2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit: Brain Enhancement in the Digital Age (December 5–7th, 2017)

The Sum­mit will explore and advance the core themes dis­cussed in the arti­cle Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright. All times below indi­cate US Pacif­ic Time; San Fran­cis­co, CA.

You can check all Speak­er Bios Here.

December 5th: Navigating the Opportunities and Risks Ahead

Kick­start­ed with a keynote by scientist/ pol­i­cy-mak­er/ entre­pre­neur Dr. Tom Insel,  the Sum­mit will host a Brainnova­tions Pitch Con­test (details HERE) to dis­cuss the lat­est tech­nolo­gies for Brain Health & Enhance­ment. 12 select­ed star­tups will get to pitch their inno­v­a­tive approach and solu­tions to our dis­tin­guished Judges –our very own “Sharp Tank”– and to all Sum­mit participants.

The Sharp Tank will select a Win­ner per cat­e­go­ry, facil­i­tat­ed by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Sharp­Brains’ CEO & Edi­tor-in-Chief, and Dr. Bob Bilder, Direc­tor of the UCLA Ten­nen­baum Cen­ter for the Biol­o­gy of Cre­ativ­i­ty.

8.30–9.30am. The Future of Men­tal Health, Today

• Dr. Tom Insel, Pres­i­dent and Co-Founder of Mind­strong Health

9.30–10.45am. Top Brain­no­va­tion to mea­sure Brain Health & Per­for­mance. The three Final­ists are:

• Savonix – pitch by Greg Wong, VP Prod­uct Management
• HealthTech Con­nex – pitch by Dr. Ryan D’Arcy, Pres­i­dent & Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Officer
• Neu­raMetrix – pitch by Jan Samzelius, Co-Founder & CEO
• Judged by: Dr. Adam Haim, Chief of the Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research (SBIR) and Small Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer (STTR) Pro­grams at the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health (NIMH); Dr. David Barash, Chief Med­ical Offi­cer and ED of Glob­al Health at GE Foun­da­tion; Dr. Edward Kli­phuis, Invest­ment Direc­tor at Mer­ck Ven­tures; Dr. Karen Postal, Pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Clin­i­cal Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy (AACN)

10.45–11.45am. Water­cool­er Chats/ Nour­ish­ment break

• We’ll spend some time con­nect­ing with oth­er par­tic­i­pants, dis­cussing high­lights, and exchang­ing ideas and con­tact information.

11.45am-1pm. Top Brain­no­va­tion to improve Brain Health & Per­for­mance. The three Final­ists are:

• Click Ther­a­peu­tics – pitch by David Klein, Co-Founder & CEO
• AUG­MEN­Tx – pitch by Dr. Albert Kwon, Co-Founder & CEO
• Sin­cro­lab – pitch by Igna­cio de Ramon, Co-Founder & CEO
• Judged by: Alexan­dra More­house, Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer at Ban­ner Health; Dr. Bill Reich­man, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Bay­crest; Col­in Mil­ner, Founder and CEO of the Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil on Active Aging (ICAA); Dan­ny Dankn­er, CEO and Co-founder of Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing; Zack Lynch, Gen­er­al Part­ner at JAZZ Ven­ture Partners

1–2.15pm. Top Brain­no­va­tion har­ness­ing Big Data. The three Final­ists are:

• WEKIT — Wear­able Expe­ri­ence for Knowl­edge Inten­sive Train­ing – pitch by Paul Lefrere, Inno­va­tion Lead
• Sapi­en Labs – pitch by Tara Thi­a­gara­jan, Founder & Chief Scientist
• Myn­dY­ou – pitch by Shi­ra Yama Nir, Project Manager
• Judged by: Bill Tuck­er, Senior Advi­sor to the K12 Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram at the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion; Eduar­do Briceño, CEO and Co-founder of Mind­set Works; John Cam­mack, Angel Investor; Neil Alli­son, Direc­tor of Busi­ness Mod­el Inno­va­tion at Pear­son North America

