2015 East Coast Retreat | Fannie and John Hertz Foundation

Patents, pyrotechnics, physics applied to immunology, and what’s new at Google captured the range of speaker-led topics at the annual east coast retreat.

Date:

Oct 9, 2015 - Oct 11, 2015

Location:

Thompson Island, Boston, MA

Materials:

Agenda

Forty Fellows ventured to Thompson Island, Massachusetts, to collaborate with each other and learn from guest speakers.

Chuck Wilson, Hertz Fellow and President of Unum Therapeutics spoke about his experience launching a cancer immunotherapy startup. He shared observations about how his physics background is useful in biological applications. Jim Freedman, MIT Technology Licensing Office, discussed how to patent inventions generated during graduate education. Alfred Spector, Hertz Fellow and Vice President at Google, spoke about Google’s present and future goals. John Steinberg, Pyrotechnics, & Energetic Materials and Kurt Medlin, Senior Analyst at Kaiser Permanente, explained the chemistry behind the pyrotechnics used in fireworks.

After a clambake on the beach, John and Kurt ignited controlled pyrotechnic demonstrations to enact the chemical reactions they described. Thank you to the East Coast Retreat organizing team: Max Mankin, Kelly Moynihan and Vyas Ramanan; and to sponsor Louis Lerman.