Office of the president

Presidential University Lecture Series

The Presidential University Lecture Series highlights faculty excellence in learning, discovery, and engagement. The president invites Iowa State faculty of international preeminence to present lectures from their own areas of expertise on topics of interest to the general public, designed to stimulate high-quality, intellectual discussion among faculty, staff, students, and community members.

Inaugural Presidential University Lecture -- From a Sow's Ear to a Silk Purse: The Promise of Genomics, Max Rothschild, Nov. 13, 2003

Max Rothschild is the Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor in Agriculture. He is an internationally recognized leader in animal genetics whose research has been directed towards identifying genes controlling traits of economic importance in the pig. He serves as the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Pig Genome Mapping Coordinator and was the 2002 Iowa Inventor of the Year. He has also received two R&D 100 Awards from R&D Magazine, which honor the nation's top technological product innovations. He has presented invited papers in over 30 countries and has more than 195 referred publications, 450 other publications and 5 patents. He is co-director of the Center for Integrated Animal Genomics, a new presidential initiative at Iowa State

Spring 2004 Presidential University Lecture -- Is Cancer Preventable? Diane F. Birt, Feb. 3, 2004

Diane F. Birt is Professor and Chair of the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition and Director of the Center for Research on Botanical Dietary Supplements nationally recognized for her research in nutrition and cancer prevention. She has over 100 publications and was director of the Plant Sciences Institute's Center for Designing Foods. She has been awarded major federal grants for diet and cancer prevention research, in addition to her work with botanical dietary supplements.

Fall 2004 Presidential University Lecture -- Business Ethics after Enron: Looking Good versus Being Good, Charles B. (Brad) Shrader, Oct. 27, 2004

Charles B. (Brad) Shrader is a professor of management in the College of Business. He teaches courses in strategic management, competitive strategy, corporate governance and business ethics. A major thrust of Shrader's research is the relationship of corporate social responsibility with company performance and he is actively involved in executive programs, such as presenting sessions on business ethics at the Iowa School of Banking. He has a national reputation in strategic management and business ethics from his extensive publications in many professional and academic journals. He has served on the editorial boards for the "Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education" and the "Journal of Managerial Issues." He holds a master's of business administration and doctorate degree in business from Indiana University, Bloomington.

Spring 2005 Presidential University Lecture -- Do the Eyes Have It? The Mistaken Eyewitness, Gary L. Wells, Feb. 7, 2005.

Gary L. Wells is Distinguished Professor of Psychology, and internationally recognized for his studies of eyewitness memory. His work on the reliability of eyewitness identification has been funded by the National Science Foundation, and his findings incorporated into textbooks in psychology and law. He has served as an expert for the defense, prosecution, and plaintiffs in criminal and civil cases across the U.S. and Canada. He was a founding member of the U.S. Department of Justice group that developed the first set of national guidelines for eyewitness evidence. He co-chaired the panel that wrote the Justice Department training manual for law enforcement on the collection and preservation of eyewitness identification evidence, which has been distributed to every law enforcement agency in the U.S. Wells has worked with prosecutors and police to reform the way they conduct police lineups.

Fall 2005 Presidential Lecture -- Reducing the Risk of Aviation Catastrophe, R. Bruce Thompson, Nov. 29, 2005

R. Bruce Thompson is one of the nation's leading authorities on nondestructive evaluation - the practice of testing a material's ability to perform its intended function and prevent failure without destroying the sample. Thompson uses ultrasound and other technologies to determine stress, texture and other properties of materials. His centers have been involved in testing materials from numerous high-profile crashes and material failures. He holds 24 U.S. patents, leads Iowa State's Center for Nondestructive Evaluation and Ames Laboratory's Nondestructive Evaluation Program, and is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation. In 2003, Thompson was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer.

Spring 2006 Presidential Lecture -- The Wonders of Virtual Reality: A Research Extravaganza, Carolina Cruz-Neira, Feb. 6, 2006

Carolina Cruz-Neira holds Iowa State's Richard Stanley Chair in Interdisciplinary Engineering and is a professor in the industrial and manufacturing systems engineering department. In 1997 she was featured by Business Week magazine as a "rising research star" in the new generation of computer science pioneers. Her doctoral dissertation at the University of Illinois at Chicago included the design of the CAVE(TM) Virtual Reality Environment, the CAVE Library software specifications and implementation, and preliminary research on CAVE-Supercomputing integration. She is co-owner of the Record of Invention of the CAVE. Here at Iowa State she was key in the development of the Virtual Reality Applications Center, where she led the development of the C2, C4 and the C6, the world's first totally immersive visual reality theatre.

Fall 2006 Presidential Lecture -- Critical Landscapes: From Pork Barrels to Otherworldly Dumps and Gardens, Mira Engler, Nov. 6, 2006

Mira Engler "Otherworld Garden" design was one of 14 chosen for the Westonbirt Festival of the Garden in the United Kingdom in 2004. Her proposal for rehabilitating the Hiriya landfill in Israel was a part of an exhibition on "Reclaiming Metaphors Out of the Dump" at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 1999. The professor of landscape architecture's 2004 book, "Designing America's Waste Landscapes," unravels the significance of closed landfills and sewage plants and endows them with new uses. My aim is to elicit the contradictory destructive and constructive powers of these landscapes and to help us see their potential for future use," Engler says.

Spring 2007 Presidential Lecture -- Interpersonal Intelligence, Michael Bugeja, April 4, 2007

Michael Bugeja shares findings in his book "Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age. The director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication says the Digital Age, which was supposed to give society a global village, has produced something quite different. "We found the village, all right, and it is peopled with as many jesters, peddlers and pickpockets as with wizards," he says. "We have inherited a global mall -- so much so, in fact, that we talk, think and behave according to the demographics and psychographics of consumer profiling, even with mobile social networks whose 'affinity groups' read like direct mailing lists."

Fall 2007 Presidential Lecture -- More Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail: The Iowa Caucuses and American Presidential Candidate Selection, Steffen Schmidt, Oct. 8, 2007

Steffen Schmidt, University Professor of political science will explore the Iowa caucuses and the media-driven spectacle they have become. "I'm going to talk about the Iowa caucuses as a part of the phenomenon and culture that we've developed of how we select the candidates for the two parties and how that involves, basically, a lot of 'smoke and mirrors,'" he says. "It involves mostly images and it's mostly a media phenomenon. The practical selection of delegates is pretty irrelevant in the Iowa caucuses."

Spring 2008 Presidential Lecture -- Exploring Crop Genomes, Advancing Crop Improvement, Patrick Schnable, March 31, 2008.

Patrick Schnable, director of the Center for Plant Genomics will explore the possible uses of the corn genome map, other genomes and the future of genome research. Mapping the corn genome, "is similar to Lewis and Clark exploring the Louisiana Purchase," according to Schnable.