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Beyond the Geodesic Dome
Kenneth Hicks, PhD gives a talk on Buckyballs, Spaceship Earth, Synergy and other Legacies of Buckminster Fuller.
About the film
16-year-old Sebastian Prendergast has spent most of his life with his Nana in their geodesic dome home tourist attraction where she raises him on the futurist teachings of her former mentor Buckminster Fuller in hopes that one day Sebastian will carry Fuller’s torch and make the world a better place. But when a stroke sidelines Nana, Sebastian begins sneaking around with Jared, a chain-smoking, punk-obsessed 16-year-old with a heart transplant who lives in the suburbs with his bible-thumping single father Alan and teenage sister Meredith.
Sebastian and Jared form a band, and with his Nana’s dreams, his first real friendship, and a church talent show at stake, Sebastian must decide if he wants to become the next Buckminster Fuller, the next Sid Vicious, or something else entirely.
About the speaker
Ken Hicks does research in the area of experimental nuclear/particle physics. Along with his graduate students, he publishes prolifically in this area, where he is a co-author on hundreds of papers in physics research journals. He also does research in pure mathematics, where he has published a few articles in the branch of mathematics called finite fields.
He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and is currently Secretary-Treasurer in the
Division of Nuclear Physics of the APS. His primary research interest is the forces between quarks and gluons, which make up strongly-interacting particles like the proton and the neutron. In order to study such small particles, he travels to a national accelerator facility, called Jefferson Lab, located in Virginia. Using beams of high-velocity electrons, which scatter from protons, this acts like an electron-microscope that can peer into the heart of the proton and sheds light on the subatomic interactions of quarks and gluons.
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Science on Screen® is an initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, with major support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Science on Screen program pairs films with a short talk with a scientist or technology expert. The free Science on Screen events are fun and engaging, offering dynamic speakers an unexpected jumping point to teach their field of expertise in a way that is accessible to a diverse audience.
Free admission to this event is provided by Arts for OHIO.
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85 MIN
Preceding the film will be a presentation by Russ Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Dr. Gerri Botte. Gerardine (Gerri) Botte is a University Distinguished Professor, the founder and Director of Ohio University’s Center for Electrochemical Engineering Research (CEER), and the founder and Director of the Consortium for Electrochemical Processes and Technology (CEProTECH) -an Industry University Cooperative Research Center. In addition to being a professor and a scientist, she is a prolific inventor, entrepreneur, and visionary. In 2014, she was named a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society for her contributions and innovation in electrochemical processes and engineering. She became a Chapter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2012. In 2010, she was named a Fellow of the World Technology Network for her contributions on the development of sustainable and environmental technologies. Dr. Botte has 171 publications including peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, 48 granted patents (in the US, Canada, Japan, China, and other countries) and 30 pending patent applications. Dr. Botte and members of her research group are focusing on developing solutions for some of the world’s greatest challenges related to food, water, and energy. Example projects include: hydrogen production from ammonia, urea, biomass, and coal, synthesis of carbon nanotubes and graphene, water remediation and disinfection, selective catalytic reduction, ammonia synthesis, electrochemical conversion of CO2 to high value products, novel electrolytes for thermal batteries, and advanced electrowinning. Dr. Botte is also an entrepreneur, she has been involved in the commercialization of technologies and has founded and co-founded companies. She received her Ph.D. in 2000 and M.E. in 1998, both in Chemical Engineering, from the University of South Carolina. Prior to graduate school, Dr. Botte worked as a process engineer in a petrochemical plant; she was involved in the production of fertilizers and polymers. Dr. Botte received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Universidad de Carabobo (Venezuela) in 1994. She can be reached at botte@ohio.edu
Preceding the film will be a presentation by Ohio University Presidential Research Scholar & Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Nancy Stevens, Ph.D.
Dr. Sarah Wyatt will speak at the Science on Screen event with “Hidden Figures”