2.30–3.45pm. Top Brain­no­va­tion to boost Work­place Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and Resilience. The three Final­ists are:

• Beam Rid­ers – pitch by Jafar Sab­bah, Founder & CEO
• MyCog­ni­tion – pitch by Mar­ti­na Rat­to, Cog­ni­tive Scientist
• The Touch­point Solu­tion – pitch by Dr. Amy Serin, Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist & Co-Founder

• Judged by: Ariel Garten, Founder and Chief Evan­ge­lism Offi­cer at Inter­aX­on; Char­lie Hartwell, Oper­at­ing Part­ner at Bridge Builders Col­lab­o­ra­tive; Kath­leen Herath, Asso­ciate Vice Pres­i­dent Health & Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at Nation­wide Insur­ance; Lisa Neu­berg­er, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Strat­e­gy + Inno­va­tion at Accen­ture Cor­po­rate Citizenship

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December 7th: Expo Day

Select­ed Sum­mit Spon­sors and Part­ners will show­case their most promis­ing brain health & enhance­ment ini­tia­tives and solutions.

8.30–9am. Adam Gaz­za­ley, UCSF Pro­fes­sor of Neu­rol­o­gy, will present Neu­roscape.

9–9.30am. Dr. Wal­ter Green­leaf, Med­ical VR/ AR Expert at Stan­ford Vir­tu­al Human Inter­ac­tion Lab, will pro­vide an overview of health appli­ca­tions of vir­tu­al & aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (VR/AR).

9.30–10am. Dr. Lew Lim, Founder & CEO of Vielight, will dis­cuss pho­to­bio­mod­u­la­tion as a new way to enhance brain function.

10.30–11am. Dr. Bob Schafer, Direc­tor of Research at Lumos Labs, will present their expand­ing vision for brain train­ing, includ­ing mindfulness.

11am-Noon. Lunch break

Noon-12.30pm. Dr. Chris Walling, Chair­man of the Edu­ca­tion­al Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee at
The Alzheimer’s Research and Pre­ven­tion Foun­da­tion (ARPF), will present the new Brain Longevi­ty Ther­a­py Training.

12.30–1pm. Dr. Leanne Young, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Brain Per­for­mance Insti­tute at UT-Dal­las Cen­ter for Brain­Health will present the new 62,000-square-foot Brain Per­for­mance Institute.

1–1.30pm. Deb­bie Gilmore, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of The Arrow­smith Pro­gram, will present plans to bet­ter equip 100+ schools help­ing stu­dents with spe­cial needs.

1.30–2pm. Dr. Ran­dal Koene, Lead Sci­en­tist at Ker­nel, will dis­cuss future direc­tions of neu­ro­engin­ner­ing and human com­put­er interfaces.

Summit Sponsors and Partners

Gold Sponsors

AARP is a non­prof­it, non­par­ti­san, social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion with a mem­ber­ship of near­ly 38 mil­lion that helps peo­ple turn their goals and dreams into real pos­si­bil­i­ties, strength­ens com­mu­ni­ties and fights for the issues that mat­ter most to fam­i­lies. Its Glob­al Coun­cil on Brain Health (GCBH), found­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Age UK, is an inde­pen­dent col­lab­o­ra­tive cre­at­ed to pro­vide trust­ed infor­ma­tion on how to main­tain and improve brain health.

VieLight has a mis­sion to engi­neer and com­mer­cial­ize non-inva­sive devices based on pho­to­bio­mod­u­la­tion that are safe and effec­tive, easy to use and afford­able – all to tru­ly help improve one’s qual­i­ty of life. It focus­es on devel­op­ing new-gen­er­a­tion home-use brain stim­u­la­tion devices that are enjoy­ing a grow­ing rep­u­ta­tion to be help­ful for men­tal acu­ity in var­i­ous pre­sen­ta­tions. Its prod­ucts are used by both prac­ti­tion­ers and con­sumers all over the world.

