Alcor 2015 Conference

October 9-11, 2015

THE CONFERENCE IS OVER
THIS IS AN ARCHIVE PAGE

The Alcor 2015 Conference will be held on October 9-11, 2015 at the Scottsdale Resort and Conference Center at McCormick Ranch, located at 7700 East McCormick Parkway, Scottsdale, AZ 85258.

Alcor 2015 Conference

 

HOTEL ROOMS:

The room rate is $179 per night plus 13.5% sales tax. The suites are $279 per night.

Attendees must contact hotel at least 30 days before to identify themselves as part of the group.

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REGISTRATION:

Registration is $385 ($405 non-members).

You may register with the PayPal button below (PayPal account not required), with a credit card by calling Bonnie Magee at Alcor: 1-877-462-5267 ext. 114, or by sending a check to Alcor Life Extension Foundation, 7895 East Acoma Drive Suite 110, Scottsdale, Arizona 85260.

Note: Alcor will waive the normal $90 Membership Application Fee for conference attendees joining Alcor.

Sunday afternoon tour and cookout: The tour is free, but if you want the catered lunch, add $20 to your registration.

Group Discount: Organizations generating conference registrations of 10 or more people will receive discounts on whatever rate is applicable at the time of registration (10-15: 15%; 16-25: 20%; 26+: 25%). To claim the discount, you must call Bonnie Magee, rather than using the web form below, and identify your organization.

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  • A once-in-three-years opportunity to meet and catch up with over 200 people involved in cryonics.
  • Stay around for the Sunday afternoon cookout and tour of Alcor. If you haven’t seen inside Alcor for a few years, you will find that a lot has changed! Computerized perfusion, internal and external aesthetic changes, infographic display room, 3-D printers, new television commercials for Alcor, and much more.


CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Friday October 9, 2015
 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm Registration    
 7:30 pm - 10:00 pm   Welcome Reception    
 8:00 pm  Welcome Address:  Max More, Alcor President and CEO    
 8:15 pm until late   Networking. Hospitality Suite open    

Saturday October 10, 2015
 7:45 am - 12:00 noon   Registration    
 7:30 am - 8:30 am Breakfast    
 9:00 am - 9:20 am Opening by Alcor President Max More    
 9:20 am - 9:35 am Opening address and welcome:  Jim Lane, Mayor of Scottsdale    
 9:35 am - 11:00 am Research Session 1    
  • Greg Fahy, Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Twenty-First Century Medicine, Inc. “Transforming Complex System Cryoprotection, Starting this Year.”
  • Natasha Vita-More, University of Advancing Technology: “Memory Preservation of Nematodes Throughout Vitrification.”
  • Steve Graber, Alcor Technical and Readiness Coordinator: “Alcor’s Neuropatient CT Scanning Project.”
    
 11:00 am - 11:20 pm Break    
 11:20 am - 12:40 pm Research Session 2    
  • Steve Harris, Director of Research, Critical Care Research Co. “Dying is Easy, Rapid Cooling Is Hard”
  • Chana Phaedra, President of Advanced Neural Biosciences, Inc. “Recent Advances at Advanced Neural Biosciences.”
  • Max More, Aschwin de Wolf, Greg Fahy: “Riding the Mainstream to Reversible Medical Biostasis”
    
 12:40 pm - 2:20 pm Lunch    
 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm Optional on-site carotid ultrasound screening    
 2:20 pm - 3:35 pm  Research Session 3    
  • Robert McIntyre, 21st Century Medicine: “Aldehyde-Stabilized Cryopreservation”
  • Mark Voelker, President, SPNES: “Using High Pressure to Avoid Ice Formation”
    
 3:35 pm - 4:05 pm  Break    
 4:05 pm - 5:15 pm  How Alcor and Suspended Animation Work with Hospitals and Hospices:    
  • Aaron Drake, Medical Response Director, Alcor Foundation
  • Catherine Baldwin, Chief Operating Officer of Suspended Animation, Inc. (SA)
  • Chrissy Bird, Executive Director, Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care of Arizona
  • Christine Gaspar, Registered Nurse and president of the Cryonics Society of Canada
    
 5:15 pm - 5:30 pm Maximus Peto: “Novel Age-Reversal Human Clinical Study”    
 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm Break and networking    
 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm Banquet Dinner    
 8:30 pm Banquet Dinner Speaker: Dr. Michael West, CEO of BioTime, “Engineering Cellular Immortality: Implications for Aging & Regenerative Medicine”    

