This year's theme is towards shaping impactful spaces around our passions. Over 10 years ago Passion Talks was built out of conversations from PhD researchers at Stanford, Berkeley, UCSF, and UCSC. Today, we call for people to submit their passions. The program committee will curate and select talks for a virtual poster session on November 5th (Saturday) 9 am - 11 am Pacific.
We have an incredible spread of topics and passions this year, organized into spaces and communities around solving problems and cultivating solutions. This year, we are excited to present galleries of talks around Solving Addiction, Innovative Education, Artistic Expressions of Resistance, Artificial Intelligence, and Blockchain in a virtual interactive meeting space. By request of the speakers this year and the depth of topics, we are restricting attendance to "Invitation-Only." Please submit a request below to attend!
DANNY KIM
Danny is a leader in business and education and applies his entrepreneurial skills to transform both areas. As the founder and CTO of FullArmor Corp. (www.fullarmor.com) founded in 1987, Danny has worked with more than 30 of the Fortune 50 including Walmart, Boeing, and Bank of America and have done OEM and partnerships with large enterprise vendors such as Microsoft, NetIQ, Citrix, Dell, MicroFocus and others. As an educator, Danny heads the STEM and Research programs at Valley Christian Schools in San Jose, CA (www.vcs.net/amse), a K-12 school with over 2700 students. In addition, Danny serves as the Managing Director of Quest Institute for Quality Education (www.q4excellence.com), that provides one of a kind educational programs that allows students to create science experiments that run on board the International Space Station and newly released program to perform underwater research in the world’s only underwater research facility dedicated to education. Danny holds several patents around enterprise security and cloud computing and has recently led a team of high school students to become the youngest team in XPRIZE history to win the $1 million-dollar international competition to innovate in the oceans. Kim holds a BS in Computer Science from Cornell University.
DR. WARREN YAMASHITA
Warren Yamashita is a family medicine and addiction medicine physician who works at an underserved federally qualified health center in Santa Ana, CA. He is adjunct faculty at Stanford Addiction Medicine Fellowship, where he teaches their Diversity Equality and Inclusion curriculum. He founded and Chairs the Christian Medical and Dental Association (CMDA) – Section on Addiction Medicine, which is an multiprofessional and interdisciplinary network of healthcare professionals and faith-based leaders working together in partnership to free their communities from addiction. He also serves on CMDA’s Racism, Reconciliation, Equality, and Diversity Committee. Warren is currently conducting research with Stanford and the Asian American Drug Abuse Program to break the model minority myth around Asian American and Pacific Islander substance use and recovery. He is passionate about caring for the whole person and exposing myths and stigmas that exacerbate addiction, overdoses, and poor health in our communities.
CHRISTIAN BUSTOS
Christian Bustos is a Kapampangan-American, born in the Mission District and raised in the Excelsior District of San Francisco, California. Cross works with an arts nonprofit newly based in Brisbane, California called Lyrical Opposition. He also serves as a spoken word poet and graphic designer. Christian is a San Francisco State University Alumni, where he received his Bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Electronic Communication Arts with an Emphasis in Business. Cross was the Project Manager and Executive Producer for the short film, Re-Entrification: Oakland. One random fact is that his favorite movie is Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. His whole life he’s been infatuated by the synergy of culture and organic produce.
SINEO
Sineo is a first generation of immigration and descendant of american slavery. Born in San Francisco raised in the Bay Area. Sineo has worked in the arts & community space for over 20 years refining his approach to supporting people in adverse circumstances. Sineo is a music artist who produces and performs his music focused on healing and change. You can find his voice on the Lyrical Ones podcast as well as the narrator of the LO produced movie Re-Entrification.
DR. HANNAH EAGLESON
Dr. Hannah Eagleson is Director of Innovation & Partnerships for the American Scientific Affiliation, a professional society for Christians in science and science-adjacent fields. As a national faith and science organizer and the editor of Science and Faith: Student Questions Explored (Hendrickson, 2019), Dr. Eagleson frequently designs programming to support faith and work conversations. In the 2022/2023 year she will hold a visiting scholar role at Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, where she will create a report for religious nonprofits on key scholarship and best practices for events engaging with religion, social sciences, and artificial intelligence. She will also hold a Visiting Fellow role at New College Berkeley. Dr. Eagleson is also Associate Director of InterVarsity’s Emerging Scholars Network and Director of Graduate & Faculty Engagement for Chesterton House, a Center for Christian Studies at Cornell.
