Upper School Intersession 2025

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK - aka North Korea) government has made extensive investments into offensive cyber security capabilities. What separates the DPRK from other top tier countries in the cyber space is their full embrace of financially motivated crime in addition to more classic state activities like espionage and covert operations / disruption. In this session we’ll spend time talking through the various branches of DPRK cyber activities including crypto/bitcoin attacks, attacks targeting security researchers, the billion dollar raid targeting the Bangladeshi National Bank, and recent efforts to plant DPRK operatives under stolen identities in western countries as regular remote IT workers.

We will discuss how lasers, rather than blow stuff up, can cool atoms down to temperatures near absolute zero. At these temperatures, atoms can form macroscope waves that are the matter analog of lasers. Experiments can use these matter waves as emulators for studying quantum materials such as high-temperature superconductors. Moreover, laser-cooled atoms can serve as the key ingredient in quantum devices like sensors and computers. We'll present examples of what the new revolution in quantum science and engineering might bring.

Political cartoons have been part of public debates around the world for more than 250 years. Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist David Horsey will take students on a visual journey through the history of political cartoons and then talk about his own career; how he creates cartoons, the presidents he has lampooned, the readers he has angered, the wild scenes he has observed -- all illustrated with copious examples of his award-winning cartoons.

Our Universe is 15 billion years old. In its early phases, it consisted of mainly hydrogen and helium, with only a small admixture of lithium. Yet today, when we look at our hand, we find it consists mainly of carbon and oxygen, a bit of hydrogen and nitrogen, plus some calcium present mainly in our bones. Those elements are crucial to the formation of life, but how and where did they form? In this lecture, presented on an introductory level, Dr. Madejski will talk about the history of elements and how they got dispersed into interstellar space via stellar explosions.