Here's a new fun way to kick off your weekend in Downtown Los Altos: Third Friday Happy Hours at Helix! This month's event features fractal-generated music by Dr. Stedman Wilson and a talk about Chaos Theory presented by Baiju Bhatt. Bring your friends and enjoy an evening rediscovering Downtown Los Altos!
HELIX HAPPY HOUR: MAY
Friday, May 16th
6:00-8:00pm
Chaos theory reveals the hidden order in many seemingly random phenomena including the flow of meandering rivers and airflow around birds’ wings in flight. Join us for happy hour as we explore turbulence and self-similarity and enjoy presentations from our special guests.
6:00pm-6:45pm Fractal-generated music by Stedman Wilson, PhD
Stedman Wilson is a mathematician, and an amateur musician and composer. He earned a BS in mathematics and physics from Stanford University (2006), and a PhD in mathematics from UCLA (2012). In college, Stedman was keyboardist and vocalist for “The Institute for the Advancement of Funk and Soul”, a definitively funky band he started together with guitarist and frontman Baiju Bhatt (our speaker for the evening! see below) in 2003. Friends ever since, Stedman and Baiju have recently reunited at Robinhood, where Stedman currently works as an intern software developer.
Algorithmic composition, including fractal music, provides for a unique and fascinating blend of mathematics and music, and is one of Stedman’s hobbies and passions. He will present examples of original fractal music generated by a variety of known methods (L-systems, cellular automata), and by an original algorithm based on non-linear dynamics. A few examples of his music (algorithmic and human) can be found at: https://soundcloud.com/cooler-paradox
6:45pm-7:30pm Baiju Bhatt talks about what gets him pumped about Chaos theory
Baiju Prafulkumar Bhatt attended Stanford University and graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in Physics as well as a Master’s of Science in Mathematics. He is the co-founder of the mobile commission-free brokerage, Robinhood. Founded in 2012, Robinhood is one of the fastest growing startups in the financial technology industry. As of May 1st, it has over 330,000 signups on its wait list and has stated it is preparing to launch in mid 2014. Bhatt co-founded Robinhood along with Vladimir Tenev, a fellow Stanford student. Previously, the two co-founded two technology companies that were focused on high-frequency trading technology. Through building these technologies, the founders realized the potential to bring their innovations to individual investors.