JOANNA NG
Joanna Ng pivoted to innovate in an entrepreneurial start-up setting after leaving IBM, continuing in AI, integrating IoT and Blockchain, focusing on augmented cognition. Joanna’s niche is translating complex abstractions and theories into useful solutions. Joanna had a seven-year tenure (October 2008 – October 2015) as the Head of Research and Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies, IBM Canada Lab. An IBM Master Inventor, she was granted 47 patents; co-authored two computer science books with Springer: The Smart Internet (2010) and The Personal Web (2013). She also published and co-authored over twenty peer-reviewed academic papers. Joanna has founded a ministry to integrate faith and work called KOE (Kingdom On Earth)
DR. RICHARD ZHANG
Richard Zhang is a Senior Research Engineer at Google Brain in Pittsburgh, where he leads research efforts on hyperparameter optimization, Bayesian methods, and theoretical deep learning. He also spearheads faith-based diversity initiatives within Google to empower people of faith to bring their unique perspectives to research discussions and core initiatives in fairness, responsibility, ethics. He is grateful to have graduated with a PhD in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at UC Berkeley and before that, Richard graduated in the Great Class of 2014 from Princeton University, where he first personally experienced God in a wave of revival.
JOHN KNOX
John lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. From a background working strategy consulting he transitioned to spending 7 years building mission driven startups (including an IPO with SurveyMonkey in ‘18). Recently he was the Director of Customer Success at CrowdSmart.AI and is an investment advisor and customer success coach for startups in the Silicon Valley. 2022-2023 he is a writing a book on theology and technology.
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We the participants, employees, and other individuals involved with Passion Talks, come together for the open exchange of ideas, the freedom of thought and expression, and for respectful academic/scientific debate. This requires a community and an environment that recognizes and respects the inherent worth of every person.
RESPONSIBILITY
All participants, organizers, reviewers, speakers, media, sponsors, and volunteers (referred to as “Participants” collectively throughout this document) at our Conference, workshops, and Conference-sponsored social events are required to agree with this Code of Conduct both during an event and on official communication channels, including social media.
Sponsors are equally subject to this Code of Conduct. In particular, sponsors should not use images, activities, or other materials that are of a sexual, racial, or otherwise offensive nature. This code applies both to official sponsors as well as any organization that uses the Conference name as branding as part of its activities at or around the Conference.
Organizers will enforce this Code, and it is expected that all Participants will cooperate to help ensure a safe and inclusive environment for everyone.
POLICY
The conference commits itself to providing an experience for all Participants that is free from the following:
Harassment, bullying, and discrimination which includes but is not limited to:
Offensive comments related to age, race, religion, creed, color, gender (including transgender/gender identity/gender expression), sexual orientation, medical condition, physical or intellectual disability, pregnancy, or medical conditions, national origin or ancestry.
intimidation, personal attacks, harassment, unnecessary disruption of talks or other conference events.
Inappropriate or unprofessional behavior that interferes with another's full participation including:
sexual harassment, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, inappropriate physical contact, unwelcome attention, public vulgar exchanges, derogatory name-calling, and diminutive characterizations.
Use of images, activities, or other materials that are of a sexual, racial, or otherwise offensive nature that may create an inappropriate or toxic environment.
Disorderly, boisterous, or disruptive conduct including fighting, coercion, theft, damage to property, or any mistreatment or non-businesslike behavior towards participants.
"Zoom bombing" or any virtual activity that is not related to the topic of discussion which detracts from the topic or the purpose of the program. This includes inappropriate remarks in chat areas as deemed inappropriate by presenters/monitors/event leaders.
Individuals and organizations that make false claims or accusations related to Passion Talks or inappropriately make comments online as if they represent Passion Talks without advanced approval.
Scientific misconduct including fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism of paper submissions or research presentations, including demos, exhibits or posters.
This Code of Conduct applies to the actual meeting sites and conference venues where Passion Talks business is being conducted, including physical, virtual venues, and official virtual engagement platforms, including video, virtual streaming, and chat-based interactions. Passion Talks is not responsible for non-sponsored activity or behavior that may occur at non-sponsored locations such as hotels, restaurants, physical, virtual, or other locations not otherwise deemed a sanctioned space for Passion Talks sponsored events. Nonetheless, any issues brought to the Passion Talks Committee will be considered. However, it is also the case that Passion Talks cannot actively monitor voluntary social media platforms and cannot follow-up on every transaction occurring between individuals who voluntarily engage in argument and altercation outside the Neural Information Processing Systems sponsored events virtual or otherwise.
ACTION
If a Participant engages in any inappropriate behavior as defined herein, the Conference organizers may take action as deemed appropriate, including: a formal or informal warning to the offender, expulsion from the conference with no refund, barring from participation in future conferences or their organization, reporting the incident to the offender’s local institution or funding agencies, or reporting the incident to local authorities or law enforcement. A response of "just joking" is not acceptable. If action is taken, an appeals process will be made available. There will be no retaliation against any Participant who brings a complaint or submits an incident report in good faith or who honestly assists in investigating such a complaint.
COMPLAINT REPORTING
If you have concerns related to your participation/interaction at the Conference or Conference sanctioned events, or observe someone else's difficulties, or have any other concerns you wish to share, please contact the Passion Talks Email at info@passiontalks.org.
(policy is adapted from: https://nips.cc/public/CodeOfConduct)