Sunday October 11, 2015
 7:00 am - 9:00 am Breakfast    
 9:30 am - 9:50 am   Aschwin de Wolf on Alcor’s new book Preserving Minds, Saving Lives    
 9:50 am - 10:20 am   Rudi Hoffman, CFP, CLU, ChFC: “Funding Cryonics in an Inflationary Universe,” with comments from Diane Cremeens, Alcor’s Membership Administrator, and Max More    
 10:20 am - 11:10 pm   Effective Communication about Cryonics
and Radical Life Extension:		    
  • Joe Polish, Founder and President of Piranha Marketing Inc.
  • David Kekich, Founder, Maximum Life Foundation
  • Max More, CEO of Alcor
   
 11:10 am - 11:30 am   Break    
 11:30 pm - 12:15 pm   Past, Present, and Future of Alcor’s Public Education:    
  • John Bevens, Director of Creative & Brand Marketing, Media Architects
  • Max More, CEO of Alcor
   
 12:15 pm - 12:45 pm Open discussion of effective communication    
 12:45 pm Closing remarks    
 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm Alcor Open House & Cookout    
 2:00 pm - 4:20 pm Optional on-site carotid ultrasound screening    


SPEAKERS

Jim Lane
Jim Lane
Mayor of Scottsdale, Arizona
W. J. “Jim” Lane is the current Mayor of Scottsdale, Arizona, and a former Scottsdale city councilman. He is the owner of Scottsdale-based internet service provider, financial consulting, and telecommunications company Chatham Hill Group LLC. Lane was also an adjunct instructor of business and accounting at Scottsdale Community College. Outside of business, Lane spent several years as an officer of the Board of Management of the Scottsdale Paradise Valley YMCA. Lane was inaugurated to his first term on the Scottsdale City Council on June 8, 2004. He assumed the office of Mayor in January 2009.
Catherine Baldwin
Catherine Baldwin
How Cryonics Organizations Work with Hospitals and Hospices
Catherine is the Chief Operating Officer of Suspended Animation, Inc. Since 2007, she has led SA’s expansion of research and facilities and overhaul of its service model, bringing mainstream scientists, surgeons and perfusionists into SA to contribute to research and care of cryopreservation patients. Prior to joining SA, Catherine served as Director of Business Development for Pharmaceutical Platforms at Symyx Technologies and as a Strategic Marketing Manager for Applied Biosystems. As a cell biologist in Neurobiology at UCLA and in Cardiopulmonary Physiology with the Lovelace Institutes, she pursued research interests in the molecular mechanisms of glutamate in the brain and thermoregulatory responses to hypoxia and ischemia. She has co-authored articles in Brain Research and the American Journal of Physiology.
John Bevens
John Bevens
Past, Present, and Future of Alcor’s Public Education
John Bevens is Director of Creative & Brand Marketing for Media Architects Advertising & Design, an award winning, full-service ad agency here in Phoenix, Arizona. He has worked as a writer, producer, and director in radio, television, video, film and in the agency world for over 25 years. John continues to lead and direct all the creative and marketing efforts of all agency clients for the last 15 years and has developed successful marketing campaigns and digital designs for notable clients such as: Honeywell, Dial Corporation (Henkel), Swift Transportation, St. Judes Children’s Research Hopital, Mazda, and many more. John and the Media Architects team provide on-going advisory, consultation and production services to Alcor Life Extension Foundation in the areas of: digital solutions, brand development, new media strategies, graphic design, website development, social media strategy, video production, and enhanced marketing strategies. John has been working with Alcor dating as far back as 2001 and definitely envisions a day when “cryonics” is a common household word.
Chrissy Bird
Chrissy Bird, MSN, RN, CHPN
How Cryonics Organizations Work with Hospitals and Hospices
Chrissy is Executive Director of Seasons Hospice and Palliative Care of Arizona. She joined Seasons Hospice in 2011 as the Clinical Director for the Phoenix program. During her four years with Seasons, she has also held the position of the National Director of Clinical Operations. In November of 2014, Ms. Bird returned to the Phoenix program as the Executive Director. She has over 12 years of experience in healthcare, with 10 of those years specifically in the area of hospice and palliative care. Ms. Bird is a board certified hospice and palliative care nurse, and is an active member of both the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and the local Arizona Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. She is a graduate of Grand Canyon University.
Aaron Drake
Aaron Drake, NREMT-P, CCT
How Cryonics Organizations Work with Hospitals and Hospices
Aaron is a Nationally Registered EMT-Paramedic (NREMT-P) and a Certified Cardiovascular Technologist (CCT) who serves as Alcor’s Medical Response Director. In this position he is responsible for the standby, stabilization and transport operations of the Alcor Foundation. He also ensures the timely preparation of detailed cryopreservation case reports. In conjunction with Alcor’s Readiness Coordinator, he ensures that equipment is properly maintained for emergency deployment, that field personnel are adequately trained, and that the highest quality of care is delivered to Alcor’s patients. Prior to joining the Alcor staff, Aaron worked as a paramedic firefighter for 14 years in his hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska. He has served with FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue program for emergency preparedness planning and has performed rescue and recovery efforts in response to national disasters. He has also managed operations for a nuclear medicine diagnostic imaging company for cardiologists in the southwest. Aaron holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from the University of Nebraska.
Greg Fahy
Greg Fahy, PhD
Transforming Complex System Cryoprotection, Starting this Year
