Conference Speakers
Opening Speaker:
Jorge Cham
Jorge Cham is the creator and artist of Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD), the comic strip about life (or the lack thereof) in grad school.
Often called the Dilbert of academia, PHD has appeared in the Stanford, MIT, Caltech and Carnegie Mellon newspapers among others, and it is published online where it receives over 7 million page views a month from over 1000 universities and colleges worldwide.
Jorge Cham was born and raised in the Republic of Panama. He obtained his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University (specializing in Robotics), where he started drawing PHD. He was subsequently an Instructor and Research Associate at Caltech from 2003-2005, where his work focused on developing “Smart” Neural Implants. He has published and presented nationally and abroad on his Robotics and Neural Prosthetics research. He also travels and presents all over the world to thousands of graduate students, faculty and administrators on the graduate student experience.
Three PHD book collections have been published. In all, Jorge Cham’s books have sold over 48,000 copies to date.
To view Jorge’s comic strips, please visit: www.phdcomics.com
Sessional Speaker:
Dr. Mostafa A. El-Sayed
Professor Mostafa A. El-Sayed was born in Egypt where he received his BSc. He received his Ph.D. at the Florida State University with Professor Michael Kasha. After doing postdoctoral work at Yale, Harvard and Caltech, he joined the faculty at UCLA in 1961. In 1994, he moved to Georgia Tech and became the Julius Brown Chair, Regent Professor and Director of the Laser Dynamics Lab at Georgia Institute of Technology.
El-Sayed and his group (over 70 Ph.D. students and 40 Postdoctoral Fellows) have contributed to many areas of physical and materials chemistry research. They have been involved in the development of new techniques such as magnetophoto selection, picosecond Raman spectroscopy and phosphorescence microwave double resonance spectroscopy. Using spectroscopic techniques, they have been able to answer fundamental questions regarding ultrafast dynamical processes involving molecules, solids and photobiological systems. Since he moved to Georgia Tech, El-Sayed and his group became active in the study of the physical, chemical and photothermal processes of metallic and semiconductor nanostructures of different shapes. The shape dependent applications of the metallic nanoparticles in nanocatalysis as well as nanomedicine have also been demonstrated. Prof. El-Sayed has published over 500 peer-reviewed papers, given over 45 special named lectures and over 200 invited talks at National and International meetings. He has served on numerous international and national committees such as the Advisory Boards of NSF and Basic Energy Sciences of DOE and the National Research Council Board of Chemical Sciences. Prof. El-Sayed has served as the Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Physical Chemistry (1980-2004) and as the U.S. Editor of the International Reviews in Physical Chemistry.
Prof. El-Sayed is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Science, an associate member of the Third World Academy of Sciences, and an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the AAAS, and the American Physical Society. He has received the 1990 King Faisal International Prize in Science and an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Hebrew University. He has received a number of national awards such as the Fresenius, the Tolman, the Richard's medal, as well as other numerous local ACS section awards. In 2002, he received the ACS-APS Langmuir National Award in Chemical Physics and in 2007 was awarded Georgia Tech's highest award, "The Class of 1943 Distinguished Professor" for his long-term contributions to research, teaching and service. Most recently, Professor El-Sayed became sole recipient of the 2007 National Medal of Science in chemistry “...for his seminal and creative contributions to our understanding of the electronic and optical properties of nano-materials and to their applications in nano-catalysis and nano-medicine, for his humanitarian efforts of exchange among countries and for his role in developing the scientific leadership of tomorrow”. He also received the 2009 Ahmed Zewail Prize in Molecular Sciences "...for his seminal contributions to the understanding of the electronic and molecular dynamics and properties of systems with different length scales, ranging from molecules to nanoparticles to biomedical systems" at the 2009 Spring ACS conference in Salt Lake City, UT. In 2009, Prof. El-Sayed became a fellow of the American Chemical Society, an elected member of the Egyptian Academy of Science and Technology, an honorary fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society, and was also awarded the Medal of the Egyptian Republic, First Class, and the Glenn T. Seaborg Medal.
