School marks 125th anniversary with expanded Hall Engineering Lecture series

To mark the School of Engineering’s 125th anniversary in 2011-2012, its annual distinguished lecture — The John R. and Donna S. Hall Engineering Lecture — becomes a special series bringing four notable engineering leaders to campus, one each in October, November, January and March.

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Davis

Mark E. Davis, Warren and Katharine Schlinger Professor of Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, will deliver a lecture titled “Fighting Cancer with Nanoparticle Medicines” Friday, Oct. 14, at 3 p.m. in Jacobs Believed In Me Auditorium, Featheringill Hall. A reception in Adams Atrium follows the lecture.

Davis is a founding editor of CaTTech and he has served as associate editor of Chemistry of Materials and the AIChE Journal. He is a member of the Experimental Therapeutics Program of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the City of Hope.

Davis was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1997 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2006. He is the first engineer to win the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award. He is the founder of Calando Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a company that created the first RNAi therapeutic to reach the clinic for treating cancer.

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Majumdar

Arun Majumdar, director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), will deliver a lecture titled “ARPA-E: Catalyzing Energy Breakthroughs for a Secure American Future” Wednesday, Nov. 9, at 4 p.m. in Jacobs Believed In Me Auditorium, Featheringill Hall. A reception in Adams Atrium follows the lecture.

Majumdar became the first director of ARPA-E, the country’s only agency devoted to transformational energy research and development, in 2009. Prior to joining ARPA-E, he was the Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and Environment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

Majumdar was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2005. He has served on the advisory committee of the National Science Foundation’s engineering directorate, was a member of the advisory council to the materials sciences and engineering division of the Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences, and was an adviser on nanotechnology to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

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Bergman

Rebecca Bergman, vice president, New Therapies & Diagnostics for Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management, Medtronic, Inc., will deliver a lecture titled “Medical Technology: Opportunities and Challenges for the Next Decade” Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012 at 4 p.m. in Jacobs Believed In Me Auditorium, Featheringill Hall. A reception in Adams Atrium follows the lecture.

Bergman has served as vice president of Medtronic’s CRDM business  since 2009. Previously, she served as vice president of Corporate Science and Technology and directed Medtronic’s Corporate Life Sciences Research and the Materials and Information Science R&D groups as well as overseeing corporate technology initiatives.

Bergman is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She has served on the National Advisory Committee of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the NIH, and on a number of academic advisory boards.

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Fortenberry

Norman Fortenberry, executive director of the American Society for Engineering Education, will deliver a lecture titled “Engineering Excitement” Tuesday, March 20, 2012 at 4 p.m. in Jacobs Believed In Me Auditorium, Featheringill Hall. A reception in Adams Atrium follows the lecture.

Fortenberry was appointed executive director of the ASEE in May 2011. He is a Fellow of ASEE and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He was the founding director of the Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education at the National Academy of Engineering.

Prior to joining NAE, Fortenberry served as senior adviser for policy, analysis and planning to the National Science Foundation’s assistant director for education and human resources. He concurrently served as director of the Division of Undergraduate Education at the NSF.  Fortenberry also has served as executive director of the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science, Inc.