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Electrical Engineering Professor Welcomed at Star Wars-Themed Conference

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The possibility of having real-life Princess Leia holograms in the near future excited attendees at a Star Wars-themed conference at which Doctor Daniel Smalley spoke.

Dr. Smalley, an Electrical Engineering professor, was invited to speak at the AI (Artificial Intelligence) Showbiz event in Redwood City, California on May 2-3, 2019 in celebration of May 4—a day commonly recognized as ‘Star Wars Day.’ Experts in the AI field came to speak to the attendees.

While Smalley was there, he gave a pitch and a Ted-talk style presentation about his hologram research and sat on a panel with other field experts. Molly Lavik, the co-founder of the event, had previously visited BYU and was impressed by the research Smalley had performed, which is why he was invited to speak.

Smalley said, “Molly was trying to invite a very specific group of people—there were a lot of CEOs from Silicon Valley, investors, and influencers. It was a huge networking event and everything was connected to AI.”

Perhaps the most novel part of the conference was when Noah Spavik, the man in charge of the “arch project,” launched nickel coins into space.

Of the landing, Smalley said, “[Spavik] crash-landed an archive on the moon…he makes these little nickel-plated coins that have all of the pages of the Bible, the Quran, and other literature etched into them. Nickel doesn’t degrade, and in theory could outlast the Earth. Then he crash-landed a bunch of stuff on the moon so he has essentially 'backed-up’ Earth. He made recordings of all of our talks that he’s going to put on these disks and in probably 2021, he’s going to launch them into space.”

While this is an unconventional way to save information, Dr. Smalley is excited about the launch: “It’s a long-time aspiration. I’ll have my stuff launched into the void of space. It’s very fitting for the theme of the conference.”