The Scientech Club upcoming events

Prediction Markets: The Good and the Bad (June 29, 2026)

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Speaker: Rick Whitener

A prediction market is where individuals trade contracts based on the outcomes of unknown future events such as election results or sports competitions. The earliest US market is the Iowa Eletronis Market which has been run by the Univeristy of Iowa as an education tool since 1988. This talk will outline areas where these markets have proved to be useful and areas where problems have been created.

Rick Whitener has a BA in Economics from Davidson College. He is a former banker and IT consultant.

No Meeting - Independence Day 250 (July 06, 2026)

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Col. Eli Lilly (July 13, 2026)

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Speaker: Richard Gunderman

Eli Lilly and Co, founded in 1876, is the largest private corporation in Indiana, and the Lilly Endowment is the largest private philanthropy in the US.

Richard Gunderman is Chancellor's Professor of Radiology at the IU School of Medicine. He is a member of the Scientech Club and a frequent program contributor.

STEM Education in Early Childhood (July 20, 2026)

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Speaker: Karan Young

Before children read fluently, calculate logically, or think scientifically, the brain must first build the architecture for learning — a foundation on which all future learning depends. During these early critical years, the brain forms more than one million new neural connections every second; what is used is strengthened, and what is unused is pruned.

This presentation connects modern brain research with Montessori’s understanding of movement, language, independence, attention, self-regulation and nature — an educational approach increasingly supported by neuroscience.

As education struggles to prepare children for tomorrow’s world, the question becomes: what kinds of experiences most profoundly develop the human mind?

Karan Young is a highly experienced and trained educator of young children, ages 2-6, particularly in the Montessori method. She has a BA from the University of Tennessee, a Masters in Early Childhood Education from Loyola University, 2 AMI Montessori diplomas (0-3 and 3-6) as well as a certificate in Brain Based learning. She founded four Int’l Montessori schools, 2 in Helsinki, Finland and 2 in St. Petersburg, Russia which she led for 20 years. She has worked on four continents as an educational leader and guide.

Managing Wastewater Treatment (August 03, 2026)

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Speaker: Rick Reed

The speake will talk about the engineering involved in identifying and addressing problems in wastewater managment in the Indianapolis area.

Rick Reed is a Service Condition Analyst for Citizens Energy Group.

Indiana Weather and Climate: A Look at the Past, Present and Future (August 10, 2026)

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Speaker: Sam Lashley

This talk will examine past weather and climate trends, recent weather events, and potential future weather conditions across Indiana.

Sam Lashley is a veteran meteorologist with over 33 years of operational experience, culminating in his retirement in 2025 as the Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the National Weather Service (NWS) in Indianapolis. In that capacity, Sam served as the primary liaison for state and local partners, leading Impact-Based Decision Support Services (IDSS) to strengthen community resilience against severe weather and hydrological hazards. Today, Sam is the founder of Sunny Sam Enterprises LLC, a natural hazards consulting service specializing in preparedness and safety planning along with table top exercises focused on natural hazard event planning, operations, and recovery. Sam was born and raised in Crawfordsville, IN where he lives today with his wife Lesley.

The Making of Modern Medical Education in 20th Century China (August 31, 2026)

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Speaker: Wendy Lee

During the 20th Century, China underwent one of the most remarkable public health transformations in human history. Its population grew from 400 million to 1.26 billion. Life expectancy increased from 35-40 years to more than 70 years. This achievement depended on the introduciton of modern medical science and the creation of institutions capable of training generations of physicians, researchers and public health professionals. This talk will include the contributions of Dr. Chung-un Lee, a little known but important figure in his generation.

Wei-Hua (Wendy) Lee is a retired Associate Professor of Pediatrics and anatomy at the IU School of Medicine. She taught neurobiology and condocuted research on neonatal brain injury for more than two decades. She received her medical training at Capital Medical University in China and earned her PhD in Pharmacology from IU> A former HIH-funded investigator, she has authored or co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed articles and led multiple exernally funded research projects. Since her retiremen, Lee has conducted extensive archival research in China, the UK, the US and Taiwan. Her research draws on institutional archives from Peking Union Medical College, the Guizhou Provincial Archives, the Rockefeller Archive Center, the University of Glasgow, family papers and unpublished materials. She has conducted interviews with former students and colleagues of Chung-un Lee, perserving first hand testimony not available elsewhere. Lee is the granddaughter of Chung-un Lee and resides in Indianapolis.

No Meeting - Labor Day (September 07, 2026)

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 16:00:00 GMT

How to Live Past 60 with the Best Quality of Life - By an Old Doctor (September 14, 2026)

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Speaker: Glenn Bingle

This talk will be an update to an earlier talk on the Science of Aging. It will include new findings on the role of the immune system and innovative anti-aging therapies. The subtitle will be Who do you believe and follow: Drs Ko and Bingle or Dr. Eric Topol or Peter Attia.

Glenn Bingle was the chief medical officer of the Community Health Network, retired and chief of Medical Genetics. He also was a volunteer Clinic Professor of Medicine and Medical Molecular Genetics at the IU School of Medicine.

From Antiquity to AI: Mathematics, Medicine, and the Black Box Problem (September 21, 2026)

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Speaker: David Gunderman

Medicine has long relied on numbers, formulas, and models to classify patients, predict risk, and guide decisions. Machine learning and AI have made these tools more powerful, but also more opaque: physicians and patients may rely on outputs without fully understanding how they were produced or what assumptions they contain. Is this opacity a new problem, or part of a much longer history of medicine’s trust in mathematics? Drawing on examples from the four humors to modern AI, this talk explores how mathematical models shape real clinical decisions and patient lives. Questions that may seem purely technical, such as measurement, modeling, thresholds, and prediction, also turn out to be questions about ethics, communication, bias, and responsibility.

David Gunderman is an incoming resident physician at Ascension St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis and a future dermatologist whose work brings together medicine, mathematics, and public health. A summa cum laude graduate of Wabash College with majors in Mathematics and German, David received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado Boulder and his MD from Indiana University School of Medicine. He was a Fulbright Fellow in Germany in 2015 and the Lillian Gilbreth Postdoctoral Fellow at Purdue Engineering and Stanford Medicine in 2021. During medical school, Gunderman served as President of the Indiana University School of Medicine Medical Student Council, was named one of the Premier 10 graduate students across IU Indianapolis, and received the national U.S. Public Health Service's Excellence in Public Health Award. He serves on the board of Mental Health America–Wabash Valley Region, a nonprofit serving 11 counties and more than 500,000 residents in north-central Indiana. He has taught college- and graduate-level statistics, mathematics, and computer science for nearly a decade and has published more than 25 peer-reviewed research articles.

The American Spirit - David McCullough and The Science of Light and Sound (November 02, 2026)

Mon, 02 Nov 2026 17:00:00 GMT

Speakers: Bill Dick and Kendra Latta

Our Scientech historian, Bill Dick, will talk about the favorite Americans of one of our nations notable historians, David McCullough.

The Scientech Foundation will also present Kendra Latta from The Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel. She will talk about the impact of the yearly program The Science of Light and Sound. This talk will give a concrete example of the impact that the grants from the Foundation are having on STEM education for thousands of young people in central Indiana.

No Meeting - Christmas (December 21, 2026)

Mon, 21 Dec 2026 17:00:00 GMT

No Meeting - New Years (December 28, 2026)

Mon, 28 Dec 2026 17:00:00 GMT