[BNC-all] Seminars: Candidates for Discovery Park Chief Scientist and Executive Director (5/15, 18, 21)

Thu May 14 15:27:30 EDT 2015

Dear All,

The Visioning and Search Committee for the Chief Scientist and Executive Director of Discovery Park has invited three candidates to campus to share their vision for Discovery Park.  See below the schedule of the seminars.

·         Dr. Karl Mueller:  Friday, May 15, 9:30-11:00 am, MRGN 121

·         Dr. Maureen McCann:  Monday, May 18, 9:30-11:00 am, MRGN 121

·         Dr. Tomás Díaz de la Rubia:  Thursday, May 21, 10:00-11:30 am, MRGN 121

More details about the talks are provided below. This position is quite important for the future of the Birck Center and DP. I encourage you to attend these seminars and provide feedback (through the Qualtrix survey found at  https://purdue.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_55Qaqwt0nBreLlz).

Thanks a lot,
Ali

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Dr. Karl T. Mueller

Professor of Chemistry, Pennsylvania State University

Laboratory Fellow and Acting Chief Science Officer of
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

May 15, 2015  •  9:30-11:00 am

Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship Room 121

Discovery in a Time of Complexity

Research in both fundamental and applied sciences has accelerated due to tremendous advances in analytical and computational tools that have redefined “big science” and allowed us to ask questions that would have previously appeared absurd based on their complexity.  In my scientific career, where I have been developing and deploying new methods in solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, I have experienced the exciting transition from the single investigator/laboratory model to a world of multidisciplinary science where complex questions are pursued by diverse teams of researchers.  I will briefly trace this arc in my studies while highlighting my changing research interests and goals.

At a wider scale, the research and discovery landscape in the United States, and indeed worldwide, must evolve rapidly to confront large and complex scientific challenges that arise at a quickening pace.  As such, the immediacy of research heightens and desired timescales for results becomes compressed, while (as noted above) the issues increase in complexity and scale.  Agile scientific strategies are replacing slower methods, requiring new approaches and bold leadership.  To lead effectively in such an environment, viewpoints and strategies from the multitude of scientific venues (academia, industry, private and government laboratories) must be examined, evaluated, and thoughtfully merged.  I will present my insights into the challenges and opportunities available for Discovery Park gained from my years in the academic world, now joined with experience from a national laboratory where client-based business capture and customer-centric relationship management are keys to success.

Dr. Karl Mueller received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Rochester in 1985 and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991.  Mueller has been a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at Penn State University for over twenty years.  His research team develops and exploits solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to address complex problems and is funded by NSF, DoE, and industrial sponsors.

Since 2010, Mueller has also held an appointment as Laboratory Fellow at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), where his research interests include the study of structure and dynamics in battery materials and catalyst systems.  At PNNL, he is a PI in the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (a DOE-funded Energy Hub), a member of the lab-level Science and Technology Council, the Executive Committee of the Council of Fellows, and the Strategy and Leadership Teams within the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) scientific directorate.  For the past year and a half he has served as acting Chief Science Officer for EMSL, a position where he is responsible for decisions on scientific planning and investments as well as the leadership of strategic planning and scientific outreach.

Mueller has authored over one hundred research communications, articles, and book chapters, which have been cited over 2950 times. He was recently inducted as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Dr. Maureen McCann
Professor, Biological Sciences, Purdue University
Director, Energy Center in Discovery Park
Director, Center for Direct Catalytic Conversion of Biomass to Biofuels (C3Bio)

Monday, May 18, 2015  •  9:30-11:00 am
Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, Room 121

Discovery Park:  A lever, a place to stand

The Navy describes three kinds of fleets under its command: the fleet afloat, the fleet under construction, and the future fleet imagined by engineers and scientists.  By analogy, Discovery Park is engaged with current research needs across a range of disciplines, with the translation of technologies that provide solutions, and with the grand challenge research for a future resilient in the face of economic, health and environmental threats.  My vision encompasses two over-arching themes for this future: 1) developing our technological, intellectual and stakeholder capacity for sustainable prosperity and 2) enhancing the STEM pipeline for leadership in industry, academia and government.  Sustainable prosperity is the future that we choose. It is a future of well-being for global citizens, economic security and social justice.  We will need technological innovation and invention, future decision-makers, and systems-level solutions.  For Discovery Park, I suggest that we are poised to enable a new bio-economy at the intersection of the life and physical sciences, using deep expertise in diagnostics, healthcare delivery, sensors, drug discovery, cyber-security for patient privacy, and bio-based products and devices.  We have a proven model for conducting interdisciplinary science but we can expand convergence to capture human dimensions.  We can enhance the pipeline of STEM leadership by engaging with the best and brightest undergraduate and graduate students, and early career scientists, to providing a rich training environment.  These themes are best approached in the culture of use-inspired discovery and mission-oriented research that is the very foundation of Discovery Park.

