Noted inventor, author and futurist to speak on the St. Paul Campus of the U of St. Thomas on Wed July 12

Ray Kurzweil, an inventor, futurist and author who has been recognized by three U.S. presidents for his contributions to science and technology, will speak at 5:45 p.m. Wednesday, July 12, in the auditorium of O’Shaughnessy Educational Center on the St. Paul campus of the University of St. Thomas at 5:45 p.m. Wednesday, July 12.

The talk, and a 7 p.m. reception, are part of a celebration of the 20th anniversary of Graduate Programs in Software, which now is part of the College of Business.

Kurzweil, called the “greatest thinker on artificial intelligence” by Bill Gates, will discuss virtual technology, molecular computing, cybernetics, nanorobots and other developments in technology.

Kurzweil was the first to invent such devices at the flatbed scanner, omni-font optical character recognition, print-to-speech reading machine, and text-to-speech synthesizer.