Alcor-40 Conference

Conference was held October 19-21, 2012
This is an archive page

 Registration

Alcor is celebrating its 40th Anniversary at this Conference! In trying to keep costs as low as possible, registration includes: Conference materials and all presentations; three meals at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort on Saturday; a continental breakfast at the Resort and an Open House Cookout at the Alcor Foundation on Sunday.

Conference Registration is $365 for Alcor members and $385 for non-members. We will give full credit of the registration fee toward Alcor membership sign-up fees.

You may register by using the PayPal button below, or with a credit card by calling Bonnie at Alcor: 1-877-462-5267 ext. 114, or by sending a check to Alcor Life Extension Foundation, 7895 East Acoma Drive Suite 110, Scottsdale, Arizona 85260.

 Location & Room Reservations

Scottsdale Plaza Resort
Scottsdale Plaza Resort
7200 North Scottsdale Road
Scottsdale, AZ 85253
800-832-2025

Rooms are $159/night for single and double rooms. You can reserve rooms through our direct conference link.

 Speakers and Panels
Robert Littlefield
Robert Littlefield
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. See his City Coucil web page.
Catherine Baldwin
Catherine Baldwin
From Bedside to Clinic: The Evolving Care of Cryopreservation Patients
Catherine is Chief Operating Officer of Suspended Animation, Inc. (SA). Before joining SA in mid-2007, Catherine served as Director of Business Development for Pharmaceutical Platforms at Symyx Technologies and as a Strategic Marketing Manager for Applied Biosystems. As a cell biologist in Neurobiology at UCLA and in Cardiopulmonary Physiology with the Lovelace Institutes, she pursued research interests in the molecular mechanisms of glutamate in the brain and thermoregulatory responses to hypoxia and ischemia.
Aubrey de Grey
Aubrey de Grey, Ph.D.
Experimental Rejuvenation Research: An Update
Dr. de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist based in Cambridge, UK and Mountain View, California, and is the Chief Science Officer of SENS Foundation, a California-based charity dedicated to combating the aging process. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Rejuvenation Research, the world's highest-impact peer-reviewed journal focused on intervention in aging. He has developed a comprehensive plan for repair of aging damage, termed Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS), which breaks aging down into seven major classes of damage and identifies detailed approaches to addressing each one.
Chana de Wolf
Aschwin de Wolf
Chana & Aschwin de Wolf
Cryopreservation of the Ischemic Brain
In 2008 Chana and Aschwin de Wolf launched the neural cryobiology research company Advanced Neural Biosciences, Inc. In this presentation they present the results of many years of experimental research investigating the effects of ischemia on brain cryopreservation. They will also announce a new ambitious project to further strengthen the evidence in favor of human cryopreservation.

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. Aschwin de Wolf is a Director and researcher for Advanced Neural Biosciences, President of the Institute for Evidence Based Cryonics, editor of Cryonics magazine, serves as a consultant for a number of cryonics organizations, and has published technical articles on various cryonics topics.
Gregory Fahy
Gregory Fahy, Ph.D.
Progress Toward the Reversible Cryopreservation of Complex Systems
Dr. Fahy is the Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of 21st Century Medicine, where he has directed research since 1998. He is the pioneer of high concentration, slow cooling rate vitrification, which he introduced in the early 1980s while a scientist at the national research laboratory of the American Red Cross. He has been a full-time cryobiologist since 1977 and has many publications and patents related to cryobiology and life extension. His main research and academic interests are the cryopreservation of complex systems and interventive gerontology. In 2009, he published the first account of the survival of a vitrified kidney after transplantation. His current research projects include the cryopreservation of kidneys, brains, and whole mammals.
Todd Huffman
Todd Huffman
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.
Keegan Macintosh
Keegan Macintosh, J.D.
Access to Cryonics: Legal Strategies Then and Now
Keegan is a recent law graduate from the University of British Columbia, where he founded the UBC Life Extension Club in 2010 to spread awareness of cryonics and life extension research. During its start-up this summer, Keegan was Executive Director of the Lifespan Society of British Columbia, a non-profit organization which aims to educate the public on life extension strategies and protect access to potentially life-saving technologies. Keegan sits on the boards of two other cryonics organizations, the Cryonics Society of Canada and the Institute for Evidence Based Cryonics. He will discuss changes in the legal landscape regarding the right to a pre-mortem cryopreservation since the the 1992 appellate court decision in Donaldson v. Van De Kamp.
Josh Mitteldorf
Josh Mitteldorf, Ph.D.
Directions for Medical Research: Four Paths to Extending Life
The surprising fact that our bodies are genetically programmed to age and to die offers an enormous opportunity for medical intervention. It may be that therapies to slow the progress of aging need not repair or regenerate anything, but only need to interfere with an existing program of self-destruction. After earning a Ph.D. in astrophysics, Mitteldorf moved to evolutionary biology as a primary field in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, Berkeley, Bryn Mawr, LaSalle and, most recently, at Temple University. His present research, on evolutionary theory of aging using computer simulations, is under the auspices of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department of the University of Arizona. His book, Suicide Genes, will be published early 2013.
Max More
Max More, Ph.D.
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.
Michael Rose
Michael Rose, Ph.D.
How to Control Your Aging
Dr. Michael R. Rose is Professor at Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University Of California, Irvine. His main area of work has been the evolution of aging. He is known for experiments that substantially postpone aging in fruit flies. His two primary current research interests are the evolution of late life and experimental evolution in Drosophila. Michael's most recent books are The Long Tomorrow: How Advances in Evolutionary Biology Can Help Us Postpone Aging and Does Aging Stop?. Dr. Rose will discuss how the last two years have seen a remarkable convergence between the Paleo Movement and evolutionary research on aging. Residual later-age adaptation to the paleo lifestyle may allow the deceleration and early stabilization of death rates with the adoption of an evolutionarily correct emulation of paleo lifestyle at later ages. This talk will feature the science, both theoretical and experimental, that underlies this possibility.
Anders Sandberg
Anders Sandberg, Ph.D.
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.
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:
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”), and others to be confirmed.

