Herrick Conferences

Monday, July 13

Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Eckhard, for that kind introduction…

On behalf of Purdue’s College of Engineering it’s a real pleasure to welcome you to the 2026 Herrick Conferences and to our campus. Whether you’ve come from here in Indiana, from elsewhere across the U.S., or from around the world, we are truly glad to have you with us at Purdue this week.

Purdue has long been a place where fundamental research, practical engineering, and partnership with industry and government come together. That spirit is at the heart of the Herrick Conferences. This gathering reflects what Purdue Engineering strives to do every day: bring people together across disciplines, sectors, and borders to solve problems that matter — for our economy, for our environment, and for communities around the world.

As dean, I should say a few words about Purdue Engineering. You probably know that Purdue is one of the nation’s largest Engineering colleges, but we’re about more than scale, affordable, excellence at scale is our mission.

  • Purdue now graduates more BS, MS, and PhD engineers annually than any other university in the country.

  • Over the past 15 years, enrollment has grown by almost 90%. Over my time at Purdue, we’ve become much more of a national university – 75% of our undergraduates are now out-of-state students.

  • The average time to graduate with a BS in engineering is less than 4 years.

  • 70% of those students graduate with no debt.

All this has been accomplished while freezing base tuition for 14 years and increasing the level of excellence:

  • U.S. News ranks our graduate program #4 in the U.S.

  • They rank our online MS programs No. 1 in each of the engineering specialties ranked.

  • Purdue engineering research is leading the way in addressing the nation’s critical technology challenges – including areas relevant to this conference.

  • We have some exceptional research facilities, with the Herrick Labs being a stellar example. I had an opportunity to tour the Herrick labs last week – it’s an amazing place and I encourage you to join the tours Tuesday evening.

Herrick is a Mechanical Engineering lab, but it engages faculty from across the College of Engineering and across the University. Mechanical Engineering is the largest undergraduate program in the College, and is now rapidly growing at our Indianapolis campus too.

As an electrical engineer, I’ve always been impressed with the breadth of mechanical engineering. I’ve spent my career working how to make Silicon MOSFETs smaller and smaller – there are now more than 100 million of them on an AI chip. The Silicon MOSFET was invented in 1960 at Bell Labs by a mechanical engineer, John Atalla, who did his PhD in ME at Purdue in 1949 with a thesis titled: “High Speed Compressible Flow in Square Diffusers.” He went to Bell Labs and quickly became a top-notch semiconductor physicist.

These are the kind of people we have here at Purdue in Mechanical Engineering and the kind of amazing people working in the Herrick Labs.

Now, for more than five decades, the Herrick Conferences have brought people together from around the world to exchange ideas and advance several fields. First it was compressors, then refrigeration and air conditioning, and then high-performance buildings. 

We are proud to welcome all of you — researchers, engineers, industry leaders, and government partners — who are here to share your new discoveries, challenge familiar assumptions, and learn from one another. You are part of a global community with a common purpose: developing technologies that improve lives.

This week, you’ll explore some of the most important challenges shaping our built environment and our energy future. The central challenge is: how do we design systems that perform better, last longer, improve quality of life, and use less energy? How do we create technologies that are not only more efficient, but also more resilient, more reliable, and more affordable than ever before.

Purdue researchers are proud to help advance that global effort — not only by hosting this forum, but through the research taking place every day in the Ray W. Herrick Laboratories and across Purdue Engineering.

But the value of the Herrick Conferences come not only from the technical sessions, but also from the conversations around them — the hallway exchanges, the meals, the informal discussions. I hope you’ll take full advantage of those moments — to exchange ideas, build new collaborations, and form friendships that last well beyond this conference.

I want to express my sincere appreciation to our sponsors and industry partners. Your continued support helps make these conferences possible, and your partnership strengthens the broader research ecosystem that drives innovation — here at Purdue and across our profession.

I’m also grateful to everyone who has worked so hard to bring this conference together — our faculty, staff, students, and volunteers. Welcoming hundreds of participants from around the world is no small undertaking, and we appreciate the time, care, and energy you have invested behind the scenes.

To those of you returning to Herrick, welcome back. And to those joining us for the first time, we’re so glad you’re here. I hope you enjoy your time on campus, discover new ideas, make meaningful connections, and leave inspired by the conversations you’ll have throughout the week.

Eckhard, thank you for your leadership. I’ll turn the program back over to you in just a moment.

To all of you, thank you for being part of the 2026 Herrick Conferences. May this week challenge us, connect us, and inspire us to build the technologies — and the partnerships — that will shape a better future. Have a wonderful conference. And as we say here at Purdue — Boiler up!