2019-2020 Distinguished Lecturers

|February 12, 2020|Theme: Transdisciplinary Research|

Dr. Kathy Halvorsen

Lecturer

Distinguished Professor Kathleen Halvorsen

Topic

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Team Science: Lessons Learned from 25 Years of Transdisciplinary Research

Research Statement

The creation and management of effective large, complex research teams and proposals is challenging. One of the keys to turning a diverse group of individual talented researchers into an effective research group is an understanding of some basic team science principles. I focus on describing some of the lessons learned together from my time working in, leading, and studying large, complex scientific research teams. My goal is to increase understanding of successful teamwork skills that can increase research team success.

Learn More About Kathleen Halvorsen

|December 5, 2019|Theme: Cloud Chambers|

Raymond A. Shaw

Lecturer

Distinguished Professor Raymond Shaw

Topic

The Michigan Tech Cloud Chamber – How Does It Work and What Have We Learned?

Research Statement

Michigan Tech is home to a unique chamber used for investigating aerosol and cloud processes relevant to weather and climate. To make a cloud, the environment has to have a relative humidity above 100%. In the laboratory that’s a tricky thing to achieve because water condenses on any available surfaces; the MTU chamber gets around that by generating clouds through turbulent mixing. The cloud chamber allows us to study a wide variety of research questions: For example, how do clouds respond to clean versus polluted conditions? Cloud chamber experiments reveal how clean clouds may produce rain more easily.

Learn More About Raymond Shaw

|October 16, 2019 | Theme: Utilitarian Engineering |

David Watkins

Lecturer

Distinguished Professor David Watkins

Topic

Utilitarian Engineering: Promoting Equity and Sustainability Under Resource Constraints

Research Statement

Research shows that happiness and life satisfaction scale with the logarithm of income. This supports the use of utility functions (and their derivative, demand curves) in engineering models for managing resources and planning infrastructure investments.  Examples of resource management models that ultimately seek to maximize societal utility--both for current and future generations--will be presented, along with some limitations and research directions.  The talk will begin with a disclaimer that, despite having a Ph.D., the speaker has no formal training in philosophy.

Learn More About David Watkins