In his keynote speech for the Churchill Club’s “Igniting Innovation and Mastering Change” conference, SRI CEO Curt Carlson explains why he still believes in abundance and in the U.S. as a global leader in innovation. Carlson has confidence in the power of innovation despite a worsening of the debt-to-GDP ratio and dire financial conditions in California.

SRI CEO Curtis Carlson’s Keynote at Churchill Club Event, Sept. 16, 2011

Dr. Curtis R. Carlson
President and Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Curtis Carlson_ The Five Disciplines of Innovation

Dr. Curtis R. Carlson became president and CEO of SRI International in December 1998. Previously, he spent more than 20 years with Sarnoff Corporation, an SRI subsidiary that was fully integrated into SRI in 2011.

“In 1973, Carlson joined RCA Laboratories, which became part of SRI in 1987 as Sarnoff Corporation. He started and helped lead the high-definition television (HDTV) program that became the U.S. standard, and in 1997 his team won an Emmy Award for outstanding technical achievement. In 2000, another team started and led by Carlson won an Emmy for a system to optimize satellite broadcast image quality. He helped found more than 12 companies.

Carlson is widely sought out as a speaker and thought leader on innovation and global competitiveness. He serves as co-chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Singapore National Research Foundation. He is a founding member of the Innovation Leadership Council for the World Economic Forum and was selected to serve on President Obama’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He advises U.S. governors and prime ministers, economic ministers, and education ministers around the world on innovation, competitiveness, and educational reform.

In 2006, Carlson won the Otto Schade Prize for Display Performance and Image Quality from the Society for Information Display with Dr. Roger Cohen. In 2007, Carlson was given the Medal of Excellence Award by Rutgers University’s School of Engineering. In 2002, he received the Dr. Robert H. Goddard Award from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) for his professional achievements.

He has received honorary degrees from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Stevens Institute of Technology, and Kettering University. He was a visiting distinguished scientist at the University of Washington in 1998, and he is a Kobe ambassador for SRI’s contributions to Kobe, Japan.

Carlson has been on numerous boards, including Nuance Communications, Pyramid Vision, Sensar, and Sarif. He was a member of General Motors’ Science and Technology Advisory Board. He has served on numerous government task forces, including the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, National Research Laboratory Review Panels, the Galvin Naval Research Laboratory Review Panel, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory Technical Assessment Board, and the Defense Science Board task force on bio-chemical defense. He was a member of the original team that helped create the Army’s Federated Laboratories.

He has written a book with William Wilmot called Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want, published by Random House. It was selected by BusinessWeek as one of the Top Ten Business Books for 2006. Innovation describes how SRI’s unique process for innovation can be applied to all types of commercial and nonprofit enterprises, including the government.

Carlson received his B.S. in physics from WPI and was named in Who’s Who Among Students. He is a member of Sigma Xi, and Tau Beta Pi. His M.S. and Ph.D. degrees are from Rutgers University. Carlson has published or presented numerous technical publications and holds fundamental patents in the fields of image quality, image coding, and computer vision. He is married to Dudley Brown Carlson, an award-winning children’s librarian.”

[Quote Source: SRI International]

Pundits, Professors and their Predictions

The world’s leading opinion-shapers from the media and academia debate scenarios for 2012 and beyond as what was change in ten years is happening in just ten months.

• Thomas L. Friedman, Columnist, Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, USA
• Kishore Mahbubani, Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Global Agenda Council on China
• Gideon Rachman, Associate Editor, Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator, Financial Times, United Kingdom; Global Agenda Council on Geopolitical Risk
• Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics and International Business, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University, USA; Global Agenda Council on Fiscal Crises
• Robert J. Shiller, Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics, Yale University, USA

Moderated by
• Nik Gowing, Main Presenter, BBC World News, United Kingdom

Yoga may have positive effect on anxiety, depression, and arrhythmia [Atrial fibrillation (AF or A-fib) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia (irregular heart beat]. Source: Cardiology Today

“Emotional stress is very well correlated with AF. A lot of patients with AF complain of significant anxiety and depression, Dhanunjaya Lakkireddy, MD, director of the Center for Excellence in AF and EP Researcher at the University of Kansas, told Cardiology Today. “However, it is unclear whether anxiety and depression bring on the AF or if AF brings on the anxiety and depression.”

During a session here, Lakkireddy presented unpublished data from a study that measured quality of life, anxiety and depression in patients with AF. The study included 49 patients who participated in two 60-minute yoga sessions a week for 3 months. Researchers measured quality of life, anxiety and depression scores at baseline and again at the end of 3 months. Additionally, yoga reduced symptomatic AF episodes from 3.8 at baseline to 2.9 at 3 months. The number of asymptomatic AF episodes was also reduced after yoga practice, Lakkireddy said. Yoga was also associated with improved quality of life, anxiety and depression scores at the end of the study period. Correlation analysis showed that change in anxiety and depression correlated with the change in the number of AF episodes.

“There was a 35% to 40% reduction in the number of AF episodes in this study,” Lakkireddy said in an interview. “Yoga doesn’t completely cure AF, but in gross terms, the number of AF episodes was significantly lowered to reach statistical significance.”

Yoga in the West
Gurudev Yogi Amrit Desai is recognized as one of the pioneers of the authentic teachings of yoga in the West. He has been repeatedly honored for following in the footsteps of many of the great spiritual Masters such as Paramahansa Yogananada and Swami Vivekenand in spreading the profound depth of the ancient teachings of India to the world. In 1893, when Swami Vivekanand addressed a gathering of 7,000 people at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago, his presence marked the beginning of Western interest in the ancient spiritual teachings of India.

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