Schedule

Continental Breakfast

Welcoming Remarks

Zrinka Stahuljak, PhD (Director, UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies)
David Schaberg, PhD (Dean of Humanities, UCLA College)
Lee Walcott (Managing Director Emeritus, the Ahmanson Foundation)
Francis Wells, FRCS (Conference Organizer)

Opening Lecture

Introduced by Massimo Ciavolella, PhD (Conference Organizer)

Leonardo and His Place in the Renaissance
Kenneth Bartlett, PhD (Professor of History and Renaissance Studies, University of Toronto)

Session I: Flight – Francis Wells, FRCS; Chair

“When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long to return” – Leonardo da Vinci

9:30
Leonardo and Flight
Matthew Landrus, PhD (Research Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Oxford)

10:00
Birds, Airplanes and Leonardo’s Fliers: Modern Perspectives on Renaissance Dreams of Flight
Charles Adler, PhD (Professor of Physics, St Mary’s College of Maryland)

10:30
Coffee break / Exhibits open

11:00
Leonardo on Flight: an Historical Introduction
Domenico Laurenza, PhD (Museo Galileo, Florence)

11:30
Lunar Men: From Leonardo to the 19th Century
Maite Alvarez, PhD (Project Specialist, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles)

12:00
The Golden Age of Space Exploration: Now and in the Future
Charles Elachi PhD (Former Director, Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Professor Emeritus, Electrical Engineering and Planetary Science, Caltech)

12:30
Lunch break / Exhibits open

1:45
Special Guest Lecture: Introduced by Francis Wells FRCS
The Golden Age of Space Flight
Colonel Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7 Astronaut, Houston)

2:45
Coffee break / Exhibits open

Session 2: Leonardo and the Heart – Noel G. Boyle, MD, PhD; Chair

“With what words will you describe this heart so as not to fill a book?” – Leonardo da Vinci

3:00
The Heart of Leonardo
Francis Wells, FRCS (Senior Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Royal Papworth Hospital and Cambridge University)

3:30
The Detailed Representation of the Human Heart: The Work of McAlpine and Others in the Modern Context
Kalyanam Shivkumar, MD, PhD (Professor of Medicine, Radiology and Bioengineering, UCLA)

4:00
The Ultra-Modern Computer-Generated Imaging of the Heart and Its Use in Teaching, Research, and Clinical Practice
Shumpei Mori, MD (Research Associate, Kobe University, Japan and UCLA)

4:30
The Transparent View: Artistic Anatomy at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice
Roberta Ballestriero, PhD (Associate Lecturer, University of the Arts London)
Mauro Zocchetta (Professor, Academy of Fine Arts in Venice)

5:00
Reception

6:00 – 7:30
Screening of the documentary film Being Leonardo da Vinci (2019), directed by Massimiliano Finazzer Flory and produced by RAI Cinema. In Italian with English subtitles (1 hour, 20 minutes). Director in attendance. In collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles.

Continental Breakfast

Session 3: Disruptive Technologies. Leonardo, Robotics, and Artificial Intelligence – Morteza Gharib, PhD; Chair

“Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active”
“Nature never breaks her own laws” – Leonardo da Vinci

9:30
Leonardo and Robotics
Sara Tagliagamba, PhD (Post-doctoral Fellow, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris)

10:00
Deep Learning, Leonardo Style
Morteza Gharib, PhD (Professor of Aeronautics and Bioinspired Engineering, Caltech)

10:30
Coffee break / Exhibits open

11:00
From Man to Molecules: Nano-Technology and the Next ‘Big Bang’
James Gimzewski, FRS (Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCLA)

11:30
Disruptive Technologies and their Effect on the Modern World
Roger Malina, PhD (Professor of Arts & Technology and Professor of Physics, University of Texas, Dallas)

12:00
Lunch break / Exhibits open

Session 4: Art Meets Science – Roger Malina, PhD; Chair

“Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment” – Leonardo da Vinci

1:30
What Would Leonardo’s Strategies Be for Compelling Action on the Climate Crisis?
Claire Farago, PhD (Professor Emerita, University of Colorado Boulder)
in dialogue with
Victoria Vesna, PhD (Professor of Design and Media Arts; Director, Art|Sci Center, UCLA)

2:30
The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana
Victoria Steele, PhD (Curator, UCLA Collections)

3:00
From Anthropomorphic to Biomorphic architecture: Quo Vadis? The evolution of the built environment with the logistic progress of human kind
Francis Wells, FRCS (Senior Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Royal Papworth Hospital and Cambridge University)

3:30
Concluding Remarks by Conference Organizers

4:00-5:00
Exhibits open

Concert

Schoenberg Hall Auditorium

Chopin Etudes, Bk 1, & Etudes by Russian composers including Rachmaninoff
Patrick Hemmerlé (Concert Pianist – Diploma Paris Conservatoire; Cambridge, UK)

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