“INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL ABOUT TOWN” 
 

An Opinionated Multi-Media Run-through of Goings on in San Diego and Beyond, Attempting, as usual, to Focus on Game-Changing People & Ideas, But What Are You Going to Do?  Life is Too Curious.
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SPRING 2015

A wonderful two weeks in sunny San Diego.  I note that there is still snow on the ground in Boston. 


Besides the strangely awesome weather, the Kyoto Prizes came to town. Often a precursor to the Noble or the Lasker, but in many ways more interesting, the Kyoto categories represent a revolving mix of technology, basic sciences and the arts, including theater, cinema, and significant folk art.  The Laureate in Advanced Technology, biomedical engineer Robert Langer from MIT, for instance, developed two big ticket items—often against the conventional wisdom of leading scientists and government officials—drug delivery and tissue culture. We take drug delivery for granted now, but the idea of timed-release anti-cancer drugs inserted into a brain tumor through polymer “bags,” for instance, was revolutionary.  So was Langer’s development of tissue culture, how cells might be layered onto 3-dimensional platforms—some resembling seaweed, a great biomimicry insight—to create new skin, and other organs.  Think of the pain of child burn victims.  Before Langer and his team, and the pharma companies that believed in him before academia, these kids, and a lot of other people died, horribly.  Langer’s breakthroughs may have helped as many as 2 billion people.

 
He was also a lot of fun to interview, a scientist with a wry sense of humor, whose dad, an amateur mathematician, ran a liquor store in Albany.  Here is a link to a rather detailed video with Dr. Langer at Radcliffe earlier in the year, should you want to “get into the weeds” on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwnNAJOq86w

 
We then talked with Dr. Ed Witten, the Kyoto laureate in Basic Sciences on the spectacular grounds of Pt. Loma Nazarene College, over-looking the Pacific. Witten is a developer of string theory, how the very small connects to the very big. Subatomic to the origin of the universe.  Harder for this bio-based observer to understand, I’m afraid!  Witten flew out from Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies.  We strayed from science a bit to talk about peace and the Middle East, and though Witten was perhaps embarrassed to entertain the thought, one has to recall that Einstein spent a great deal of time lecturing on how to make this a better planet, too, over-run as it is now by our unruly species.  

 
The Kyoto Gala that evening was a sold-out affair at the top of the Hilton Bay Front.  Tables ($3000 a pop) were added, I am told, because of the strong interest from the many who work at San Diego’s hundreds of biotech companies, and understand just who Langer is.  


There is a fun, formal aspect to the Kyoto Gala, as it follows at least some of the structure of the Kyoto Awards ceremony held mid-November just as the leaves are turning russet and vermillion in the ancient city of Kyoto, headquarters for the Kyocera Corporation, whose US headquarters are near Montgomery Field in San Diego.  Kyocera is a major producer of high-end solar cells and insulating chip sets which are found in innumerable products from cellphones and computers to dishwashers.  Here is a link to the Kyoto Ceremonies this year: (http://www.mediafire.com/watch/oqyyft34hfrt9kz/Kyoto_Prize_2015_b-roll.mov  Speeches by Langer and Witten begin around 5:31. (Transparency Note: I was the Kyoto Symposium Journalist Fellow in 2013.)


The laureates reprise their talks in San Diego. Dr. Kazuo Inamori, Kyocera’s founder, welcomes the crowd, often with a story of creativity and perseverance, an example of a sort of high-business-zen-calmness rare at the top of our more raucous business world.  This year there was an excellent potpourri of musical acts from Crosby, Stills, Nash knockoffs to classical piano riffs.  Significant scholarships are given out to high school students from Tijuana and San Diego.  The testimonials by these inspired young people are often the high points of the evening.  Much schmoozing was done. Certainly at our table, which included biotech entrepreneurs Jay Short and Carolyn Anderson Short, who at the moment are cooking up significant deals from Wyoming to China.           

 
Here is a link to an “INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL ABOUT TOWN” video chat with Kyoto Symposium Director Peter Farrell, founder of the sleep apnea company ResMed, as shot and edited by UCSD film student Clint Evangelista: http://youtu.be/NhxrH1SR9W0

 
In the week after Kyoto came Andrew Viterbi’s introduction into the CONNECT Hall of Fame, during a luncheon at the Estancia.  Viterbi, co-founder of Qualcomm, delivered a no-nonsense 11-minute-talk summing up the future of technology, his views on the Middle East, how he came up with what has come to be known as the Viterbi Algorithm and more.  It was far from your usual rubber-chicken lunch.  (Nor could it be at the Estancia, a very cool hotel and understated neo-Spanish joint on Torrey Pines.)  Jenn Karlman of the Fox Channel emceed with a less blond Greg McKee, executive director of CONNECT, and we recommend their very smart high-tech segment on FOX-5 TV. We also chatted with U-T science reporter Gary Robbins about the cool Friday supplement (now in your mailbag) titled The Wonder of the Brain, an organ as important on The Mesa as the liver is to the French.



A link to the excellent Viterbi Hall of Fame video can be seen here https://vimeo.com/121946720 .          

And then it was Greg Koch, co-founder of Stone Brewery at Amanda and Nico Canigilia’s Bella Vista Cafe & Social Club next to Sanford Consortium.  Here we had to pivot from the good wine of the Kyoto Gala to the possibly even better beer from Stone.  Arrogant Bastard, the game-changing bitter that put Stone on the map, was free-flowing, and as a writer, I have to tip the literary hat to a major corporation launched with scribblings on the back of a beer bottle.  Greg Koch came up with the hilarious—and, he pointed out, completely serious—Arrogant Bastard label that begins:  “This is an aggressive ale.  You probably won’t like it.” But Stone is now almost a lifestyle, taking the paragon of brewing authenticity to restaurants (no TV, no burgers, not your usual sports bar but an attempt at old-fashioned conviviality) as well as to their new 18-acre farm-to-table farm with the table lying across the road from the farm, Stone Brewery Escondido.

 
Couple days later materials scientist Nikki Truitt had a birthday party at Bella Vista (again) before breaking her foot in time to introduce legendary VC Ann Winblad over at the new Basement, the mildly funky headquarters for collegiate entrepreneurs underneath Mandeville Auditorium at UCSD.

 
And the La Jolla Playhouse ended its run of The Grift at the Lafayette Hotel, San Diego’s repository of Old Hollywood.  Please see About Town Video at: http://www.stevechapple.com/

 
Well, enough foolery and narrative.  Time to go for a swim in the Cove, see if the Garabaldis are still orange.

 
 [NOTE: Videos and links to speeches and chats referenced above may be found on the INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL WEBSITE at stevechapple.com.  Or if they aren’t there yet, they should be when we get out of the water.]




G’day.


Steve

Research Associate, Subin Ryoo contributed to this post. 

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