An initiative of the COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE

With major support from the ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION

2021 Science on Screen Program at the MV Film Center:

Wednesday, March 24th at 7:30pm

CONTAGION W/ DR. MARTHA NASON

“Performing Scientific Research in a Pandemic”


Wednesday, April 21 at 7:30 pm

THE BIT PLAYER W/ ALAN BRIGISH

“Implementing Shannon’s Theory in a Practical Demo”


Wednesday, May 12 at 7:30 pm

THE KING’S SPEECH W/ JOHN GOMEZ

“Discussing the Science and Humanity of Stuttering.”

 See Below for More Information on a Specific Movie*

CONTAGION
 
Wednesday, March 24 at 7:30pm
 
Guest Speaker:
Dr. Martha Nason,
N.I.H Bio-statistician
 
CONTAGION (2011) follows the rapid progress of a lethal airborne virus that kills within days. As the fast-moving epidemic grows, the worldwide medical community races to find a cure and control the panic that spreads faster than the virus itself. At the same time, ordinary people struggle to survive in a society coming apart.

Dr. Martha Nason

Dr. Martha Nason is a biostatistician at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, and a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. Her work has focused on clinical trials and preclinical research into vaccines and infectious diseases, including HIV, Malaria, Zika, Ebola, and recently SARS-CoV2.  She has worked with NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center since 2003 on vaccines against many different pathogens, and participated in many scientific review and advisory committees for NIAID and for the FDA. In addition, she has served as a member of the World Health Organization’s R&D Working Group on Clinical Trials since 2016.

In the past year she has focused on SARS-CoV2, working as part of Operation Warp Speed’s statistical group and a member of the protocol team for several of the Covid-19 vaccines under development, as well as on the preclinical studies of the Moderna vaccine at the Vaccine Research Center. She has continued to collaborate with the WHO on the design of their multinational vaccine platform study, and supported the members of the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel in evaluating evidence on which to base their recommendations.

THE BIT PLAYER
 
Wednesday, April 21 at 7:30pm
 
Guest Speaker:
Alan Brigish
 
The Bit Player is a 2019 documentary film created to celebrate the 2016 centenary of the birth of Claude Shannon, the “father of information theory”. The film was produced and directed by Mark Levinson, in cooperation with the IEEE Information Theory Society and the IEEE Foundation.
 

Alan Brigish

Alan Brigish Alan earned a BS in electronic engineering from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He became a fan of Claude Shannon and his “Information Theory” when, for his 1963 graduating thesis in electronic engineering, Brigish built an analog-to-digital to analog converter to test and prove the underlying theory that Shannon had developed 15 years earlier.

Information theory studies the transmission, processing, storage, and uses of information. It underlies today’s entire electronic infrastructure.  Shannon is the undisputed and unsung father of the modern electronic era.

Alan co-founded SIMBA Information Inc. in 1989 in Wilton, Connecticut after a twenty-five-year career in applying information systems technology to online and electronic publishing services in the US and Europe. He studied virtually every attempt to move traditional publishing from paper to electronic formats for over 20 years. During the 80’s, Brigish was founder of a pioneering electronic publishing venture – the first working electronic yellow pages, catalog, and online ordering service. During the ‘70s, Brigish worked for one of the first cloud computing services companies.

Brigish has been a full time Vineyard resident since 2005, having spent the previous 16 years as a summer resident.

THE KING’S SPEECH
 
Wednesday, May 12 at 7:30pm
 
Guest Speaker:
John Gomez, M.A., CCC-SLP
 
England’s Prince Albert (Colin Firth) must ascend the throne as King George VI, but he has a speech impediment. Knowing that the country needs her husband to be able to communicate effectively, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) hires Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), an Australian actor and speech therapist, to help him overcome his stammer. An extraordinary friendship develops between the two men, as Logue uses unconventional means to teach the monarch how to speak with confidence.
 

John Gomez

John Gomez moonlights as a filmmaker. His days are spent as a Speech Pathologist for the Los Angeles Unified School District and as part-time faculty at California State University teaching a graduate-level course on stuttering.

Born and raised in Northern New Mexico, John attended Colorado College where he earned a degree in Philosophy and American Ethnic Studies. He originally moved to Los Angeles to become an actor but disillusionment with the industry-led John to a career in Speech Pathology. In 2009, he graduated from California State Los Angeles University with a master’s degree in Communication Disorders.

John’s first feature film, WHEN I STUTTER, premiered at the Cleveland International Film Festival in April of 2017. WHEN I STUTTER has been admired for its ability to effectively raise awareness about people who stutter and their challenges in life. The film has won 7 awards, been an official selection in over 15 film festivals with over 100 screenings worldwide. In 2017, John was honored with the Emerging Filmmaker Award from the prestigious Chagrin Documentary Film Festival.