Professors Hit the Road — Lecturing, Teaching and Attending Conferences Around the World
KGI Faculty Don’t Slow Down in Summer Months
KGI faculty members have been on the move this summer — teaching, speaking at and attending several international conferences. Joel West, Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and an internationally recognized expert on open innovation, recently returned from a trip to Aachen, Germany. At RWTH Aachen University, he taught a PhD seminar on open innovation and gave a lecture on his solar research, which compares industry development and policy in California with other key regions of the world. He also was the opening speaker at a June 28 progress meeting of a German-Dutch-Belgian regional economic development effort based in Aachen. He outlined how the principles of open innovation could help support their efforts to strengthen cross-border alliances among technology companies in the Greater Euregio Meuse-Rhine Region.
Jim Sterling and CGU PhD student Michael Franklin took a more southerly course, heading to the 8th International Meeting on Electrowetting in Athens, Greece. In addition to being the VP of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty, Sterling also co-directs the Microfluidics Research Laboratory at KGI along with Dr. Ali Nadim, professor of mathematics at Claremont Graduate University. Held biannually in cities throughout Europe, Asia and the U.S., the meetings allow scientists and engineers to exchange ideas about recent advances in theoretical and technological aspects of electrowetting.
Over the past decade, the field of microfluidics has matured and has led to commercialization in diagnostic systems and high-throughput life science research. Electrowetting is a particular type of liquid-handling technology that allows many laboratory steps to be integrated in a lab-on-a-chip with applications to DNA and protein diagnostics, optics, and biomimetics. Limited to 100 attendees, the June 21–June 23 meeting also featured a series of tutorials on fundamental electrowetting issues aimed at encouraging student participation.
“It is truly gratifying to see the development of electrowetting technology into commercial applications,” Sterling noted. “From zoom-lenses and flat-panel displays to DNA diagnostics and newborn screening tests, we are witnessing the emergence of a new paradigm for automating microfluidics.”
Also, during a recent trip to his native London, Ian Phillips met with Informa Healthcare Communications and accepted an appointment as editor in chief, expert opinion in orphan drugs. Working with leading researchers and thinkers around the world, Informa publishes a comprehensive portfolio of journals, print and online books, encyclopedias and directories.