Synopsis:

Do you know what Credit Score is? Do you know how it affects you personally? Are you aware how this score is calculated and reported?  The fact of the matter is that this 3-digit number affects not only your financial wellbeing but also your lifestyle altogether not only the interest rates you are charged but also your insurance premiums and your employment. Whether we like it or not, our credit score is used to judge and categorize us. Of course, where there is vested interest, there is going to be consorted effort to justify this type of assessment; and thus, the possibility of error and miscalculation.         
In this presentation, Ms. Etezad will address these issues and how the Credit Bureaus calculate and report your credit. She will discuss the uses and the abuses of this industry’s practices, the possible ways to monitor and follow the changes in your credit score and more importantly how to hold these credit reporting agencies accountable for errors which adversely affect you, your credit, your business and your lifestyle.She also will give you tips on how to improve your credit score.

About the Speaker:

Gita Etezad is a board certified credit expert and runs the day to day operation at the Credit Pro Center in Rockville, Maryland. She primarily helps potential homebuyers with credit rating and score improvement services, enabling them to qualify for financing. Credit Pro Center is among only a handful of credit repair companies which are licensed and bonded in the State of Maryland.
She started her career in the financial industry in 1998 as a mortgage loan officer. Her expertise includes residential mortgages, commercial loans, credit analysis and credit score improvement, SBA loans and business financing.

For this lecture: light refreshment will be provided

Synopsis:

X-ray has been used in imaging and treatment of cancers since its discovery by Rontgen in 1895. X-rays is part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum with energies higher than visible light. X-rays are partially absorbed and scattered by tissues when striking the body but those that pass through the body can be detected to form an image of the internal organs. Images taken with one x-ray projection are called planar images. They are mainly good for imaging bony anatomies. Computed tomography (CT) is an imaging procedure that uses multiple X-ray projections to create detailed images of areas inside the body.
Shortly after the use of x-ray for imaging its damaging effect to personnel dealing with x-ray started to emerge. At the same time it was discovered that the same damaging effect can be used for treating cancers. Linear accelerators (Linac) provide high energy x-rays for cancer treatment. Currently there are all kinds of specialized Linacs for treating cancers. However the newest development in cancer treatment is using proton and other particle beams for therapy. In this talk history of x-ray in medical application and the recent application of particle beams in cancer therapy will be presented.

About the Speaker:

Mehrdad Sarfaraz is currently Chief Medical Physicist at George Washington University Hospital Radiation Oncology Center. He is certified by American Board of Radiology and has worked in the field of radiation oncology and radiology for over thirty years. His former position was Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at RadAmerica, a subsidiary of MedStar Health organization. He previously held multiple academic appointments including Associate Professor at University of Maryland Medical School.
Mehrdad Sarfaraz received his BS and MS in physics from Sharif University of Technology and Michigan State University correspondingly. He later on switched his field of study to Medical Physics and was granted PhD in Radiological Sciences from George Washington University. He has published many articles on radiation medical applications and has been invited to present in multiple conferences and seminars. He was recipient of a scholarship and a research grant and was awarded Teacher of the Year by Association of Residents in Radiation Oncology.

For this lecture: light refreshment will be provided

Synopsis:

In response to many international initiatives, developing countries adopt reforms without sustained improvements in performance. Developing countries adopt these reforms to increase their external legitimacy and support without improving their performance. These attempts can sum up with capability traps in which states cannot improve or even decline their capabilities (Andrews and et al.2013 ). However, after the 1979 revolution, Iran’s institutions and organizations have leveraged their resources and technical expertise to critical mass of people’s’ ability and willingness to initiate and maintain changes. In this lecture, I discuss about Iran, which has been able to escape isomorphic mimicry (which organizations change what they look like instead of what they do.) and improve its capability in the absence of international interventions. To understand how Iran solves its public problems, I structurally analyze a post-revolution successful Iranian reform. Then, I compare those successes with the world’s “best practices” (which often failed due to lack of domestic ownership and adaption of imported reforms) and extract some lessons learned; allowing us to answer the question how Iran can be a game changer in other sectors such as economic growth. Being a game changer in this period of time is very important for Iran’s long time economic growth.

About the Speaker:

Masoomeh Khandan is a Research Fellow at Harvard Center for International Development and a consultant at the Center for Global Development, a think tank in D.C. She won the World Bank fellowship to study the Master of Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) at Harvard Kennedy School of Government (HKS) in 2013. She also won 2015 Susan C. Eaton Memorial Prize for the best paper at HKS. Currently, She is working on economic development and economic growth.
Her undergrad studies were in Electrical Engineering at Sharif University of Technology. To address some issues of Iran’s education system, she participated in leading a community of highly motivated volunteers to form the “Asseman Group”, an NGO with the mission “to conceptualize and institute Iranian children with some of the decisive, but unfortunately less-emphasized, skills such as systems thinking, team work and life skills, through edutainment”. Encouraged by this project, she attended “Leading Education Systems at the National Level”, a program offered by Harvard Graduate School of Education. Also, she led a team of students and graduates from Harvard Kennedy School and Sharif University of Technology to evaluate Iranian’s higher education system. The results were delivered to Iran’s Ministry of Higher Education to incorporate in a policy for universities.

For this lecture: light refreshment will be provided