Posts by Meeri Kim

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Science Speed Dating

Jessie Christiansen On a cool Tuesday evening in Hollywood, I find myself sitting in a circle with fifteen others when astrophysicist Jessie Christiansen walks up to us with a roulette-style carnival wheel in hand. Instead of numbers, each space features…

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Watch Science Speed Dating

Upon walking into the expansive lobby of the California NanoSystems Institute on the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus, guests were treated to a warm welcome of drinks, appetizers, and mingling. Greeters seated at a nearby table handed each…

Going Beyond Intelligent Machines

Artificial intelligence (AI) has always fascinated Hollywood, with the technology mostly depicted in a sinister, ominous light. In The Terminator, the U.S. military commissioned the development of Skynet, a defense AI who gains artificial consciousness and ends up attacking the…

Murder and Mayhem

The evening began like any other Exchange event, with delicious drinks and lively conversation in a room packed with scientists and entertainment professionals. It was the night before Halloween, but the atmosphere felt festive and lighthearted—that is, until the networking…

The Most Unknown

he line of hopeful moviegoers stretched up and down South Broadway in front of the trendy Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, praying that they would be lucky enough to nab a seat in the theater. But this was not…

One Night to Save the World: Overpopulation

The United Nations predicts the number of people on Earth will balloon to 9.8 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. Even as some countries witness a decline in fertility levels, roughly 83 million people are added to the…

You Are Who You Were

Nadine Burke-Harris As a result of a “zero-tolerance” policy enacted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents at the U.S.–Mexico border in the past…

6.7.18 Science Speed Dating

More than 200 scientists and entertainment professionals gathered on the second floor of the Creative Artists Agency in Century City sipping on wine and getting to know one another as they waited for the main event of the night to…

Designing the Future

Neil Gershenfeld In 1965, American engineer Gordon Moore was asked to make predictions about the semiconductor industry for a special issue of the journal Electronics. The future co-founder of Intel noticed that the number of transistors per silicon chip—a measure…

Scientist Spotlight: Tracy Drain

As a child, Tracy Drain had always been drawn to space and space exploration, partially inspired by the sci-fi movies her mom would take her to watch in the theater. Years later, she landed her dream job at NASA’s Jet…

The Science of Fear

Horror movies have always given us plenty of nightmare fodder. Moments like the disturbing elevator full of blood in The Shining, Psycho’s famously chilling shower scene, and a possessed girl’s head spin in The Exorcist have burned themselves into our…

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The Science of “The Expanse”

More than 130 years ago, a fusion-drive engineer from Mars tinkered around with his spacecraft, hoping to boost its fuel efficiency. Solomon Epstein took his pet project out for a test run, expecting to see a modest improvement. What happened…

Science of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Jon Spaihts, Screenwriter, DOCTOR STRANGE, was our MC for the night. Throughout its history, Hollywood has struck cinematic gold again and again with a simple yet irresistible concept: the superhero film. The idea of individuals — whether human, mutant, or…

The Future Is Happening Now

Casey Handmer, Hyperloop One Instead of spending an hour on a cramped airplane — or plodding along in a car for six hours — what if you could get from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes? Elon Musk…

Science, in the Extreme

When Mike Libecki traveled to eastern Greenland last July, the famed adventurer had two missions in mind. First and foremost, he sought to summit the elusive Polar Bear Fang — an unclimbed granite monolith bigger than Yosemite’s El Capitan. This…