On August 25, 2018, we had an educational and fun tour of the “Ink Worlds: Contemporary Chinese Painting from the Collection of Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang” at Cantor museum. We are fortunate and pleased to have the exhibition curator Ellen Huang give the SCFFC members a private tour. After the tour, we had a picnic at Rodin Sculpture Garden. It was such a great time to catch up with other SCFFC members and families on a breezy summer afternoon.

On June 3, 2018, we invited Prof. Heiwai Tang, Associate Professor of International Economics at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, who gave a talk entitled “Causes and Implications of the US-China Trade War”, based on his recent empirical research about firms’ stock market reactions to the recent announcements by both countries and his ongoing work on global value chains. He analyzed the economic cost of the announcement of “Trade War” and used the data source from US firms’ exposure to trade, to Chinese companies exposure to trade. It is certainly a very interesting talk and attracts a lot of audience.

The Stanford Chinese Faculty and Family Club (SCFFC) celebrated 2018 Chinese New Year, the year of Dog, at the Zagat rated Chef Chu’s restaurant this year. Over 50 Stanford Faculty and Family members attended the holiday banquet. Chef Laurence Chu personally prepared a special menu with many traditional holiday dishes in wish everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

On January 28, 2018, we had our first talk of the year by Prof. Lexing Ying, professor of Mathematics, entitled “The Mathematics Behind Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning”.  There has been tremendous development in the past several years in AI and ML, most notably the successes from deep neural networks. In this talk, Professor Ying discussed three stories:Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Medical Imaging. In each story, he showed how a simple and beautiful mathematical idea plays a key role in a modern AI/ML algorithm in a language that is understandable to the layman. The ticket to the talk was completely sold out 6 days before the event. The meeting room was fully packed and there were a lot of questions raised during the talk. What a popular topic, great talk, at the right time!

On October 29, 2017, Prof. Xueguang Zhou, the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development, a professor of sociology, and an FSI Senior Fellow, gave a talk entitled “The Institutional Logic of Governance in China”. It is highly stimulating and educational. Professor Zhou is an expert on institutional changes in contemporary Chinese society, especially Chinese organizations and management, social inequality, and state-society relationships.  A book of the same title in Chinese has been published in China. The talk lasted 1.5 hours followed by many questions.The audience showed deep interest in this talk.

On April 16, 2017, Dr. Jay Xu, Director & CEO of Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, gave a talk entitled “Treasures in San Francisco: History, Collection and Exhibitions at the Asian Art Museum”. With the on-going exhibition of “Tomb Treasures: New Discoveries from China’s Han Dynasty (Feb 17-May 28, 2017)” in Museum, this presentation is enlightening and highly educational, at the right timing. It is very well received and the meeting room was completely packed.

On March 12, 2017, Prof. Yinyu Ye, Chair Professor of Engineering at Department of Management Science and Engineering and Institute of Computational and Mathematical Engineering, gave a talk entitled “Data, Optimization and Decision Making”. It is highly educational and quite fascinating. Prof. Ye focused his presentation of how to use optimization methods and related machine learning tools for better decision making on supply-chain management, electronic commerce, financial risk management, transportation, sensor network, big data, among other things. The talk lasted 1.5 hours followed by many questions. There were around 80 attendees ranging from college students to seniors including a 90+ year old lady.

On Oct 24th, Prof Lu Chen and Prof Thomas Sudhof, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine (2013), joined us and gave a talk titled “Challenges in Neuroscience in the 21st century”. They briefly introduced their neuroscience research and their personal journeys while conducting this pioneering research. The talk was very insightful and inspirational. There were over 80 people in attendance, including a few teenagers who were actively asking questions. William Newsome, the director of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute also came for the talk and presented the vision of the institute’s future which was very well received by the audience.

On Oct 2nd, the club hosted a BBQ social event at the Stanford Campus Recreation Association center (SCRA). About 20 Stanford Faculty families joined this event. Under the beautiful California sunshine, the members were able to enjoy some friendly matches on the SCRA tennis court, social ping pong games and splash in the swimming pool. Families brought homemade vegetable dishes and desserts to share. All of the meat was prepared by the SCFFC board members. There were many enlightening discussions focused on the latest scientific discoveries.