I'm on the train back from Zurich airport after my whirlwind trip to Nashville and San Diego, so it's time for a wrap up post covering the rest of my time in the US.
After a very interesting first day at ANFA 2025 in San Diego, we went back for more on the Friday and Saturday.
During the opening it was great to see Autodesk Research being called out prominently as a sponsor. We're very happy to support a conference that's so well aligned with our research interests!
The theme of Day 2 was "Designing for Human Flourishing" - with a focus on brain health, well-being & collaborative innovation - which was from my perspective the most interesting of the three days, at least on paper.
I enjoyed the panel discussion by ANFA collaborators participating in the Pedersen Foundation Collective.
Here's some information on the various efforts.
Recently we were very lucky to have Cleo Valentine attend our Encoding Experience event in Boston and present to our research team via Zoom.
Her keynote at ANFA was very similar to the content we'd already seen, but it was a great refresher on some really compelling research.
After Cleo we heard from Tye Farrow, who was one of the presenters from the Neuroscience and Design class I attended a few months ago.
Sergei Gepshtein is an ANFA board member - and the next president - who also presented during the Neuroscience and Design course. He has a highly philosophical approach to his research at the Salk Institute which I find really intriguing.
We once again spent a significant amount of time talking to people about the experiential data capture research I introduced in the last post.
As people in the workshop (the VR session) walked round, you could see their positional information displayed in the APS viewer application. You can see the blue view cones below.
Here's a video where you can see them moving around.
Our first ever Neuroscience intern, Theoni, was presenting a poster of here thesis. I would have loved for her to present the research she worked on with us - which is mentioned in this blog post - but we still have some work to do on analyzing the results.
In the evening we headed to the Salk Institute for a gala dinner. I'd visited once before after AU 2024 but hadn't been able to walk around inside.
It's an iconic building designed by Louis Kahn, known to - and revered by - architects the world over.
It was a great place to see the sunset, especially at this time of year...
… as it's almost perfectly aligned with the water feature passing through the courtyard.
It was a really special moment.
Wow.
Going inside for dinner there was a really impressive sculpture. You don't quite get the sense of the scale from this photo, though.
Dinner was very nice. A candle-lit buffet with a keynote dialogue.
The dialogue was an informal chat that was led by Suchi Reddy, who also joined Encoding Experience in Boston and presented during Neuroscience and Design.
The various keynote speakers from ANFA 2025 assembled for a photo.
Dagmara and I took a quick photo with The Sun on the way out.
With Jacky we decided to walk back to the Hilton. At one point we tried really hard to walk via the golf course, but soon gave up and just followed the road.
Day 3's theme was Designing for a Changing World, with a focus on climate, cognition and the future of cities.
At one point during the introduction we saw a list of current ANFA Chapters and Affiliates. I think Switzerland needs to be on this list: if anyone if motivated to get involved - it's not something I'm quite ready to take on without someone else signing up, too - do let me know!
Naturally enough, I suppose, the technology segment - focused on how the world is changing from a cognitive perspective? - was the one I found most engaging from Day 3. The cognitive agents session by Saleh Kalantari was fantastic.
Our friend David Kirsh talked about his recent explorations with AI.
Charles Spence joined from the UK, talking about the need to design for multiple senses.
My old friend Shajay Booshan from Zaha Hadid Architects also presented remotely.
It was a seriously impressive collection of presenters. Again, my favourite session of the day.
Jumping ahead to the wrap-up session by Margaret Tarampi, we saw a photo that had been taken the evening before. I hope to get the original, at some point.
We had another special thanks at the end. It was really a great experience, so I hope we get to return in 2 years' time.
Outside the lecture hall - and the venue itself - I bumped into an Irish Setter with very similar coloring to my Daisy. Although at a very different scale.
There were three "alumni" of the Neuroscience and Design class present at ANFA, this year: Ingrid Moura, Hila Stern and myself. It was really lovely to see them Ingrid and Hila again.
Lara Gregorians from the Future Cities Lab at ETH Zurich (Singapore), presented a poster.
And yes, we did a few more VR demos.
Back at the hotel there was some kind of event for the local police force.
Jacky, Dagmara and I had a nice chat with Eve Edelstein while we waited for our colleague Liviu Calin to join us for dinner.
I'd seen Liviu in Nashville and we'd agreed to catch up in San Diego. I'm really glad we did.
On Sunday morning we woke up to fog.
This was the first time I'd stopped for breakfast in the Hilton. This is what a $28 bagel looks like (not including the 5% cost of living surcharge, tax and service charge).
After breakfast we spent an enjoyable few hours diving into more details with David Kirsh at his lab.
Jacky had an earlier flight, but Dagmara and I had time for lunch at the Rockin' Baja Lobster in San Diego's Old Town. Well worth a visit - the food was delicious!
Finally we ended up checked in to our respective flights and through security. Dagmara was flying direct to Heathrow, I had to go via San Francisco.
All went very smoothly - I boarded my Swiss flight for Zurich… a welcome reminder of home.
I worked out that I'd travelled through the following airports over the last 8 days. (LAX was the only one not originally planned):
ZRHORDBNAMSPLAXSANSFOZRH
It was a hectic week but it was a) really worthwhile and b) a lot of fun. I hope to get a few hours off, this week, to be able to catch up on sleep and recuperate in general.
Leave a Reply