MIT professor to give talk on innovation

February 4, 2010

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Eugene A. Fitzgerald, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and Cornell University visiting professor, will share his expertise in the process of innovation during a talk at 3 p.m. Feb. 18 in Stewart Center's Fowler Hall at Purdue University.

Eugene A. Fitzgerald

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Fitzgerald, co-author of the book "Inside Real Innovation," to be published later this year, will deliver the Philip Bagwell Memorial Lecture.

He has been involved in innovation for more than 20 years and has developed a picture of the processes experienced by innovators. During his talk, he will focus on a common language of innovation that will be useful for scientists and engineers as well as those involved in business and finance.

Fitzgerald is the Merton C. Flemings-SMA Professor of Materials Engineering at MIT and has been a visiting professor of management and engineering at Cornell since 2007. In 1999 he became a fellow in the Singapore-MIT Alliance, an engineering and life science educational and research collaboration among National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and MIT, and has collaborated in research and development through that program for nearly a decade.

His technology interests include nano-engineered materials, novel devices and heterostructure energy devices. He has substantial private sector business experience specializing in the commercialization of core technologies, gaining experience through multiple startup companies.

He has been founder, co-founder or founding team member in AmberWave Systems, Contour Semiconductor, Paradigm Research, 4Power and The Water Initiative. The output of these companies can be found in the low-energy microprocessors in computers, high-efficiency solar cells being developed for solar aircraft and water purification systems being deployed in Mexico.

Fitzgerald also is founding director of the Business of Science and Technology Initiative at Cornell and the Kauffman Innovation Interface. He holds more than 50 U.S. patents, with several pending, and has been author and co-author of more than 200 technical papers. 

The talk, which is free and open to the public, is part of the Philip F. Bagwell Lecture Series organized by the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and co-sponsored by ECE, the College of Engineering and Discovery Park.

The first Bagwell Lecture was held in 2004. Philip Bagwell, the associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering for whom the series is named, died in 2002.

Writer: Judith Barra Austin, 765-494-2432, jbaustin@purdue.edu

Source: Mark Lundstrom, Don and Carol Scifres Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 765-494-3515, lundstro@purdue.edu