Last November’s Tête-à-Tech event dove deep into a world of global tech policy, cutting-edge surveillance and cyber threats, and the essential fight for human rights online. Our guest, Ciprian Iancu (formerly of New America’s Open Internet Tools Project), offered his perspective informed by his nine years working at the US State Department on the Internet Freedom Program, a unique initiative that used technology development—specifically open-source tools—to advance and protect human rights all over the world.

​While AI products and marketing often use the term “thinking” we will dive into what these models are doing mathematically — probabilistic token generation and the sophisticated patterns of the Transformer architecture.

A conversation on the systems we are building to read and interpret the planet’s biological data in real time. We will move from the fundamentals of genomic sequencing as a public health tool to the complex analytics used by organizations like the CDC to track viral evolution and prevent pandemics. This discussion will explore the practical and ethical challenges of creating global access to genetic information and the immense potential of using this data for our collective safety.

Noah Landow (Founder and CEO at Macktez) sat down with Dr. Lisa Ann Schonberg (composer, percussionist, and ecological sound artist) to talk about her forty-year history with drums, traversing standard percussion into the world of “cryptic” natural sounds.

The Tête-à-Tech series kicked off its third year with a conversation that was less of a polite medical lecture and more of a revolutionary manifesto. Hosted by Noah Landow, CEO of Macktez, the event featured Jessica Halem, co-founder of Aviva Bio, a clinical-stage biotech company focused on hormone-based medicine. The room was intimate and the topic was a long-overdue reckoning: how technology and telehealth have finally reached a tipping point for women’s wellness.

​Just five years ago, the success of many innovative health products was entirely dependent on patients getting prescriptions through in-person doctor’s appointments. Underneath the surface of today’s app-based wellness, a revolution has occurred. The rise of telehealth and direct-to-consumer marketing has rewritten the rules, creating viable markets for specialized treatments and empowering women to take control of their health like never before.