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

121 Decoding Immunity: Lessons from Genetic Errors - Professor Carrie Lucas

122 The Things We Carry: How Microbes Impact Our Health - Professor Stavroula Hatzios

123 Tissue Testing Matters: A Personalized Approach to Cancer - Professor David Rimm

Season 17 (2024-2025)

124 Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases: Increasingly Significant Threats to Public Health - Professor Stephen Wikel

125 Dark Matter: What We Know and What We Don’t Know - Professor Reina Maruyama

126 Preparing for the Next Pandemic - Professor Albert Icksang Ko

127 Ethics and Equity in Data Science and Precision Health - Professor Bhramar Mukherjee