On April 24th, our club member Prof Chaofen Sun, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, gave a talk titled “Making Chinese (language) Modern”. In the two hours of Prof Sun’s talk, he took us on a journey of understanding the establishment process of the promulgation of the simplified Chinese character list and standard Chinese pronunciation. After a century of debates, China adopted its first language bill in October 31, 2000 legislating standards for the pronunciation and orthography of modern Chinese. The audience was very engaged with the conversation and showed deep interest and appreciation for this talk.

On Feb 26th, the club hosted the annual Chinese New Year celebration which was attended by over 50 faculty members and their spouses at Chef Chu’s. The event was a great opportunity for the professors to exchange ideas regarding their research projects and develop valuable relationships for future collaboration. At the dinner table, several of the professors shared their current research with the attendees. We also congratulated those who have received domestic and international awards. Our club sponsor, Richard Lim, also shared with us his VC Company’s success, especially GSR’s early investment in DiDi, which is the Chinese equivalent of Uber. The event was a great success.

On Jan 31, our club member Shoucheng Zhang gave a talk titled “Electronic Highway: a Quantum Leap for Computing”. Shoucheng reviewed the crisis and opportunity for basic science in Silicon Valley and shared several stories regarding how the visionary innovation and investments of Stanford professors’ has changed the high tech world. Shoucheng also briefly discussed his team’s discoveries with respect to topological insulator materials, which have gained a large amount of recognition by the scientific community and have received many prestigious prizes including, most recently, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2015.

On Oct 25, the club hosted a BBQ social. This was a very relaxing and exciting event. We had about 15 families including children attending the event. Families brought home made vegetable dishes and desserts to share with all the meaty food prepared by the SCFFC board members. Sports included tennis, ping pong, swimming.

On Oct 11th, Prof Feifei Li from the computer science department and the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab gave a talk titled “A Quest for Visual Intelligence in Computers”. It takes nature and evolution more than five hundred million years to develop a powerful visual system in humans. The journey for AI and computer vision is about fifty years. In Prof Li’s talk she briefly discussed the key ideas and the cutting edge advances in the quest for visual intelligence in computers. This talk was very well received among the audience. Few middle school and high school students attended the event. There was a great deal of enthusiastic discussion cross many different fields of study.

On April 5th, our club member Prof Xiaoze Xie, Paul Lee and Phyllis Wattis Professor of Art and Art History, gave a talk entitled “Between Craftsman and Thinker: My Practice as An Artist”. Xiaoze is an internationally recognized artist who has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and abroad. He introduced his diverse bodies of work including painting, installation, video, and photography, over the past 20 years. We had over 70 faculties, students and community friends in the audience and the talk generated quite stimulating conversations afterward.

The annual Chinese New Year celebration which was attended by over 40 faculties and their spouse at Chef Chu’s. Chinese counselor in Education from San Francisco office also attends the dinner gathering. The event was a great opportunity for professors to exchange research projects ideas and also establish some close relationship for future collaboration. At the dinner table, we had few professors shared their recent academic research. We also congratulated those who had received domestic and international awards. Our club sponsor Richard Lim also shared with us his VC Company’s success and also his vision for SCFFC. The event was a great success.

On Oct.13, 2013, our club had the honor to have former United States Secretary of Energy Steven Chu presented on the topics of “Climate Change, Innovations in Energy and Scientist in Government Service”. These are all very interesting topics. We had an educational yet relaxing afternoon. The room was fully packed and the audience was very engaged. The event was a huge success.