Dr. Gregory Fahy is the Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of 21st Century Medicine, Inc. (21CM), a cryobiological biotechnology company focused on whole organ cryopreservation as well as on the cryopreservation of organized tissues. In 1981, he introduced the concept of organ vitrification, and in 1984, his first full paper on the subject was published, a paper that is now the most widely-cited paper ever published in the journal Cryobiology. In 1985, his paper in Nature with colleague W. F. Rall transformed the field of reproductive cryobiology by showing that embryos can survive vitrification in high proportions. In pursuit of the goal of whole organ banking, Dr. Fahy introduced many new concepts into the broader field of cryobiology, including cryoprotectant toxicity neutralization, qv* theory, designed ice interface dopants (“ice blockers”), the relevance of the Tg-Th intersection, chilling injury abrogation by tonicity adjustment, vitrification-catalyzed nucleation, viscosity-based storage time projections, the FlowLock perfusion technique, and many others. In 2009, he and his colleagues at 21CM published the first paper showing that a rabbit kidney can survive long-term after vitrification and transplantation and provide life support function, but with some ice damage. In 2013, he described how ice damage seen in the 2009 method can be eliminated without paying a toxicity penalty, and in 2015, he and colleague Brian Wowk discovered how to further reduce injury to mild levels. Dr. Fahy was elected as a Fellow of the Society for Cryobiology in 2014. A student also of the biology of aging, Dr. Fahy published The Future of Aging in 2010 and is currently organizing the first human trial of thymus regeneration.​
Christine Gaspar
Christine Gaspar
How Alcor and Suspended Animation Work with Hospitals and Hospices
Christine Gaspar is a Registered Nurse who specializes in emergency medicine, trauma and tele-triage. She served in the Canadian Armed Forces in the capacity of medic for the Lorne Scots Infantry Regiment and the 11th Field Royal Canadian Artillery Regiment. She lives near Toronto, Canada. Christine has been the president of the Cryonics Society of Canada almost continuously since 2003. In this role she helps advocate for local cryonicists and is working with others to build an infrastructure in Canada to support cryonics standby efforts. She participated in the Alcor Southern California standby team. She has appeared in press interviews, on TV, radio and internet media in an effort to engage and educate the public on cryonics related matters as well appearing as a guest lecturer at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is a writer who has contributed essays and articles in support of cryonics and transhumanist philosophy as well as working on a field manual for local DIY cryonics standby. She is a member of the Cryonics Institute and an associate member of Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Her goal is to realize a fully capable network of volunteer cryonics standby groups in Canada with professional support and service in an effort to stabilize patients over a large geographic area with field vitrification capabilities.
Steve Graber
Steve Graber
Lessons from Alcor’s CT scans of Neuropatients
Steve Graber has been Alcor’s Technical & Readiness Coordinator since July 2010. In addition to performing standbys, postmortem stabilization, and transport of Alcor patients to Alcor’s cryopreservation facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, Steve is also responsible for purchasing, inventorying, and maintaining supplies and equipment necessary for cryonics procedures at remote locations and at Alcor’s Scottsdale facility. Steve’s work was instrumental in implementing computerized perfusion process controls and upgraded perfusate chiller technologies in the Alcor surgical suite. His I.T. skills range from computer software and hardware design, desktop application programming, 3D animation, video editing, desktop publishing, and CAD design. He has experience designing and manufacturing industrial strength 3D printers ranging in size from desktop to 8 feet tall.
Steve Harris
Steve Harris, MD
Dying is Easy, Rapid Cooling Is Hard
Steve is Chief Medical Advisor for Alcor and Director of Research at Critical Care Research Company in Rancho Cucamonga, California. He has a B.S. degree in chemistry (A.C.S) and an M.D. from the University of Utah. He is board-certified in internal medicine and geriatrics. He studied gerontology with Roy Walford, M.D., at UCLA. At Critical Care Research he is presently engaged in the development of resuscitation technology by delivery of lipid-soluble drugs to the resuscitated brain, and also in experimental hypothermia induction for cerebral protection using post-resuscitation hypothermic perfluorocarbon lung lavage (dog model). He holds a propofol microemulsion patent in the U.S. and a number of other countries which has the potential to replace all existing preparations of this important surgical general anesthetic agent. Some of his publications can be found here.
Rudi Hoffman
Rudi Hoffman
Funding Cryonics in an Inflationary Universe
Rudi Hoffman is the world’s leading funding specialist for cryopreservation. Since he signed up with Alcor as a member in 1994, he has focused his financial planning practice on the needs of fellow cryonicists. He is a Certified Financial Planner, Chartered Life Underwriter, and Chartered Financial Consultant. What matters to you as a cryonicist or potential cryonicist is that Rudi has dedicated his life to showing people of average means that cryonics is affordable, both now and in the future, primarily through the leverage of life insurance. He lives in Florida with his wife/partner of 31 years and three dogs. Hobbies include bicycling, square dancing, reading, and promoting cryonics.
David Kekich
David A. Kekich
Effective Communication about Cryonics and Radical Life Extension
David A. Kekich is a recognized authority on longevity science. In 1999, he founded Maximum Life Foundation, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation dedicated to reversing human aging and aging related diseases. Since then, the Foundation, in concert with many of the world’s leading researchers, has developed a scientific roadmap to transform the elderly to biological youth. Mr. Kekich first became intrigued with extreme life extension in 1977 after founding the country’s largest life insurance master general agency, which raised $3.1 billion of premium income for First Executive Corp. This was where he was widely exposed to the realities and horrors of death from aging. Currently, he also serves as CEO of SciCog Systems, Inc. and Age Reversal, Inc. Mr. Kekich raises funds for life-extending research. He serves as a Board Member of the American Aging Association, Life Extension Buyers’ Club and Alcor Life Extension Foundation Patient Care Trust Fund. He authored Smart, Strong and Sexy at 100?, a how-to book for extreme life extension.
Robert McIntyre
Robert Louis McIntyre
Aldehyde-Stabilized Cryopreservation

