University Scholar Series

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  Bridging Sociotechnical Divides: Trustworthy AI for Community Well-Being and Fair Decision-Making

  Souvick Ghosh

  The tremendous potential of AI to improve community well-being is hindered by the potential harm AI-based systems can cause. In this presentation, Dr. Ghosh will present his ongoing projects on automated decision-making and conversational chatbots. He will also discuss his upcoming work on trustworthy AI, and how they can improve the lives of marginalized communities by addressing biases and promoting equitable access to information. Dr. Ghosh is also heavily invested in AI education and outreach, which demystifies technology and empower communities with the tools to harness its potential responsibly. He will discuss some of his latest efforts in educating library and information (LIS) professionals about the latest AI developments and their ethical application in libraries.

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  The Hole Problem: Understanding How a Pore-Forming Toxin Promotes Respiratory Disease

  Walter Adams

  The bacterial pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae causes over 150,000 hospitalizations annually in the U.S., with a mortality rate of 5-7%, making the disease both a significant health and financial burden. During infection, S. pneumoniae enters the human airways, damages lung cells, and causes severe diseases including pneumonia, heart complications, and brain inflammation, all of which can lead to death. The Adams Lab studies how to prevent S. pneumoniae from causing severe disease in humans. Recent work with students in the lab has identified factors that drive this disease and revealed exciting opportunities to pursue therapies for many respiratory infections.

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  Microbial Evolution: Opportunities and Challenges

  Katy Kao

  Biological systems are complex, and we currently lack a full understanding of the rules of life, which limits our ability to design strains for biomanufacturing and to develop drugs. Nature can help to fill in the gaps. The process of evolution involves the selection of mutants that are fitter in their environment. Thus, if the desired properties can be coupled with cell growth or survival, evolution can be a tool for strain engineering and provide a knowledge base. The process of evolution is also important in diseases; antibiotic drug resistance, cancer, and the emergence of COVID-19 variants are all processes of adaptation and evolution.

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  Artificial Intelligence and Data Science in Healthcare

  Shayan Shams

  While the ubiquitous utilization of Artificial intelligence in healthcare applications has been expected for half a century, most of the dominating approaches of AI in healthcare have relied on expert knowledge, handcrafted feature selection, and rule fit algorithms. The emergence of the Data Science field and advances in Deep Learning and their impressive success in various fields such as speech recognition, image interpretation, and language translation have consequently led to a radical shift in the utilization of AI in healthcare. Furthermore, with the adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHR), it is feasible to access and analyze data from millions of patients, detect patterns, and provide smarter healthcare. Advances in computational power paired with massive amounts of data make many clinical problems great candidates for developing innovative Deep Learning models to solve real-world problems in medicine. In this presentation, Dr. Shams will go over some of his current projects involving the utilization of Deep Learning techniques in various healthcare domains and demonstrate how Data Science and AI can improve patient care and healthcare delivery in rehabilitation and cancer prevention and therapy.

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  To Photograph Is to Archive

  Binh Danh

  Binh Danh emerged as an artist of national importance with work investigating his Vietnamese heritage and our collective memory of war. His technique incorporates his invention of the chlorophyll printing process, in which photographic images appear embedded in leaves through photosynthesis. His newer work focuses on nineteenth-century photographic processes, applying them to investigate battlefield landscapes and contemporary memorials. A recent series of daguerreotypes celebrated the United States National Park system during its anniversary year. In this talk, he will discuss artists' crucial role in society as makers and memorialists, including his own work.

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  The Muscle Spindle: The Most Important Sensory Organ You’ve Never Heard Of

  Katherine A. Wilkinson

  The muscle spindle senses muscle length and movement. This information is essential for the ability to complete complex motor behaviors and the sense of body and limb position. Many diseases and other conditions impair the function of the muscle spindle and can lead to movement and balance problems. The Wilkinson Lab at San José State University is interested in understanding how the muscle spindle translates muscle stretch into action potentials and what causes it to malfunction. Recent work identifying components of the molecular machinery in the muscle spindle and human genetic diseases that affect muscle spindle function will be discussed.

