Video Presentations from the October 2012

Alcor-40 Conference

 Click on name/title for video
Robert Littlefield
Robert Littlefield (4 minute video)
City Councilman for Scottsdale, Arizona
Scottsdale City Council member Robert Littlefield will open the conference. Founder and President of a successful Scottsdale-based computer company, NetXpert Systems, Inc, Mr. Littlefield has 17 years of experience in corporate America as an engineer, sales executive, sales manager and general manager for a number of high-tech companies, including Prime Computer, DataPhaz, Apollo, and Hewlett-Packard. He is also a Commercial Pilot and Flight Instructor.
Kim Suozzi
Kim Suozzi (11 minute video)
“Because 21 Years Is Not Enough”
Kim Suozzi, 23, has terminal brain cancer. The cancer is highly aggressive and growing rapidly in a location that makes surgery impossible. Her final wish is to be cryopreserved. Alcor Life Extension Foundation offered to cryopreserve Kim at a reduced cost, with the staff donating their time for her cryopreservation. [Kim was cryopreserved in January 2013.]
Chana de Wolf
Chana de Wolf (31 minute video)
Cryopreservation of the Ischemic Brain
Chana de Wolf lives in Portland, Oregon, where she works as a business manager and biomedical researcher. She holds a B.S. in Experimental Psychology (2001), an M.S. in Cognition and Neuroscience (2003), and has extensive management and laboratory experience. In 2008 Chana and her husband Aschwin de Wolf launched the neural cryobiology research company Advanced Neural Biosciences, Inc. In this presentation she presents the results of many years of experimental research investigating the effects of ischemia on brain cryopreservation.
Todd Huffman
Todd Huffman (31 minute video)
Advances in Neuroscience Structure, Function, and Computation: Implications for Cryonics
Todd Huffman is an informatician and designer working biomedical imaging and system design. He is the founder and CEO of 3Scan, which is building high-throughput 3D microscopes for imaging and digitally reconstructing large scale tissues and organs. 3Scans flagship technology, the Knife-Edge Scanning Microscope, can image whole small animal brains with sub-micron resolution. Todd has been involved in cryonics for 10 years, as the co-leader of the Alcor Southern California Field Team, full-time at Alcor as a researcher, and as a consultant with Suspended Animation on training and system design. Todd holds a Masters in Computational Biosciences from Arizona State University, a Graduate Diploma in Entrepreneurial Studies from Nanyang University in Singapore, and a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience from California State University Long Beach.
Max More
Max More, Ph.D. (23 minute video)
Improving Your Prospects for an Optimal Cryopreservation
Max More is President and Chief Executive Officer at Alcor (bio). Completing your arrangements with Alcor takes some work. Once done with it, you will be tempted to think: Thats it! All done. Nothing more to worry about. Some members act as if that were the case even when they say they know better. You DO know better, but may be unsure exactly what you can do to improve your chances of being cryopreserved under good conditions. This talk provides you with a checklist of actions to take to reduce your physical, medical, financial, and legal risks.
Anders Sandberg
Anders Sandberg, Ph.D. (30 minute video)
Handling the Unknowable and Undecidable: Rational Decision-Making about Future Technology
Anders Sandberg has a background in computational neuroscience. Since 2006 he has been a researcher at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute and the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology. His research centers on societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as estimating the capabilities and underlying science of future technologies. Topics of particular interest include enhancement of cognition, cognitive biases, technology-enabled collective intelligence, neuroethics and public policy.
Sebastian Seung
Sebastian Seung, Ph.D. (30 minute video)
Connectomics and Cryonics
Sebastian Seung is Professor of Computational Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, and Scientific Director of WiredDifferently. He received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Harvard University, and formerly worked at Bell Laboratories. His laboratory at MIT has launched EyeWire, an online community that empowers the public to map neural connections by playing a game of coloring neural images. EyeWire is the first project of WiredDifferently, a citizen science organization with the ultimate goals of seeing the material basis of memory and finding connectopathies, "miswirings" of the brain long hypothesized to be associated with psychiatric disorders. His book Connectome was hailed in the Wall Street Journal as "the best lay book on brain science I've ever read."

Panel on Long-Term Financial Planning (50 minute video)
Michael Seidl, Ralph Merkle, Rudi Hoffman
Michael Seidl
Ralph Merkle
Rudi Hoffman
Panel discussion on investing strategies, inflation protection, and personal trusts, with Alcor Board members Michael Seidl and Ralph Merkle, Certified Financial Planner and insurance agent Rudi Hoffman (speaking on “Cryonics Affordability for the Masses and for All Times”).

Panel on Medical Monitoring Devices (48 minute video)
Led by Aaron Drake with Ben Best and Martine Rothblatt
Aaron Drake
Ben Best
Martine Rothblatt
Panel discussion on improving your chances of a quick response in case of a critical physiological failure, led by Alcor's Medical Response Director, Aaron Drake. Ben Best is CI director and Director of Research Oversight at LEF, and has bachelor's degrees in Pharmacy, Physics, Computing Science, and Business (Accounting and Finance). Martine Rothblatt is co-founder of the Terasem Movement, the chief executive of United Therapeutics, and the creator of Sirius XM Satellite Radio. She has also authored From Transgender to Transhuman: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Form, and was the Executive Producer of the film Singularity Is Near.