11/17: UTES Lecture: "Our Sustainable Earth"

Our Sustainable Earth

by

Dr. Ray Orbach

(Director, Energy Institute, UT Austin)

17 November, 5:15-6:15pm

WELCH HALL (WEL) 2.308

Open to all. Refreshments served at 5:00pm

Please settle in by 5:10pm

Speaker Bio:


Raymond Lee Orbach is the Director of the Energy Institute at UT Austin. In 2006, he was nominated by President Bush, and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, to serve as the first Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Prior to and concurrent with serving as Under Secretary for Science, Dr. Orbach served as the 14th Director of the Office of Science at the Department of Energy, after being sworn in as Director in March 2002. From 1992 to 2002, Dr. Orbach served as Chancellor of the University of California (UC), Riverside.


He has received numerous honors as a scholar including two Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowships, a National Science Foundation Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship at Oxford University, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship at Tel Aviv University, the Joliot Curie Professorship at the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris, the Lorentz Professorship at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, the 1991-1992 Andrew Lawson Memorial Lecturer at UC Riverside, the 2004 Arnold O. Beckman Lecturer in Science and Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Outstanding Alumni Award from the California Institute of Technology in 2005. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has held numerous visiting professorships at universities around the world.


Dr. Orbach began his academic career as a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University in 1960 and became an assistant professor of applied physics at Harvard University in 1961. He later joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1963, and served as the Provost of the College of Letters and Science at UCLA from 1982 to 1992.


Dr. Orbach received his Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1956. He received his Ph.D. degree in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1960 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.


Next Talk:

5:15-6:15pm, 26 January (Spring 2012). Location: MEZ 1.306 (Mezes Hall)

Previous Talks:

For slides/videos of previous UTES talks go to this link.