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  AI for Social Good: An Interdisciplinary Undergraduate AI Education Project

  Yu Chen

  Advances in AI hold the potential for further economic and societal impact and quality-of-life improvements. Along with this fast advancement in technology is the need for society to address long-term sustainability goals. Hence, students need to be educated with the knowledge and skills of AI in emerging and rapidly changing fields to become future leaders and innovators for a sustainable society. However, current AI education tends to lack broad multidisciplinary participation, focus on the technical aspects, and lack diversity. The AI for social good (AI4SG) aims to implement and generate evidence-based practices for interdisciplinary, community-engaged, and inclusive AI education.

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  Pragmatic Pessimism in Black Higher Education: The Case of Benner C. Turner

  Travis D. Boyce

  Benner C. Turner, the president of South Carolina State College, a public Historically Black College and University (HBCU) was a conservative educator during the Civil Rights Movement, which increasingly demanded activist disobedience from students and faculty. Turner was often accused of authoritarian leadership and of failing to appreciate the significance of Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 ruling that effectively made segregation illegal. Yet Turner’s pessimistic understanding of Brown, and his punitive response to student activism, offers an alternate model of academic leadership during times of crisis. His brand of pragmatic pessimism sheds light on some of the issues in Black higher education that we grapple with today, including affirmative action and the recent flux of Black students choosing HBCUs.

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  The Societal Impacts of the Coronavirus Pandemic and a Look Ahead to What’s Next

  Marcelle Dougan

  The coronavirus pandemic has changed all of us in ways that may not be obvious until years from now. Marginalized populations, specifically communities of color and those economically disadvantaged, felt the brunt of this pandemic. Early on, it became clear that many Black and brown communities were more likely to contract and die from the coronavirus compared to other groups. Food shortages led to increased food insecurity especially among people of color and those economically disadvantaged. Anti-Asian sentiment reached crisis levels, with many in this community reporting physical attacks, largely due to the public rhetoric at that time. Dr. Dougan discusses her research on the experience of marginalized populations as a result of the pandemic, and highlights some bright spots on the horizon with respect to reducing health disparities.

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  The Power of Dance: The Viennese Ballroom and European Monarchy after the French Revolution

  Erica Buurman

  Today’s ballroom dance culture has its origins in Vienna in the decades around 1800, when the ballrooms of the aristocracy were opened to the public. For the first time, members of all social classes could waltz together in the city’s glittering ballrooms, and composers like Beethoven and Mozart provided music for the latest fashionable dances. The world of the public ball ostensibly removed the rigid hierarchy associated with courtly dancing before the upheavals of the French Revolution, where dance was used primarily as an opportunity to display aristocratic manners. Yet as European monarchies sought to retain their relevance in nineteenth-century society, they found ways of reinventing their public image in ways that harnessed the new dance culture — ways which have left their trace in the dance and music of the period.

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  “Forever or Five Years”: Recordkeeping and Human Thriving

  Darra Hofman

  Jeff Rothenberg wrote that, “[d]igital objects last forever – or five years, whichever comes first.” Rothenberg gives as his example a CD that contains the secrets to his fortune, and the challenges his grandchildren would face in even finding an appropriate disk-drive in 2045. Since Rothenberg’s article was first published in the mid-90s, digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become ever more entrenched, and the cycles of change and development ever faster. Archivists, specialists in recordkeeping, race to ensure the long-term trustworthiness, accessibility, and useability of data, records, and other digital objects that are designed with the expectation of obsolescence and ever-faster cycles. Doing so is critically important. Without trustworthy records, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to prove our rights, to hold bad actors accountable, to build on past research, and to maintain cultural heritage. In this talk, Dr. Hofman will explain how archival science’s ancient principles can improve our digital future, providing ways to examine new technologies and answer questions about trust, decision making, and power through the perspective of not just years, but centuries.

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  Framing and Decoding Public Narratives in the Debate Over Race-conscious Affirmative Action

  María C. Ledesma

  In this presentation, Dr. Ledesma revisits the importance of decoding public narratives used to describe and explain polemic policies, such as race-conscious affirmative action. For example, she underscores the importance of always placing such policies within an accurate and rich historical context.

