Past events
Visit our YouTube channel to view recordings of cafe events
Season 1 (2008-2009)
1 Industrial Ecology: an oxymoron? - Professor Gordon Geballe
2 Darwin's 200th birthday: how evolution helps us understand life on earth - Professor Tom Pollard
3 Quantum Mechanics: does anyone get it? - Professor Ramamurti Shankar
4 Antibiotics: past, present and future - Professor Susan Baserga
5 Dark matter and dwarf galaxies - Professor Marla Geha
6 Biodiversity and Global Changes - Professor Michael Donoghue
7 The platypus: a vestige of the past - Professor Caroline Zeiss
Season 2 (2009-2010)
8 Globalization of coffee: From Islamic Wine to International Latte - Nayan Chanda
9 Genetic Ancestry: history alive and what it tells us - Professor Himla Soodyall
10 The Dark Side of the Universe: Shedding Light on Dark Matter & Dark Energy - Professor Daniel McKinsey
11 The Origins of Irrationality - Professor Laurie Santos
12 Race to build a quantum computer - Professor Steven Girvin
13 The Intersection Between Science and Social Action: The Case of Climate Change - Dr. Rajendra Pachauri
14 Supra-Humans: communal harmony between humans and microbes - Professor Paula Kavathas
15 The Giant Galapagos Tortoise: Saving Lonesome George’s Line From Extinction - Adalgisa Caccone
16 Unraveling the dark side of the Universe - Professor Priyamvada Natarajan
17 Love, Trust and Oxytocin: How the brain figures it all out- Professor Meenakshi Alreja
Season 3 (2010-2011)
18 Learning from Nature: how to use solar energy for renewable fuel production - Professor Gary Brudvig
19 The visible and invisible world of viruses - Professor Daniel DiMaio
20 Aircraft Engines: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow - Professor Sharvan Kumar
21 Math, Music and Mind - Professor Ian Quinn
22 A soft touch for robot and prosthetic hands - Professor Aaron Dollar
23 Patterns and fractals: mathematical mysteries revealed - Professor Amanda Folsom
24 Morphine, Mint and Chili Peppers: An Introduction to the Neuronal Pathways of Pain - Daniel C. Broom, Ph.D.
25 Hubble Who? - Moshe Gai, Ph.D.
26 Personalized Cancer Therapies: how they work, and new approaches - David F. Stern, Ph.D.
Season 4 (2011-2012)
27 Wiring the brain, one connection at a time - Professor Thomas Biederer, Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University
28 Stress, Resiliency, and PTSD: From Neurobiology to Treatment - Professor John Krystal, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University
29 Marty's Adventures Underground: Physics of the Oil Patch - Martin E. Cobern, Vice President, Research and Development, APS Technology, Inc.
30 Adventures in Lung Cancer - Professor Thomas Lynch, Director Yale Cancer Center, and Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University
31 Getting under your skin: how stem cells regulate hair growth - Professor Valerie Horsley, Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, Yale University
32 Genetic Testing for Cancer Predisposition: Would You Want to Know? - Ellen Matloff, Department of Genetics, Director, Cancer Genetic Counseling, Yale University
33 Let's Eat, You Thick-Skinned Prickly Bastard: Carnivorous Plants and Desert Denizens Eric Larson, Manager, Marsh Botanic Gardens, Yale University
34 Beats and the Brain - Professor Ian Quinn, Department of Music, Yale University
Season 5 (2012-2013)
35 Science Ink - Tattoos of the Science Obsessed - Carl Zimmer
36 Demystifying Stem Cells: What they are and why we should care - Professor Lawrence Rizzolo, Yale School of Medicine
37 Closing the Universe's Budget Deficit -- Towards an Understanding of Dark Energy - Professor Nikhil Padmanabhan, Department of Astronomy, Yale University
38 How Puzzles Make Us Human - Dr. Pradeep Mutalik, Associate Research Scientist, Medical Informatics, Yale University School of Medicine;Curator, Enigma Café, Museum of
39 The Stressed Brain and Your Health - Professor Rajita Sinha, Department of Psychiatry at Yale University and Director of the Yale Stress Center
40 The Wild World of Electrified Water - Professor Mark Johnson, Department of Chemistry, Yale University
Season 6 (2013-2014)
41 September 21, 2013 - The Many Faces of Smoking: the effects of nicotine on brain and behavior. Professor Marina Picciotto Department of Psychiatry, Yale University
42 November 2, 2013 - Understanding Collective Animal Behavior for Bio-Inspired Design. Professor Nicholas T. Ouellette Department of Mechanical Engineering and Material
43 November 23, 2013 - Exceptionally preserved fossils: critical evidence of the history of life. Professor Derek E.G. Briggs, Department of Geology and Geophysics; Dire
44 January 11, 2014 - Current hypotheses in Parkinson's Disease Pathogenesis: Culprits of Neuronal Toxicity. Dr. Duarte Machado, Department of Neurology, Yale University
45 February 22, 2014 - Synapses: Connections that Make Your Brain Work. Professor Sreeganga Chandra, Department of Neurology, & Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Bio