Robert is a researcher at 21st Century Medicine where he works on experiments toward winning the Brain Preservation Prize, with funding from the Brain Preservation Foundation. He obtained a Masters of Engineering in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT in 2014, where he was the first to win both the Charles and Jennifer Johnson Thesis Award and the Harold L. Hazen Teaching Award. He contributed to the MIT Genesis research program into an AI that tries to understand stories the way humans do. He runs a blog at aurellem.org.
Max More
Max More, PhD
Effective Communication about Cryonics and Radical Life Extension

Max has been President and CEO of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation since the start of 2011. He joined Alcor as a member in 1986 and co-founded the first British cryonics organization the same year. He has been described as a philosopher recognized for his thinking on the philosophical and cultural implications of emerging technologies. More’s contributions include founding the philosophy of transhumanism, developing the Proactionary Principle, and co-founding Extropy Institute, an organization crucial in building the transhumanist movement since 1990. Max has a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University and received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Southern California in 1995. His doctoral dissertation, The Diachronic Self: Identity, Continuity, Transformation included a chapter on the concept of death: “The Terminus of the Self,” a shorter version of which appeared in Cryonics magazine and is found on this website. Max has given hundreds of talks, articles, and interviews on life extension and cryonics.
Maximus Peto
Maximus Peto, MBA
LEF’s Young Plasma Transfer Age-Reversal Study

Maximus joined the Life Extension Foundation in a full-time capacity in 2015, providing long-term managerial, scientific, and fiduciary oversight for the company. As a biochemist, longevity scientist, and biotech entrepreneur, Maximus has worked in various capacities in the life-extension research community. Since 2010, he has worked with the SENS Research Foundation as both a wet lab researcher (protein chemistry) and science literature analyst and reporter. A particular scientific interest of his is human metabolism: insulin signaling, nutrient uptake, ATP generation, cell turnover, mitochondrial biogenesis, exercise, and how all these relate to slowing and reversing aging. He is attending this year’s conference on behalf of Bill Faloon, and will be presenting Mr. Faloon’s slides on a parabiosis-related, age-reversal clinical study in South Florida, being supported substantially by LEF.
Chana Phaedra
Chana Phaedra
Recent Advances at Advanced Neural Biosciences