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  The State of the State: Regional Writing About the Past, Present, and Future State of Planet California

  Keenan Norris

  In this presentation, Dr. Norris will discuss his representation of the Oakland/Bay Area and California more broadly in his fiction and non-fiction writing. Norris’ novel The Confession of Copeland Cane (2021) takes place in a near future East Oakland battered by gentrification, environmental degradation, and a draconian police state. Meanwhile, the essays from his collection-in-progress Classroom California looks at the state from San Diego to San José through the lens of our vast community college system. Several essays in this collection have been published individually, including “One Coyote” and “A Complicated Relationship: How California’s Community Colleges Educate Future Police and Why Our Curriculum Needs to Change.” The essay-in-progress “Transparent California” begins from the claim that “California’s community colleges constitute vast, multiperspectival prism on to California” and then takes the reader on a cross-state journey where he meets with college presidents, professors, and students at several community college campuses.

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  Impacts of Disturbance on Marine Mammals: Physiological and Behavioral Responses to Stressors

  Birgitte McDonald

  Marine mammals play important roles in marine ecosystems and are often considered indicators of ecosystem health. Unfortunately, a growing human footprint in the marine environment has led to increased interactions between marine mammals and humans, leading to concerns about the impact of these activities on populations already facing other threats such as climate change. Exposure to disturbance from naval exercises and tourism results in short-term disruptions of natural behavior that may have energetic consequences or put the animals at greater risk to pressure related problems such as decompression sickness. To predict and quantify how marine mammals will respond to natural and anthropogenic stressors, it is essential to understand their physiological limits and the plasticity in the behavioral and physiological responses to stress. Dr. McDonald’s research addresses these knowledge gaps by 1) investigating the diving capacity and energetic requirements of breath-hold divers and 2) investigating the physiological and behavioral responses to anthropogenic stressors.

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  Equity-focused Data Analytics for Libraries

  Kristen Radsliff Rebmann

  Libraries exist as important community anchor institutions (CAIs), defined by the FCC “as schools, libraries, hospitals and other medical providers, public safety entities, institutions of higher education, and community support organizations that facilitate greater use of broadband by vulnerable populations, including low-income, the unemployed, and the aged” (FCC, 2011, p. 38). TV Whitespace (TVWS)-enabled cognitive radios can help libraries propagate robust, (backhaul) internet connections to new community spaces with the goal of keeping citizens connected in everyday and crisis situations. To leverage TVWS successfully, however, libraries, researchers, and information technology professionals must understand the availability of frequency spectrum in their area to know whether TVWS is an appropriate technology for implementation in their community. This presentation will share equity-focused analyses of corporate and public datasets that can help us understand the potential impact of TVWS networking technology to support digital equity among America’s rural and underserved communities.

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  Faith, Conflict, and Bracero Migration in Mexico’s Greater Bajío

  Alberto Garcia Maldonado

  Between 1942 and 1964, a bilateral initiative known as the Bracero Program allowed Mexican men to work in the United States as seasonal contract farmworkers, or braceros. All told, 4.65 million bracero contracts were distributed during the program’s duration, and a significant plurality of these contracts, at least 44 percent, went to rural workers from the Mexican states of Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, and Zacatecas. These five states were also an epicenter of conservative Catholic resistance to official policies like land redistribution and secular public education. This talk will explore how endemic, community-level conflicts between conservative Catholic and pro-government partisans fueled popular interest in migrating to the U.S. as braceros, influenced the bracero selection process, and shaped a regional migratory tradition that has endured into the early twenty-first century.

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  University Scholar Series: Susanna Khavul

  Susanna Khavul

  This event was not recorded.

  Is Mobile Money a Digital Gateway to Financial Inclusion?

  Large segments of the world’s population have no access to formal financial services and are considered financially excluded or unbanked. The vast majority live in developing countries, yet in the U.S., fifty million adults and their fifteen million children are underbanked and vulnerable. The recent widespread introduction of mobile money has made low-cost transfers, payments, and financial services available to a much wider segment of the population than the banking sector could reach in the past. Although widely adopted, the fundamental questions of whether mobile money fosters financial inclusion or is an effective tool for poverty alleviation remain unanswered. Khavul will build on an interdisciplinary research program and offer insights into the digitization of financial services. Such reflections prove timely given the increasing number of Silicon Valley firms that are creating more diverse and complex FinTech solutions, at least some of which seek to close the gap in financial inclusion.

