-Residence, RUNB), Jenny Chen (President of the Rutgers STEAM student club, RUNB), Remi Leibovic (student, RUC)
SPONSORS:
LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) Talks is Leonardo's international program of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversations. LASER Talks were founded in 2008 by Bay Area LASER Chair Piero Scaruffi and are in over 30 cities around the world. To learn more about how our LASER Hosts and to visit a LASER near you please visit our website.
The mission of the LASERs is to provide the general public with a snapshot of the cultural environment of a region and to foster interdisciplinary networking.
Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University
MAX Classroom
Online / New Brunswick, NJ 08901
United States