Panel on Medical Monitoring Devices:
Led by Aaron Drake with Ben Best, Martine Rothblatt, and Danila Medvedev
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.

 Conference Schedule

Friday October 19, 2012
 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm Registration    
 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm    Reception    
 8:00 pm  Welcome Address    
 10:00 pm until late Networking    

Saturday October 20, 2012
 7:30 am - 12:00 noon   Registration    
 7:30 am - 8:30 am Breakfast    
 9:00 am - 9:10 am Robert Littlefield Welcome from the City of Scottsdale  
 9:10 am - 9:15 am   Max More Opening remarks  
 9:15 am - 9:50 am   Greg Fahy Progress Toward Reversible Cryopreservation of Complex Systems  
 9:50 am - 10:25 am   Chana de Wolf
Aschwin de Wolf 		 Cryopreservation of the Ischemic Brain  
 10:25 am - 10:50 am Break    
 10:50 am - 11:10 pm Max More Cryonics Procedures and Improvements at Alcor  
 11:10 am - 11:45 am Keegan Macintosh  Legal Strategies for Cryonicists  
 11:45 am - 12:35 pm Panel  Long Term Financial Planning  
 12:35 pm - 2:10 pm Lunch Buffet    
 2:10 pm - 3:00 pm  Panel Medical Monitoring Devices  
 3:00 pm - 3:30 pm  Anders Sandberg Rational Decision Making About Future Technology  
 3:30 pm - 4:00 pm   Max More Improving Your Prospects for an Optimal Cryopreservation  
 4:00 pm - 4:25 pm   Break    
 4:25 pm - 5:00 pm   Todd Huffman Advances in Neuroscience: Implications for Cryonics  
 5:00 pm - 5:45 pm   Sebastian Seung Connectomics and Cryonics  
 5:35 pm - 6:10 pm   Discussion Discussion of Sebastian Seung’s talk  
 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm   Sign-Up Salon    (continued on Sunday afternoon, by appointment)  
 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm Banquet Dinner    
 10:00 pm until late Networking    

Sunday October 21, 2012
 7:00 am - 9:00 am Breakfast    
 9:30 am - 10:05 am Catherine Baldwin From Bedside to Clinic: The Evolving Care of Cryopreservation Patients  
 10:05 am - 10:40 am Aubrey de Grey Experimental Rejuvenation Research: An Update  
 10:40 am - 11:00 am Break    
 11:00 am - 11:35 am Joshua Mitteldorf Directions for Medical Research: Four Paths to Extending Life  
 11:35 am - 12:10 pm Michael Rose How to Control Your Aging  
 12:10 pm - 12:20 pm Break    
 12:20 pm - 12:55 pm   Panel Panel with de Grey, Mitteldorf, and Rose  
 2:30 pm - 5:30 pm Alcor Open House 
& Cookout		    
 2:30 pm - 5:30 pm Sign-Up Salon (by appointment)