Chana is President of Advanced Neural Biosciences, Inc. and on the Board of Directors at the Institute for Evidence Based Cryonics. She has been an Alcor member since 2007. Chana was also previously employed as General Manager of Kaos Softwear. Chana earned her B.S. in Psychology at the University of North Texas in 2001 and her M.S. in Cognition and Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2003.
Joe Polish
Joe Polish
Effective Communication about Cryonics and Radical Life Extension

Joe is the Founder and President of Piranha Marketing Inc. He is also the Founder of GeniusNetwork.com (also known as the 25k Group) and co-founder of 10xTalk and I Love Marketing®, two highly popular podcasts on iTunes. Joe has an entrepreneurial focus on value creation, connection, and contribution. His marketing expertise has been utilized to build thousands of businesses and has generated hundreds of millions for his clients, ranging from large corporations to small family-owned businesses. Joe’s passions today are continuing to develop his Genius Network®, his group for high-achieving entrepreneurs providing useful sales and marketing best strategies, inspiration, and access to otherwise inaccessible experts and connections simply not available anywhere else, and his charitable contributions, which has raised well over three million dollars to date for Sir Richard Branson’s Foundation, Virgin Unite, to help fund entrepreneurial schools and humanitarian programs.

Natasha Vita-More
Natasha Vita-More, PhD
Memory Preservation of Nematodes Throughout Vitrification
Dr. Natasha Vita-More is a designer, author, and innovator. She is an expert in the field of emerging technology and humanity’s future challenges. She has appeared in over twenty-four televised documentaries and published in numerous academic, scientific, and design journals. Called an “early adapter of revolutionary changes” (Wired magazine) and a “role model for superlongevity,” her conceptual whole body prototype received international recognition. Currently Professor at the University of Advancing Technology, she lectured at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Virginia Commonwealth, Aalto (Finland), and Polytechnic (Hong Kong) universities. Natasha was an invited speaker on human enhancement at the International SportAccord Convention for Olympic and non-Olympic sports, and on radical life extension and the world’s aging population at the TOPOS Conference in Tokyo. She is co-editor and author of The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, published by Wiley-Blackwell.
Mark Voelker
Mark Voelker, PhD
Using High Pressure to Avoid Ice Formation
Mark is President of the Society for the Preservation of Near Extinct Species (SPNES). He has an MS in Physics from Caltech and a PhD in Optical Sciences from the University of Arizona. He worked for many years at the biotech firm BioTime, Inc.
Michael West
Michael West, PhD
Engineering Cellular Immortality: Implications for Aging & Regenerative Medicine
Dr. Michael West is the Chief Executive Officer of BioTime, Inc. BioTime and its subsidiaries are focused on developing an array of research and therapeutic products using pluripotent stem cell technology. He was the founder and first CEO of Geron Corporation of Menlo Park, California, and from 1992 to 1998 he was a Director, and Vice President, where he initiated and managed programs in telomerase diagnostics, oligonucleotide-based telomerase inhibition as anti-tumor therapy, and the cloning and use of telomerase in telomerase-mediated therapy wherein telomerase is utilized to immortalize human cells. From 1998 to 2007 he was President and Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. now Ocata Therapeutics where he managed programs in nuclear transfer, retinal differentiation, and PureStemTM, a technology for the multiplex derivation and characterization of diverse clonal human embryonic progenitor cell lines.
Aschwin de Wolf
Aschwin de Wolf
Presentation of the book Preserving Minds, Saving Lives: The Best Cryonics Writings from the Alcor Life Extension Foundation
Aschwin de Wolf is the CEO of Advanced Neural Biosciences, Inc., a neural cryobiology company in Portland, Oregon. Before that, he was employed at the cryonics stabilization services company Suspended Animation, Inc. He is an active Alcor member since 2003, an Advisor to the Alcor Board of Directors, and also a member of its Research and Development Committee. In 2007, he founded the Institute for Evidence-Based Cryonics, a tax exempt non-profit organization aimed at educating the general public about the benefits of human cryopreservation. Aschwin has been the Editor of Alcor’s Cryonics magazine since 2008.

 

Scottsdale Resort and Conference Center