Organizer
Organizing Committee
Hannah Eagleson, Associate Director, InterVarsity Emerging Scholars Network; Director of Innovation & Partnerships, American Scientific Affiliation. hannah.eagleson@intervarsity.org
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.
Richard Zhang, Google Brain, Senior Research Engineer. PhD in Math/Statistics from Berkeley. qiuyiz@google.com
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.
Joanna Ng, founder of an AI startup. A former IBMer, 7 year tenure as head, directing research in IBM Canada. She was an IBM Master Inventor with 47 patents granted and other publications. joanna.ng@devarim.design
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)
This year's theme is towards shaping impactful spaces around our passions. We will be meeting virtually in a poster session format with interactive sessions in a game-based world. A virtual poster event is an interactive forum where researchers, enthusiasts, practitioners, and students present the latest developments and ongoing projects and needs. Poster presenters discuss their work, receive feedback, inspire and find inspiration from others, and network with like-minded community members.
For the past year, we've seen substantial changes in our outdated institutions, traditions, and practices. At Passion Talks we have always held a strong commitment towards innovating and trying new things through the spaces in which we collaborate and impact. This year, we are excited to be working on some major pivots for 2023. Stay tuned for more opportunities to engage in addition to our usual workshop announcements. 2022 is a year where there will be revitalized inspiration for liberating the old and realizing the new. We look forward to thoughtfully and prayerfully inventing the future together.