46 April 5, 2014 - Music, Math and Computation. Professor Paul Hudak. Department of Computer Science, Yale University
47 May 10, 2014 - Pharmacology Confidential: How Drugs Work. Daniel Broom, Ph. D.
48 June 7, 2014 - Making the invisible visible - what fluorescent proteins can reveal about how cells work. Professor Megan King, Department of Cell Biology, Yale Univer
Season 7 (2014-2015)
49 September 20, 2014 - Research on Steroids:Human Bio-cultural Diversity in the Amazon and Beyond. Professor Richard Bribiescas, Chair, Department of Anthropology, Yale
50 October 18, 2014 - Getting to know your dog through its DNA. Mark Neff, PhD. Founder, Brindle.
51 December 13, 2014 - Drug Re-purposing. Dr. Jerome Zeldis, MD, PhD. Chief Medical Officer, Celgene Corp; CEO Celgene Global Health
52 January 17, 2015 - A brief history of light. Douglas Stone, Chair, Applied Physics Department, Yale University
53 April 11, 2015 - Managing relationships with viruses. Akiko Iwasaki, PhD. Professor of Immunobiology and of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Yale Unive
54 May 16, 2015 - A Hitchhikers Guide to Medicinal Chemistry & Drug Discovery. Kevin S. Currie, PhD. Director Medicinal Chemistry, Gilead Sciences
55 June 6, 2015 - Sunlight, excited electrons, and skin cancer. Douglas E Brash PhD. Department of Therapeutic Radiology, Yale University
Season 8 (2015-2016)
56 September 19, 2015 - Computing and Cultural Heritage - Professor Holly Rushmeier, Department of Computer Science, Yale University
57 November 7, 2015 - Do Muslims Accept Biological Evolution? - Professor Salman Hameed, Director, Center for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies (SSiMS) Charles Ta
58 December 5, 2015 - Neutrinos: Chasing the ghost particles in our Universe - Professor Karsten Heeger Professor of Physics Director, Wright Laboratory, Yale University
59 January 16, 2016 - Understanding networks through physical metaphors - Professor Daniel Spielman, Department of Computer Science, Yale University
60 February 20, 2016 - A Paleontologist's Perspective on Mass Extinctions Past and Present - Professor Pincelli Hull, Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale Universi
61 April 2, 2016 - Global noncommunicable diseases: an epidemic of silent killers - Dr. Christine Ngaruiya, Emergency Medicine; Global Health Fellow, Yale School of Medi
62 June 4, 2016 - Making Valuable Materials from the Greenhouse Gas Carbon Dioxide - Professor Nilay Hazari, Department of Chemistry, Yale University
Season 9 (2016-2017)
63 Making modern vaccines to prevent the next pandemic: from flu to zika - Dr. Rachael Felberbaum
64 Stem Cells and Eye Disease: Treatment of Age-Related Macular Degeneration - Professor Rizzolo
65 Large-scale digitization of natural history collections - Dr. Patrick Sweeney
66 The What, Why, and How of Proteins - Professor Lynne Regan
67 Oenology 101: A little wine science at Tilde Cafe - Jonathan McLumski
68 The Physics of Bird Nests - Professor Corey O'Hern
69 Languages today as clues to the past - Professor Claire Bowern
70 The Bed Bug: A Masterpiece in Adaptation and Survival - Dr. Gale E. Ridge
71 Democracy and the science communication environment - Professor Dan Kahan
Season 10 (2017-2018)
72 Fighting the bite: ticks and tick-borne diseases - Dr. Kirby Stafford III
73 Allergy and what it's not - Professor Stephanie Eisenbarth
74 Type 2 Diabetes: A molecular change of form and function by a single protein - Prof. Andrew Miranker
75 The Evolution of Beauty - Professor Rick Prum