Silver Sponsors

The Alzheimer’s Research and Pre­ven­tion Foun­da­tion (ARPF) has a mis­sion to empow­er peo­ple to build healthy brains and reduce the inci­dence of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease by con­duct­ing clin­i­cal research and pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment outreach. The Arrow­smith Pro­gram, avail­able in 80+ schools in the US, Cana­da, Aus­tralia and New Zealand, is a com­pre­hen­sive suite of cog­ni­tive pro­grams for stu­dents with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties to train key brain func­tions involved in learning. Ban­ner Health is one of the largest non­prof­it health sys­tems in the USA, employ­ing more than 50,000 staff mem­bers in 29 hos­pi­tals and oth­er set­tings rang­ing from home care and long-term care, to lab­o­ra­to­ries and reha­bil­i­ta­tion services.

EMOTIV is a bioin­for­mat­ics com­pa­ny advanc­ing under­stand­ing of the human brain using elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG) with a mis­sion to empow­er indi­vid­u­als and accel­er­ate brain research globally. Lumos­i­ty was found­ed to help peo­ple keep their brains chal­lenged thanks to a sim­ple online tool allow­ing any­one to train core cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. From neu­ro­science to visu­al art, they com­bine diverse dis­ci­plines to cre­ate engag­ing brain train­ing pro­grams and, through the Human Cog­ni­tion Project, they col­lab­o­rate with over 100 lead­ing researchers, clin­i­cians and teach­ers from insti­tu­tions around the world. Mind­Maze has devel­oped a break­through plat­form to build intu­itive human machine inter­faces com­bin­ing vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR), com­put­er graph­ics, brain imag­ing & neu­ro­science, enabling excit­ing new appli­ca­tions in gam­ing, brain machine con­trol, and healthcare.

Partners

Sum­mit Spon­sors are insti­tu­tions devel­op­ing inno­v­a­tive brain health solu­tions and will­ing to help fund this unique event.

Sum­mit Part­ners are insti­tu­tions help­ing pro­mote the Sum­mit through their respec­tive plat­forms and com­mu­ni­ties to ensure max­i­mum par­tic­i­pa­tion and impact.

Please con­tact us if you want to dis­cuss details.

 

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where will the Sum­mit take place? Over the Inter­net. Par­tic­i­pate access the vir­tu­al meet­ing room from any loca­tion — all that is required is a com­put­er with Inter­net connection.

What is a vir­tu­al con­fer­ence? The Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit is just like a phys­i­cal con­fer­ence — reg­is­tered par­tic­i­pants can access all pre­sen­ta­tions, ask press­ing ques­tions, and con­nect with speak­ers and fel­low par­tic­i­pants. The main dif­fer­ence is, no one needs to travel.

I can­not par­tic­i­pate live in all ses­sions. Will they be record­ed? Yes, all ses­sions will be record­ed and avail­able at no extra cost to reg­is­tered par­tic­i­pants for a full year after the Summit.

Do you offer press pass­es? Yes, please con­tact us with details on your pub­li­ca­tion and idea.

Do you offer CEUs/ CMEs? Sor­ry, we don’t. But we do offer a Cer­tifi­cate of Atten­dance to those who request it.

What is the typ­i­cal pro­file of Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants? By design, the Sum­mit is tru­ly cross-sec­tor and mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary, so there’s no one “typ­i­cal pro­file” — the com­mon theme for par­tic­i­pants is work­ing in acad­e­mia, indus­try or prac­tice and look­ing to explore and dis­cuss, in a high qual­i­ty and care­ful­ly curat­ed envi­ron­ment, the lat­est in brain health and performance.

Over 1,000 pro­fes­sion­als in 20+ coun­tries have par­tic­i­pat­ed in Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mits. For the 2017 Sum­mit, 177 pio­neers have reg­is­tered so far (rep­re­sent­ed by the dots in the image to the right), in 23 countries.