The Future of Innovation, Technology and Humans

Dean Ornish & Vinod Khosla, moderated by David Ewing Duncan

21st Apr 2015
San Francisco

Arc Fusion Dinner

At Arc we like to have unexpected pairings of people to have discussions about provocative issues. It was our pleasure to combine two leading figures in fusion that come in many ways from different perspectives to discuss their ideas about the future and where humans are headed.

One is an engineer and investor at the forefront of many high tech movements of the past 35 years; the other is a physician and biomedical researcher who pushes mostly what he calls “low tech” solutions to improving health – although as Dean Ornish said of Vinod Khosla, they “violently agree” as much as they disagree.

Vinod Khosla

Founder, Khosla Ventures

Vinod Khosla is an entrepreneur, investor, and technology fan. He is the founder of Khosla Ventures, focused on impactful clean technology and information technology investments.

Mr. Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy systems and founding CEO of Sun Microsystems where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors.

One of Mr. Khosla’s greatest passions is being a mentor to entrepreneurs, assisting entrepreneurs and helping them build technology based businesses.

Mr. Khosla is driven by the desire to make positive impact through scaling alternative energy, achieving petroleum independence, and promoting a pragmatic approach to the environment. He is also passionate about Social Entrepreneurship.

Vinod holds a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from IIT, New Delhi, a Master’s in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Dean Ornish, M.D.

Clinical Professor of Medicine, UCSF

Founder & President, nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute

Dr. Dean Ornish’s pioneering research was the first to prove that lifestyle changes may stop or even reverse the progression of heart disease and early-stage prostate cancer and even change gene expression, “turning on” disease-preventing genes and “turning off” genes that promote cancer, heart disease and premature aging.

Recently, Medicare agreed to provide coverage for his program, the first time that Medicare has covered an integrative medicine program.

He is the author of six bestselling books and was recently appointed by President Obama to the White House Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health.

He is a member of the boards of directors of the San Francisco Food Bank and the J. Craig Venter Institute. The Ornish diet was rated #1 for heart health by U.S. News & World Report every year from 2011 to 2015.