The LASERs are an international program of gatherings that bring the humanities, arts and sciences together for informal presentations and conversation with an audience. As of 2025, they take place in more than 40 universities and cultural institutions in four continents.
The LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) series was started by cultural historian Piero Scaruffi in january 2008 in San Francisco as a local forum for presenting art and science projects underway in the Bay Area. Besides the series at University of San Francisco, co-chaired with Tami Spector, Piero also started the series at Stanford, now co-chaired with prof. Curtis Frank, and UC Berkeley. Sister series, coordinated by Leonardo ISAST, have appeared in many cities of the world.
Think globally, act locally.
Click here for a history of the LASERs
As of 2021, LASER series are held in
Washington D.C.;
Los Angeles, CA;
Santa Cruz, CA;
Davis, CA;
London, Britain;
Austin, TX;
Kansas;
Zurich, Switzerland;
Paris, France;
Toronto, Canada;
New York City;
Tacoma, WA;
Montreal, Canada;
Augusta, GA;
Irvine, CA;
Edmonton, Canada;
San Jose, CA;
New Jersey;
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;
Fortaleza, Brazil;
Sao Paulo, Brazil;
Tehran, Iran;
Houston, TX;
Vienna, Austria;
Buffalo, NY;
Hong Kong, China;
New Brunswick, Canada;
Boston;
Pasadena, CA;
North Carolina;
Santa Barbara, CA;
New Zealand;
Mexico City, Mexico;
Arizona State University;
Dartington College, Britain;
Aalto University, Finland;
Moscow, Russia;
University of Queensland, Australia;
Linz, Austria;
Cyland/St Petersburg/ Moscow,
Helsinki/Espoo, Finland;
Brussels, Belgium;
Tel Aviv, Israel;
Valencia, Spain;
Lisbon, Portugal;
Liverpool, Britain;
Denmark;
Oxford Univ, Britain;
Shanghai, China;
Amsterdam, Netherlands;
Jerusalem, Israel;
Joint Research Centre, Italy;
... Seoul, Korea; Melbourne, Australia;...
LASER hosts as of 2026
The mission of the LASERs is to provide the general public with a snapshot of the cultural environment of a region and to foster interdisciplinary networking.
Each evening, in a casual academic setting, free of charge and open to the public, presents up to four artists, scientists, philosophers, historians, inventors and scholars who are working on paradigm shifts. Each evening also allows the audience to socialize and encourages people in the audience to briefly introduce their work. (If you are interested in running a LASER series at your university, please contact me and this is roughly what makes the LASERs different).
A white paper about the LASERs
Archive of past LASERs
Gallery of past presenters
.
See also the
The LAST festival
Piero Scaruffi is a cognitive scientist who was the manager of the Olivetti Artificial Intelligence Center in Silicon Valley, held visiting scholarships at several academic centers (notably Harvard and Stanford universities), lectured in three continents, and published several books on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (most recently, the four-volume "Thinking about Thought" in 2014 and "Intelligence is not Artificial" in 2015). He pioneered Internet applications in the early 1980s and the use of the World-Wide Web for cultural purposes in the mid 1990s; and he has co-authored "A History of Silicon Valley" (2012).
As a music historian, he has published ten books, the latest ones being "A History of Rock and Dance Music" (Second edition, 2009) and "A History of Jazz Music" (2007). He has also written extensively about cinema, literature and the visual arts on his website www.scaruffi.com. His latest book of poems and meditations is "Synthesis" (2009). "A Brief History of Knowledge" (2011), the lectures from his old UC Berkeley class, has been published as an Amazon ebook.
Full bio: click here.
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