The average person will spend 80,000 hours of their adult like working. That is a lot of time that could be put to good use for yourself, your community, and the world. The website 80000hours.org has collected extensive research and interviews to determine what makes people happy with their job choices and their impact on the world. We'll go over that work to help you think about how you want to spend your 80,000 hours.

This course will be a discussion-based overview on the ways in which recent advances in technology will (and already do) impact society. No scientific knowledge or interest is required. Just come prepared to listen to some short examples and share your ideas

We all have an intuitive notion of attention, but what is it really? In this course we'll explore the study of attention, a topic which has become widely popular in neuroscience lately. We'll discuss the many types of attention studied scientifically and what is known about their biological basis.

Artificial intelligence has expanded rapidly in recent years, particularly through the field of machine learning. Computers can now perform certain behaviors at human level accuracy. But do they do it the same was as humans? Using vision as an example, we'll compare how computers process images to how the human visual system works.

From meteorology to neuroscience to biochemistry, mathematical models and computer simulations are used to aide understanding of complex systems. We'll go over what a computational and/or mathematical model is, the many ways they're used in a variety of fields, and how scientists build them.

Being able to read and comprehend published research articles is an important skill not just for scientists but for anyone who desires to understand where information comes from. But these articles can contain lots of jargon, complicated figures, and obscure writing styles, making them daunting for most people to approach. In this workshop, we'll discuss how to break down the different sections of a research article to understand just what was done, how it was done, and why it matters. We'll also discuss different types of research papers and different means of presenting information graphically.

Have you ever wondered about how you are able to see the world in color? This course will go over the basics of the science of color and the how color information is processed by the brain. Included will be examples of color illusions and mechanisms of color blindness.

AI is responsible for how Siri can understand your quandaries and Watson can beat Jeopardy champions. In this course, we'll explore the major concepts that allow intelligent machines to function, along with some history of how they developed and views of the potential future they could take us to.