Maureen McCann is the Director of Purdue’s Energy Center, part of the Global Sustainability Institute in Discovery Park.  She is also the Director of the Center for Direct Catalytic Conversion of Biomass to Biofuels (C3Bio), an interdisciplinary team of biologists, chemists and chemical engineers in an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science.  The C3Bio is focused on building the scientific knowledge base to convert plant materials (fast-growing trees, crop residues, dedicated bioenergy crops) into liquid hydrocarbon fuels and high-value chemicals.  The goal of her own research is to understand how the molecular machinery of the plant cell wall contributes to cell growth and specialization, and how plants may be optimized for use in various conversion processes.  She obtained her undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, UK, in 1987, and then a PhD in Botany at the John Innes Centre, Norwich UK, a government-funded research institute for plant and microbial sciences.  She stayed at the John Innes Centre for a post-doctoral, partly funded by Unilever, and then as a project leader with her own group from 1995, funded by The Royal Society.  In January 2003, she moved to Purdue University as an Associate Professor, and she is currently a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences where she teaches Eukaryotic Genetics.

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Dr. Tomás Díaz de la Rubia
Director and Innovation Leader, Energy & Resources Industry Practice, Deloitte Consulting, LLP

Thursday, May 21, 2015  •  10:00 – 11:30 am
Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship Room 121

Societal Grand Challenges in the 21st Century:
Strategies for Accelerating the Solutions through Interdisciplinary Science and Technology

We live in an era of unprecedented change in which exponential growth in science and technology provides tremendous hope and optimism for the future.  However, going forward, we face daunting societal challenges that threaten our continued development and well-being. These challenges–ranging from energy and climate, to human health, to food and water, among many others–often represent “wicked” problems that cannot be solved using solely traditional approaches based on individual academic disciplines. The solutions are complex and require coordinated approaches that leverage the power of institutions such as Discovery Park where multiple disciplines can come together and work in a coordinated and strategic manner to tackle these issues.  We will discuss what some of these societal challenges are, how current science, technology and business trends are already changing society today, and how strategies based on the power of multiple disciplines might be able to help lead the way toward accelerating new solutions.  In addition, I will also discuss some of my personal research background, including work on multiscale modeling of materials as well as on the physics and engineering of Inertial Fusion Energy, as well lessons learned from my experience as leader and manager of a large public research organization, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Tomás Díaz de la Rubia is a seasoned, progressive science and technology leader with extensive experience in both the public and private sectors. At present, he serves as Innovation Leader and a Director in the Energy and Resources industry practice at Deloitte Consulting LLP, working with Fortune 500 clients in energy and manufacturing industries to help identify and capitalize on business opportunities presented by the emergence of potentially disruptive, innovative new technologies. Previously, he was Chief Research Officer (2008-2012) and Deputy Director for Science and Technology (2010-2012) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where he was the top executive responsible for the science and technology foundations of LLNL’s $1.6 Billion program. His role was to translate the Director’s executive vision into the research strategy of the Laboratory. His major responsibilities included setting and implementing the Laboratory’s research and scientific priorities, aligning them with its national, global and energy security mission and strategic goals, and ensuring scientific excellence at the frontiers of science and technology. He led all scientific functions of the laboratory, and directly managed the $300MM program portfolio of internal R&D and external, competitively funded basic science. He was an Associate Director (2002-2009) at LLNL and led the Chemistry, Materials Science, Life Sciences, and Energy and Environmental Sciences organizations.  Díaz de la Rubia and his team launched many new basic and applied science initiatives and created multiple cross-disciplinary centers of scientific excellence focused on nanotechnology, advanced materials, systems biology, and computational science. He led the Laboratory’s $60MM basic materials science, chemistry and biology programs with the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and has co-edited several books and conference proceedings. He is an elected a fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and served as an elected member of the Board of Directors of the Materials Research Society. He was vice chair (chair elect) of the Division of Computational Physics of the American Physical Society in 2008. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree (summa cum laude) and a Ph.D. in physics from The State University of New York, Albany.

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