Starting today, experts from companies like 3M Corporation and Bavarian Motor Works will visit the Thayer School of Engineering as part of Thayer's environmental engineering lecture series.
While open to the public, the lecture series is part of the Engineering 179: Topics in Environmental Science and Engineering, a graduate level seminar taught by Professor Benoit Cushman-Roisin and Robert Collier, a visiting lecturer in the Engineering department.
Blade's lecture is the first of five lectures which will take place on Wednesday afternoons this term.
Cushman-Roisin said the aim of the lecture series is not to focus on developing safeguards like smokestack filters to remedy existing technology, but to bring about changes in the way new technologies are designed.
Karen Blade, an AT&T representative, will kick off the series with a discussion of recent developments in the field of industrial ecology.
After Blade's lecture today, Peter Jack of Spruce Falls, Inc., a Canadian pulp and paper company, will speak on Jan. 17 about the forest industry's efforts to lessen environmental pollution.
"We wanted to learn what is happening in the natural resource industries, in the forest industries ... We're going to get an international perspective," Collier said.
Texas Instruments Vice President of Environmental Affairs Shauna Sowell will speak Jan. 31 on the unique environmental problems faced in the manufacturing of microelectronics, Cushman-Roisin said.
"Millions of computers are thrown away each year," Cushman-Roisin said, citing the need for the recycling and re-manufacturing of used parts.
On Feb. 14, Dr. Robert Bringel, the retired vice president of environmental engineering and pollution control at 3M will address the class.
The long history of dealing with problems with coatings at 3M should offer a "historical perspective on industrial ecology," Cushman-Roisin said.
The lecture series will end on Feb. 28, with a presentation by Karl-Heinz Ziwicka, the general manager of environmental engineering at the German auto maker, BMW, on efforts to lessen automobile pollution while solving the problem of used parts, Collier said.
"How do you take apart an automobile and use the different parts again?" Collier asked.