76 New cancer therapies: how they work and what happens when they stop working - Prof. Katerina Politi
77 Is there logic behind the randomness in financial markets? - Elliot Turner
78 The next frontiers of geographic data: a new way to look at the Earth - Giuseppe Amatulli
79 Searching for Siblings of our Milky Way Galaxy - Professor Marla Geha
Season 11 (2018-2019)
80 She Has Her Mother's laugh - Carl Zimmer
81 Stem Cells: From Bench to Bedside, by Professor Laura Grabel
82 Art and Science Merge at the Yale Peabody Museum Habitat Dioramas
83 Immune cells can fight cancer
84 The World Map of Chemistry: The Periodic Table of The Elements
85 Ancient Bones and the Origin of the Human Diet
86 Metal Nanoparticles: The Big Science of Small Materials
87 ExoStatistics: searching for exoplanets with statistics
Season 12 (2019-2020)
88 Engineering Simpler, Safer, and Better Medicines
89 Fighting the common cold virus with your immune system
90 Quantum Entanglement : "Spooky action at a distance" in the lab, and in black holes
91 Neutrinos: Introverts of The Universe
92 Green Chemistry: The How of Sustainability - Professors Zimmerman and Anastas
93 Natural History in the 21st Century
94 AI In The Time Of Covid-19: Honing In On Therapeutic Interventions
95 Global Warming & Climate Change - Dr. Henry Auer
Season 13 (2020-2021)
96 COVID-19 and the Environment - Professor Jordan Peccia
97 SalivaDirect: simple & sensitive molecular diagnostic test for SARS-CoV-2 surveillance - Dr. Anne Wyllie
98 Fighting Discrimination in Artificial Intelligence (AI) - Professor Elisa Celis
99 One Planet – One Ocean: From Science to Solutions – Dr. Avan Antia
100 Forensic investigation of historical and archaeological human skeletal remains - Professor Angie Ambers
101 The Downsides Of Having An Immune System - Professor Chandrashekhar Pasare
102 The Second Quantum Revolution and The Race to Build ‘Impossible’ Computers - Professor Steve Girvin
103 ADHD in Adults: All You Want to Know, but Were Afraid to Ask - Professor Mary Solanto
Season 14 (2021-2022)
104 Cancer Immune Therapies: Where Are We Headed? - Professor Kelly Olino
105 Behavior is a motor and a brake for evolution - Professor Martha Munoz
106 Bit flipping: how cosmic rays can affect your phone (and other electronic gadgets)
107 Exploring protein space: From words to landscapes to the evolution of drug resistance
108 Preserving Trust Amid Changing COVID Guidance - Dr. Jeremy Gretton
109 Health Care Utilization Before and After the “Muslim Ban” - Professor Gregg Gonsalves
110 Who does SARS-CoV-2 infect, why, and what are the implications? - Professor Suresh Kuchipudi
111 Wicked Problems: The Curious Case Of Tuberculosis Across Species - Professor Vivek Kapur
Season 15 (2022-2023)
112 A conversation about engineering "super" mRNA vaccines, vaccine equity, and vaccine access - Professor Wendy Gilbert and Unni Karunakara
113 Black Holes, Galaxies, and the Evolution of the Universe - Professor Meg Urry
114 The elegance is in the details: how form and function determine physiology - Professor Michael Caplan
115 The Physics Of Sand - Professor Corey O'Hern
116 Dark Matter of the Human Genome - Professor Sarah Slavoff
117 Energy: Past, Present, & Future - Professor Gary Brudvig
Season 16 (2023-2024)
118 The Higgs Boson & The Question of Mass - Professor Sarah Demers
119 Human evolution through the lens of ancient DNA - Professor Diyendo Massilani
120 What Makes Languages Different From Each Other? - Professor Claire Bowern