How can clouds help to reduce global warming? 

Is The Cloud Whitening Machine, a tool that creates perfectly suspended droplets of water resembling fog, a new weapon to fight global warming? 
Leuven MindGate invites no other than Dr. Armand Neukermans, a Flemish physicist and inventor in Silicon Valley who contributes to this project, to give you the answers.

We have the privilege to welcome Armand Neukermans as a speaker for a select group of 40 people.

Neukermans leads a team of elder Silicon Valley scientists who are building an audacious device that might solve one of humanity’s most profound dilemmas: the Marine Cloud Brightening Project, designed to cool a warming planet,
an effort started with funds from Bill Gates.

The men — retired physicists, engineers, chemists and computer experts from some of Silicon Valley’s top tech companies — have been meeting four days a week for eight years in the Sunnyvale lab to design a tool that creates perfectly suspended droplets of water resembling fog.
The energy-efficient "cloud-whitening" machine hurls tiny seawater droplets into a graceful trajectory. The first step of a research project is to boost the brightness of clouds to reflect rays of sunlight back into space.

Cloud Bleaching is in the opion of Neukermans a kind of insurance in case we fail collectively in our attempts to stop global warming in time.  To The San Jose Mercury News he said that “We would be perfectly happy if our method works beautifully — and it never needs to be used.” 

Programme

14h30:	Welcome coffee
14h45:	Welcome by Leuven MindGate
14h50:	Armand Neukermans - "How can clouds help reduce global warming?"
15h50:	Q&A
16h20:	Coffee chat

About the speaker

Armans Neukermans graduated with degrees in both EE and ME from Louvain University in 1962. He joined General Electric in 1964 to do research in advanced magnetic recording. He obtained the PHD in solid state Physics from Stanford University in 1970.
His achievements include the development of the earliest ink jet printers and he led teams at Xerox Labs, Hewlett-Packard, Tencor and Xros.
He is the author of 45 publications, and is the inventor of over 75 patents in very diverse fields. He was named Silicon Valley “Inventor of the year” in 2001 and won the Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship from Belcham.
His optical switch company Xros was bought in 2000 by Nortel Networks for €2.8 billion in stock. 

Since his retirement, he has been involved in various environmental projects (including the foundation of the Big Sur Environmental Institute) and in fostering the causes of various social entrepreneurs, such as D-Rev, Jaipur Foot, and Benetech’ s Landmine project.
The Jaipur Knee project, initiated and directed by the Neukermans Trust at Stanford, has resulted in a widely recognized $20 knee prosthesis of which over 11000 are now in operation worldwide. 

Early November he gave this exposé in Palo Alto, and now we invited him on the 22nd in Leuven for an exclusive talk. The seats are limited to only 40 participants, so be sure to register quickly.

Dr. Armand Neukermans 

Practical information

Date: Wednesday 22 November 2017 (14h30-16h20)
Location: imec tower (room 1b), Remisebosweg 1, 3001 Leuven
You can find a route description here.

Participation is free, but the number of participants will be limited.

Registration

Registrations before Monday 20 November 2017, preferably via the online registration form or by email to admin@leuvenmindgate.be (including all contact details).

After registration you will receive a confirmation and route description. 

 

Best regards,
The Leuven MindGate team

Concept and content programme © Leuven.Inc