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  University Scholar Series: Pei-Tzu Tsai

  Pei-Tzu Tsai

  Learning from Stuttering: A Path from Disorder to Diversity

  Tripping over our words while talking is quite common. While most people can move on without much effort, one out of 100 speakers experiences getting stuck (stuttering) on a daily basis since early childhood, and moving on can be emotionally and physically taxing. Stuttering is a speech disorder that is genetic-neurological in nature, with symptoms that can be affected by multiple factors across the lifespan. The exact cause of stuttering remains unclear, but its negative consequences on self-perception, social attitude, and quality of life are well documented. Though there is currently no cure, speech therapy has evolved in dynamic directions to address the complex impacts of the disorder and to advocate for diversity and inclusion of those who speak differently. Dr. Tsai’s research investigates the underlying factors of stuttering and stuttering therapy, with a goal of developing culturally and linguistically responsive services for individuals who stutter and advocating for acceptance and diversity in communication.

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  University Scholar Series: Ryan Skinnell

  Ryan Skinnell

  Two Truths and a Big Lie: The ‘Honest’ Mendacity of Fascist Rhetoric

  Fascists don’t just come to power—they have to persuade supporters, which is to say, they use rhetoric. One key to understanding fascist rhetoric is to understand fascists’ relationship to truth. In this talk, Skinnell distinguishes between two kinds of truth: factual and fascist. Factual truth is the theoretical basis for liberal democratic institutions, but there are inherent tensions between empirical fact and democratic values, including individualism, deliberation, and compromise. Fascists amplify and exploit these tensions to advocate for fascist truth. Fascist truth prioritizes performances of sincerity and authenticity over empirical facts. In fact, Skinnell contends that lying openly and egregiously reinforces a leader’s claim to authenticity because it shows their sincere commitment to the cause. In the end, Skinnell asserts that if we want to resist the re-emergence of fascism in the 21st century, we need to understand why people find fascist rhetoric so appealing in the first place.

  Due to a campus-wide internet connectivity issue during the hybrid presentation on September 22, 2021, a re-recording of the original presentation has been provided and includes questions asked in-person and via Zoom.

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  University Scholar Series: Tai-Ran Hsu

  Tai-Ran Hsu

  The Future of Sustainable Mechatronics is STEM Education

  The term “mechatronics'' is a branch of engineering that specializes in synergistic integrations of both mechanical and electronic technologies (the essential high technologies of Silicon Valley). Many products that we use in our day-to-day lives involve this technology, from smart household appliances like the digital buttons to operate your clothes washer to the microcomputers and processors that power GPS on your car’s touchscreen. However, mechatronics has far reaching applications to power the products that combat our biggest challenges to ensure a better tomorrow like, 24-hour farming and electric transportation to help us confront climate change and hunger. Professor Hsu’s research focuses on the integration of STEM education and sustainable mechatronics, which he considers vital to maintain leadership in local and global economies. He believes one of the reasons Silicon Valley is the world leader in high technology is due to its excellent public education, especially STEM education. STEM education, with synergistic teaching, comprehensive curricula, and interdisciplinary collaboration, such as our mechatronics program, will make SJSU a model of effective teaching and learning, and it will ultimately make Silicon Valley stronger than ever in innovation.

  Professor Hsu is a faculty member of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at San José State University (SJSU). With substantial financial support from the National Science Foundation and large high tech businesses in Silicon Valley, Hsu led an interdisciplinary group of faculty members from mechanical, electrical, materials, and general engineering, along with the Department of Physics and faculty from Mission College to establish the first, and still the only, mechatronics program at the undergraduate level in the country. He joined SJSU as a professor and chair of the department in 1990 and served for 12 years.

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  University Scholar Series: Virginia San Fratello

  Virginia San Fratello

  Play, Clay, and Chardonnay

  Virginia San Fratello's research is grounded in the discipline of architecture as the basis for creative production. In 2002, following the attacks on the World Trade Center, she formed the creative practice Rael San Fratello, with her partner Ronald Rael, in order to imagine alternative outcomes for architectural practice in a post 9/11 world. A primary focus of their work folds together indigenous and traditional craft and material practice, contemporary design technologies, and storytelling, as strategies to unravel the complexities of contemporary society. She comes from an extremely rural background and grew up in the forests and tobacco farms of the deep South. Humor, play, and hybridity are important aspects of the work of Rael San Fratello, often layered with serious topics that span the themes of immigration, start-up companies, waste, homelessness, fashion, graphic design, and 3D printing. Her practice is closely tied to her commitment to public education in her role as professor and chair in the Department of Design at San Jose State University.

