Osher Life Long Learning Institute

October 23, 2013, Barre Aldrich Library, 1:30 pm
John M. Cohn, Ph.D.
“The Maker Movement: How it Contributes to Vermont’s Vitality”

John Cohn is a principal supporter and participant in the Vermont Maker Movement – a maker being to any amateur or professional inventor of physical objects. Vermont’s makers come from all walks of life: they are farmers, programmers, artists, educators and kids who dream up solutions to problems or situations. While they are very diverse in what they do and where they come from, they seem to share a number of qualities — curiosity, a stubborn do-it-yourself spirit and an eagerness to share ideas. Though the term “maker movement” is new, the inclination to innovate, to tinker and to invent is not. Learn how this movement contributes to Vermont’s culture and the strength of its economy.

In 2006 John Cohn was named an IBM Fellow – the highest honor IBM accords to any of its scientists. He has had a long career as an innovator in the area of design automation of customized integrated circuits and has 50 patents issued or pending in that and related fields.
John is active in education issues at a local, state and national level. He frequently takes his traveling "Jolts and Volts" electricity show to schools, community groups, universities and museums across the US . John is so passionate about promoting science and engineering that he spent 58 days living and inventing in an abandoned steel mill as part of Discovery Channel's new technical survival show "The Colony".
John lives in a restored schoolhouse in Northern Vermont with his family and is eager to share his love of science and engineering with anyone who will listen.

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