Topos
A community of scientists dedicated to life-long learning.
How?
We have focused on three vectors for supporting life-long learning.
Small House
We have assembled a dozen scientists from a variety of fields to collaborate.
Large Community
We've built a large community of 500+ scientists, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists excited to learn and teach.
Learning Retreats
We've worked on developing a formula for a retreat that ensures learning what's most important but never urgent.
Topos Community
To support life-long learning, we've iterated towards optimized formats for seminars, lectures, book talks by leading authors, peer learning groups & more... We'll release our approach on our blog.
Learn More
Topos House
We host 6-12 scientists in a central house dedicated to creating the optimal conditions for interdisciplinary work.
Topos Retreats
Our retreat creates a temporary sanctuary for learning what's most important to you but never urgent.
Learn MoreTopos Mission
At Topos, our goal is to create the optimal environment for life-long learning. Whatever your age and whatever your stage, we aspire to be your greatest supporter in your learning goals. We're thrilled to work with learners from 5 yrs old to 90+.
To start, we created Topos house which brings together 6-12 scientists from deliberately disparate fields of science and art with the hope (now supported by strong evidence) that the greatest collaborations start over the kitchen table instead of conference table or even lecture tables.
We're now trying to bring our approach to a broader community.
Fundamentals Focus
Post-college learning is often most short on fundamentals. To address that, we've built curricula and best practises around learning the fundamentals of fields that aren't your own. Our most successful program was a residency of mathematical biologists intended to teach the fundamentals of mathematics to biologists and vice a versa.
The lectures continue even when one of members finds themselves in the hospital :)
Sunday Dinners
Every Sunday, we host a dinner for 8-14 people focused around a central topic. We usually follow Thomas Jefferson's rules for social dinners. We've hosted 100+ in a row.
Seminars
The Best Way to Learn is to Teach
The core of our community learning are resident-run seminars. We usually bring 3-6 people together from separate fields with the goal of creating a lucid pice of exposition. To that end, our residents run weekly seminars on a variety of topics: symplectic geometric tour of mathematical physics, thermodynamics underlying Jeremy England's work, ancient Indian economic history etc... We very much prioritize people learning through teaching others.
Book Talks
We invite leading authors from fields ranging from mathematics, physics and economic history to give early talks for their newly released books.
Glen Weyl conducting an auction based off the principles outlined in his most recent book: Radical Markets. (https://amzn.com/0691177503)
Your Idea
So far, we've mostly focused on creating excellent versions of known formats (seminars, lectures, book talks, peer learning groups etc...). We're most excited about creating new structures for life-long learning. Please share your ideas :)
Homeric Dinner on the Wine-Dark Sea. Ok, Land's End Beach :)
Contact Us
We're excited to collaborate with others in the pursuit of creating the best possible home for life-long learning. So feel free to reach out :)
Phone
650 885 5000
Email Address
nathanielsauder@gmail.com