The Scientech Club upcoming events

Research in gene therapy for for age-related macular degeneration (July 27, 2026)

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Speaker: Dr. Thomas A. Ciulla

Gene therapy holds promise as a transformative approach in the treatment of age-related macular degeneration. It offers potential advantages of reduced treatment frequency and enhanced safety. Advancements in gene therapy hold promise for improving patient outcomes and providing new treatments of diabetic eye diseases.

Dr. Thomas Ciulla graduated with high honors from Harvard College and earned his medical degree from the University of California. He completed his residency at Harvard Medical School and then a fellowship at Tufts Medical School, where he received the prestigious Heed Fellowship. Before joining the Midwest Eye Institute here in Carmel, Dr. Ciulla served on the faculty of the Indiana University School of Medicine.

A nationally recognized expert in diseases of the eye, Dr. Ciulla has:

participated in more than 100 clinical trials,
served on numerous advisory and editorial boards,
edited medical textbooks,
presented at more than 200 conferences, and
authored over 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers.

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.

Astrophotography (August 17, 2026)

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Speaker: Gary Stouder

The speaker will discuss his interest in this hobby and his volunteer work at the Lowell Observatory. He will describe what is needed to get good quality images of near space and deep space objects along with the problems that satelites and light pollution bring.

Gary Stounder is a retired family practice physician and a Scientech Club member.

Tracking the Migration of Monarch Butterflies (August 24, 2026)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Speakers: Betty Yan and Mary Oldham

The quest by the Canadian zoologists, Fred and Norah Urquhart to discover the overwintering site for the monarch butterfly, has relied on the help of citizen scientists throughout North and Central America. Small adhesive stickers were designed, tested and distributed by the Urquharts to these volunteers to track the migration of the monarchs. Between the 1950s-1980s, the Urquharts recruited >600 volunteers, resulted in the discovery of the overwintering ground in Mexico in 1975. Over 3 million monarch butterflies had been tagged with stickers by tens and thousands of volunteers to date.

Betty and Mary have been involved in using these sticker tags for 8 years. The talk will include a demonstration of applying sticker tags. About a year ago, a new technology using a light weight, solar-powered ratio tag was deployed tracking the migration of individual monarch butterflies both east and west of the Rockies in the fall of 2025. Betty and Mary have been looking into how to get involved in tagging with radio tags. The talk will also share their findings.

Mary Oldham holds a MS Degree in Special Education and taught students of various ages for 33 years. The greatest number of years were spent serving students in the RISE Special Services/Southside Special Services program. After retirement, Mary planted a small butterfly garden which attracted Monarchs. She was excited to be able to watch and learn about the entire Monarch butterfly cycle in real life –- after reading and acting out the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, to her students hundreds of times over her career. The garden has continued to grow as has the Monarch population.

Betty Yan is a member of Scientech Club. She got a BS degree in Chemistry and a PhD degree in Biochemistry. After retiring as a research biochemistry working 33 years at Eli Lilly and Co., she was interested to keep on learning other areas of science as a citizen scientist. She has no prior background in entomology. Working and learning about monarch butterfly have been fun.

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.

2025 Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry (September 28, 2026)

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Speakers: Phil Sowders Alan Schmidt

The Nobel Pirze in Physics was awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for the discovery of macroscopic quantam mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M. Yaghi “for the development of metal-organic frameworks". Metal–organic frameworks are crystalline materials made from metal nodes connected by organic linkers, forming structures with extremely high porosity. The Nobel Committee highlighted how MOFs create “molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow,” enabling breakthroughs in environmental, industrial, and energy applications.

Dr. Alan Schmidt is a retired Chemical Engineer with a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has industrial experience in polymerization research and development and environmental work at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

Philip Sowders has been a chemist, psychologist, senior behavioral health consultant, director of Autism Services, Founder/Partner, clinical director Franklin Family Services, Psychologist. He is a member of the International Centre for Leadership Results, Open Minds Physics Review, Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity.

Water, Water Everywhere: The Netherlands (Holland) (October 12, 2026)

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Speaker: James Lowery

“Water, Water Everywhere: The Netherlands (Holland) -- A Country Below Sea Level Where the Past Meets the Future,” presented by James Lowery. Mr. Lowery has spoken to our group several times and is a very popular speaker. This is a general presentation about this visually stunning country, and the presentation will include how The Netherlands handles water in a country below sea level. It will cover many things that they are doing there that we in the United States should be doing and could learn from them. The people and governments of the Netherlands understand how to live with water instead of against it.

James Lowery has had University staff positions in Alabama as noted in his previous Scientech proposals.

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.

Annual Meeting and Nobel Prize in Medicine (December 14, 2026)

Mon, 14 Dec 2026 17:00:00 GMT

Speaker: Bill Halsema and Dr. Rashid Khairi

The first part of the meeting will be to conduct required annual business of the Scientech Club including the election of officers and board members for 2027. President Bill Halsema will conduct the meeting.

Dr. Rashid Khairi will discuss the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded jointly to Mary E. Brunkow, Frederick J. Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi 'for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance."

Dr. Rashid Khairi is a retired Endocrinologist and long-time Scientech Club member..

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

Lung Cancer Screening (March 01, 2027)

Mon, 01 Mar 2027 17:00:00 GMT

Speaker: Peter Gunderman

This talk will be focus on what happens after a lung scan is done. It will cover what the CT scan itself can tell us beyond lung cancer, including information about heart disease, bone health and body composition that is hiding in plain sight in scans that are already being performed.

Peter Gunderman, MD, MA, is an Assistant Professor of Radiology and Imaging Director of Lung Cancer Screening in the Department of Radiology at Indiana University School of Medicine, where he specializes in cardiothoracic imaging. He has a particular research interest in opportunistic screening, the practice of extracting additional clinically meaningful health data from CT scans that are already being performed. His work has been published in national medical journals and covered by outlets including The Conversation. He practices at Indiana University Health in Indianapolis.