The University Sunrise Rotary Club program this week will feature the University of Washington’s Cliff Mass discussing weather and climate.  Join us!

The Zoom connection opens at 7 a.m. and the meeting will run from 730 a.m. until 830 a.m.

No reservation is required: just click here Thursday morning!

Cliff Mass is a University of Washington Professor of Atmospheric Sciences.

He is a meteorologist who specializes in weather prediction and modeling. A particular emphasis of his research has been the weather features of the western United States. The Seattle Times has called him the “closest thing to a celebrity scientist in Seattle,” and he is the author of The Weather of the Pacific Northwest—one of the best-selling books from the University of Washington Press. He also writes a popular blog about meteorological phenomena, among other weather-related musings, and he has a regular weather segment on one of the local NPR affiliates. Model simulations have been key tools for him and his group, which now runs the most extensive local high-resolution prediction system in the United States. He has received the Max Eaton Award from the American Meteorological Society, of which he is also a Fellow.

Here are Dr. Bender’s slides:

In this talk, Dr. Emily Bender will describe the ways in which so-called “AI” technology is over-sold and over-hyped, both by the companies (and sometimes academic researchers) creating it and journalists reporting on it.  She will illustrate how to tell when journalists aren’t asking the right questions and talk about the questions that she thinks we all should be asking instead.

Emily M. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics and Adjunct Professor in Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School at the University of Washington, where she has been on the faculty since 2003.  Her research includes multilingual grammar engineering, the interaction of linguistics and language technology, and how to incorporate considerations of societal impacts into the design of language technology.

Jon Fehrenbach is a retired engineer, having been a structural engineer and engineering manager at Boeing until his retirement in June 2014. Jon received his Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering, and his Master’s Degree in Engineering, both from Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. In a 35-year career at Boeing, Jon worked in airframe structures engineering on numerous programs on both the commercial side (727, 737, 777, 787 Programs) and the military side (B-2 Stealth Bomber, Joint Strike Fighter Proposal, F-22 Fighter Program). He specialized in the design of advanced carbon-fiber reinforced composites for airframe primary structure.

After retiring, Jon completed Docent training at the Museum of Flight and now works as a volunteer Docent at the Museum, chairs the Museum’s Docent Training Committee, and does presentations in the Puget Sound community for the Museum’s Speakers Bureau. He is also interested in supporting and promoting STEM-related education programs and initiatives. In his leisure time, Jon is a bicyclist (road bike/touring), pickleball player, and long-suffering Seattle sports fan. He enjoys reading, with aviation history, biographies, and other historical non-fiction currently taking up most of his reading list.

Lawrence White was born in Seattle, WA 1970 to mother Sylvia (White) and father Lawrence Sr. (Black) and raised in south Seattle Rainier Beach area.  He will be sharing his story about what it was like growing up in a mixed race household in Seattle. He lived there from 1970-1988 and then again from 1992-today.

He graduated from Rainier Beach High School in 1988 and from Seattle Central College 2000. Mr. White went into the Army right out of high school and returned to the Seattle area afterwards. He married his high school sweetheart in 1989 and will celebrate 33 years this year! 

Lawrence and his wife had two beautiful daughters Marianna and Shaelanna.  They have a 3^rd daughter Ausha who is actually his cousin–Lawrence stepped in as dad and granddad when she was in high school.  He also has three granddaughters: Audrey (8) and Maddy (4) from Marianna and Zoe (10) from Ausha.

Lawrence worked several different jobs through the 1990’s and began his IT career in 2000.  He owned an Information Security business 2000-2012 that started as security testing and ended in security training. Lawrence started in IT in the retirement community industry in 2001 and has been doing it ever since, working at Covenant Living at the Shores since February 2019.

Thanks to Victoria Wenick for arranging this program!

President Lincoln Ferris has, for the past fifteen summers, hosted an open garden for fellow gardening enthusiasts.  He will share the elements of hardscape, plant selection, color palette, fragrance and how to maintain interest as the growing season shifts from Spring to Fall.   He will show photos of how he and his wife Margaret transformed.

Join the University Sunrise Rotary Club for our weekly meeting on July 14 featuring Bruce Balick.  Dr. Balick was a University of Washington Professor of Astronomy for 39 years. 

The meeting runs from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. The Zoom line will open at 7:00 a.m. for informal networking.

Just click here Thursday morning to join us. No registration is needed.

Bruce Balick was a member of the faculty of the Astronomy Department at the University of Washington from 1975 to 2014, including five years as its Chair.  He is best known for the discovery of the black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.  His research portfolio includes studies of mass ejected from dying stars and violent outflows from galaxies.  He has served an many leadership roles for NASA, the American Astronomical Society, and the Faculty Senate of UW.  He presently supervises students in research projects and leads the UW outreach program at the Theodor Jacobsen Observatory on the campus.

Thanks to Paul Weibel for arranging this program.