Baker Institute to host Hackerman Symposium on U.S. infrastructure woes

Baker Institute to host Hackerman Symposium on U.S. infrastructure woes

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News Staff
 
The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy will host a daylong symposium Feb. 28 on the state of America’s physical infrastructure, including bridges, nuclear power plants and dams.
 
The event is the first Norman Hackerman Memorial Symposium, named in honor of the distinguished chemist and former Rice University president who passed away last June.
 

NORMAN HACKERMAN

Hackerman was a civic scientist who played an important role in science policy as chair of the National Science Board, chair of the Robert A. Welch Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Board and chair of the Advisory Committee on Research Programs of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. One of Hackerman’s academic interests was corrosion.
 
With the collapse last summer of the Interstate 35 bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, aging infrastructure has been pushed into the public consciousness. On hand to discuss the policy implications of the phenomenon will be William Marcuson, director emeritus of the Geotechnical Laboratory at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineering Research and Development Center; Eric Berger, science writer for the Houston Chronicle; Harris County Judge Ed Emmett; Michael O’Toole, director of project development at the Texas Department of Transportation’s Bridge Division; and Pol Spanos, the Lewis B. Ryon Professor of Mechanical and Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University.
 
Other speakers will include Sergio Kapusta, chief scientist and manager of engineering innovation and technology at Shell Global Solutions International B.V., who will address corrosion in the petroleum industry; Alberto Sagues, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida, who will discuss bridge corrosion; Roger Newman, UNENE Research Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Toronto, who will speak on corrosion in nuclear plants; and Jamie Padgett, assistant professor of civil engineering at Rice, whose topic is infrastructure under stress.
 
Nobel laureate Robert Curl, University Professor Emeritus and the Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences, will give the closing remarks.

For more on the event, go to www.bakerinstitute.org/hackerman.cfm. 

The event begins at 8 a.m. in the Shell Auditorium Janice and Robert McNair Hall.

Rice faculty, staff and students who want to attend must RSVP by e-mail (<bipprsvp@rice.edu>) or by fax (713-348-5993).