The White House is beginning a new series of Google+ Hangouts starting tomorrow titled “We the Geeks,” which will highlight the future of science, technology and innovation in this country.
Topics include commercial space exploration, STEM education, turning science fiction to science facts, among others.
The first Hangout will focus on Grand Challenges, ambitious goals that demand advances in innovation and breakthrough in science and technology, such as the recently announced BRAIN Initiative.
Another example is the Energy Department’s SunShot, an initiative to make solar energy as cheap as coal, and EV Everywhere, an initiative announced to make electric vehicles as affordable and convenient to own as today’s gasoline-powered vehicles.
The lineup for Thursday’s event, which begins at 2 p.m. EST, includes:
- Tom Kalil, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s deputy director for technology and innovation
- Matt Grob, executive vice president and chief technology officer, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., to discuss the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE and other bold research initiatives at Qualcomm
- Rob High, IBM fellow, vice president and CTO, IBM Watson Solutions, to discuss what’s next for Watson and the field of cognitive computing
- Kathryn Latham, recent graduate from Duke University with a degree in engineering and participant in the National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenge Scholars Program
- Sebastian Thrun, a research professor at Stanford, a Google fellow, and a co-founder of Udacity, to discuss Google’s self-driving car and Google X