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  University Scholar Series: Alberto Rascon

  Alberto Rascon

  A Quest to Control the Female Aedes aegypti Mosquito Population

  Like many thousands of species of mosquitoes, the female Aedes aegypti mosquito loves to feed on humans. However, what makes the female Aedes aegypti mosquito unique is that she is a carrier of the Yellow fever, Dengue fever, Chikungunya, and Zika viruses. These viruses can be spread to human hosts leading to fever, muscle and joint pain, headaches, and vomiting or more serious conditions. Unfortunately, there are no licensed vaccines in the United States to combat these viruses. The only method proven effective to control mosquito populations are pesticides; however, the mosquitoes are becoming resistant and the pesticides have unintended harmful effects on other pollinators. The Rascón’s lab goal is to determine a new vector control strategy by focusing on proteases (enzymes that break down proteins), specific only against mosquito biological process, thus protecting other insects or species from the quest to control the female Aedes aegypti population.

  Alberto Rascón is associate professor in the Department of Chemistry. He earned a PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Arizona on the expression and isolation of Aedes aegypti mosquito proteases. After his graduate studies, he joined Dr. James McKerrow’s lab at UCSF, an expert in parasitic protease biochemistry, working on proteases and enzymes in human parasitic worms, and proteases from human amoeba parasites. Dr. Rascón is a first generation Mexican American and in six and a half years at SJSU he has been heavily involved in underrepresented minority programs like the LSAMP, McNairs Scholars, NIH MARC, and RISE programs, eventually becoming a co-coordinator for the RISE program in 2016.

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  The Help-Yourself City: Legitimacy and Inequality in DIY Urbanism

  Gordon Douglas

  When local governments neglect public services or community priorities, how do concerned citizens respond? In The Help-Yourself City: Legitimacy and Inequality in DIY Urbanism, Dr. Douglas looks closely at people who take urban planning into their own hands with homemade signs and benches, guerrilla bike lanes, and more. He explores the frustration, creativity, and technical expertise behind these interventions, but also the position of privilege from which they often come. Presenting a needed analysis of this growing trend from vacant lots to city planning offices, The Help-Yourself City tells a street-level story of people’s relationships to their urban surroundings and a troubling individualization of participatory democracy.

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  University Scholar Series: Wendy Rouse

  Wendy Rouse

  Her Own Hero: The Origins of the Women's Self-Defense Movement, 1890-1920

  At the turn of the twentieth century, women organized to demand greater social and political freedoms like gaining the right to vote. However, few realize that the Progressive Era also witnessed the birth of the women’s self-defense movement. Some women were inspired to take up boxing and jiu-jitsu for personal reasons that ranged from protecting themselves to rejecting gendered notions about feminine weakness. Women’s self-defense was both a reflection of and a response to the broader cultural issues, including the women’s rights movement and the campaign for the vote. The discussion surrounding women’s self-defense deconstructed powerful myths about the source of violence against women and opened up conversations about family violence. Through self-defense training, women debunked patriarchal myths about inherent feminine weakness, creating a new image of women as powerful and self-reliant. Whether or not women consciously pursued self-defense for these reasons, their actions embodied feminist politics and a collective action demanding emancipation from the constrictions that prevented women from exercising their full rights as citizens and human beings.

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  University Scholar Series: Craig Simpson

  Craig Simpson

  The Kent State Shootings at 50: Rage, Reflection, and Remembrance

  Drawing from over 50 interviews from The Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, the authors examine how these detailed, varied and at-times contradictory accounts challenge and deepen our understanding of the events of May 4, 1970, which culminated in four KSU students killed and nine more wounded by gunfire from the Ohio National Guard. Simpson will explore how their methodology led to both obstacles and opportunities, resulting in a text departing in some ways from its original conception, yet one that fulfilled their objective to show how “The Long 1960s,” and the conflicts from that era that still rage in our own, can be illuminated at the intersection of individual and collective memory. He will also discuss potential avenues for further research as we near the 50th anniversary of this pivotal event in contemporary American history.