Scientists for social responsibility

2007 Science for Social Impact Forum

ESW-CIT, in partnership with the Caltech Career Development Center and Caltech Alumni Association, will host the 2007 Science for Social Impact Forum on Friday 18 May, from 1:30 to 4:30 PM in 119 Kerckhoff. All members of the Caltech community are invited to learn about how scientists can apply their skills to issues of pressing social concern. The Forum will feature a keynote address by Dr Carol Carmichael, a speaker panel, and a networking reception. For more information, contact Alan Kwan (kwan[at]its[dot]caltech[dot]edu).

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Make reservation here.

Schedule

Confirmed Speakers and Reception Attendees

(to be updated as more confirmations are received)

Scroll below for biographies and organization descriptions

Keynote Speaker

Speaker Panel

Reception Attendees

Biographies

Keynote Speaker

Carol Carmichael

Dr. Carol Carmichael is the senior counselor for external relations and faculty associate in engineering and applied science at the California Institute of Technology. Among her many activities in support of Caltech, she has a particular interest in developing opportunities to enrich the experiences of students, faculty and staff in the areas of sustainable technology and development. She also serves on the City of Pasadena's Environmental Advisory Commission, whose mission is to provide guidance on the city's goals and plans related to sustainability. Prior to coming to Caltech, Dr. Carmichael was the director of the Institute for Sustainable Technology and Development at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The Institute's activities were designed to weave concepts of sustainable technology and development into the curriculum, research programs, and management of the Georgia Tech campus so that every graduate of Georgia Tech would learn how to contribute to the creation of a more prosperous and sustainable society. Her specific responsibilities focused on the development and implementation of Georgia Tech's agenda for institutional transformation, including: disciplinary and interdisciplinary research program development; curriculum studies directed at learning about sustainability within both general studies and the major degree programs; and support of the sustainability objectives in the campus master plan through integration of campus management practices with research and educational activities.

Speaker Panel

Kitty Cahalan, Alfred Mann Foundation

Kitty finished her doctoral work at Caltech in February 2000 after completing a project characterizing rhodium(III) and iridium(III) DNA metallointercalators in Jackie Barton's lab. In March of 2000, Kitty joined Idealab, a startup company incubator in Pasadena, where she worked first with the Knowledge Management team. This group provided content for an intranet used by several thousand employees of Idealab and its operating companies, and also developed tools to to facilitate the dissemination of institutional knowledge. Next, Kitty worked as a Project Manager, helping to set up new companies during their early stages.

In August of 2001, Kitty took a position at the Alfred Mann Foundation (AMF), a non-profit that develops medical devices. As Coordinator of Clinical Operations, she helped to establish relationships with clinicians who were interested in performing clinical trials with AMF's devices. She also coordinated the deployment of the studies, managing the training of clinicians to use the equipment, getting the equipment to the site, and tracking use of the equipment throughout the study.

The devices developed most recently at AMF are small, implantable neurostimulators. They may be used to treat a diverse set of conditions from stroke and spinal cord injury to epilepsy, obesity and obstructive sleep apnea. Kitty's most recent position at AMF as Manager of Market Research has given her the responsibility of providing the team at AMF with an understanding of these ailments, including what other treatments are available for patients and how our device might improve their health, mobility, or quality of life.

Takahiro Isshiki, Spectrolab, Inc. (www.spectrolab.com)

Takahiro Isshiki is the lead engineer for metal organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) development of high-efficiency multi-junction solar cells as well as advanced optoelectronic devices at Spectrolab, Inc. including lattice mismatched metamorphic solar cells, 1.55 m m InAlAs avalanche photodiode devices (APDs), GaAs laser power converters and InP PIN diodes. Mr. Isshiki is currently leading a development effort that will result in an advanced solar cell with more than 5 junctions. His research interests include the development of terrestrial solar concentrator devices, dilute nitride material development, forming thin flexible solar cell devices through epitaxial lift-off, multijunction solar cell development through wafer bonding of dissimilar substrates, hydrodynamic optimization of production MOVPE reactors, InP based solar cell devices, and large area InAlAs APD device uniformity optimization. Mr. Isshiki has over 10 years of experience in MOVPE manufacturing, research and process development. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UCLA in 1997. He is the recipient of the Hughes Technical Excellence Award.

John Harris, Karen-Hill Scott and Company (www.karenhillscott.com)

Karen Hill-Scott and Company is a national innovator in developing content, organization models and systems that help children and families reach their potential. We work to achieve these goals through education policy consulting, media consulting, and the development of educational products for the children of young families.

Our consulting work focuses on the development and expansion of high-quality preschool systems throughout the state of California. In Los Angeles County, we worked with over 600 stakeholders to develop a Universal Preschool system designed to serve 150,000 children in 2014, making it the largest public preschool system in the country when it reaches scale.

Our media work strives to ensure that children's television supports good child development. Karen Hill-Scott has consulted for over 1,000 episodes for children's television, offering educational value to the programming while working to improve overall program quality.

As an organization, we are consistently focused on promoting the education and development of young children, because we believe that strengthening our society begins with investing in children and their families.

Reception Attendees

Peace Corps (www.peacecorps.gov)

Teach for America (www.teachforamerica.org)

Teach For America is the national corps of outstanding recent college graduates - of all academic majors and career interests - who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools in the nation's lowest-income communities and become lifelong leaders for expanding educational opportunity. Our mission is to build the movement to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting our nation's most promising future leaders in the effort.

Laurine Tuleja, South Coast Air Quality Management District

Laurine Tuleja is the Vice Chair of the Hearing Board for the South Coast Air Quality Management District. The Hearing Board is a five-member board that functions as a special court for air pollution cases in the Los Angeles region. State law requires the five-member board to include one engineer, one medical doctor, one attorney, and two additional members who can be from any profession with Board's cases nearly always involve engineering issues, and the Board members work together to understand the technical issues of each case. The Board hears three kinds of cases: (1) A company may petition the Board for a temporary exemption from an air pollution rule, usually while it is repairing an equipment breakdown. (2) Prosecutors may petition the Board to issue enforcement orders against companies in violation of air pollution rules. (3) Either citizens' groups or companies may appeal to the Hearing Board if they object to terms of a permit that has been issued by the air pollution agency.

Carl Rhodes, RAND (www.rand.org)

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis.

For nearly 60 years, the RAND Corporation has pursued its nonprofit mission by conducting research on important and complicated problems. Initially, RAND (the name of which was derived from a contraction of the term research and development) focused on issues of national security. Eventually, RAND expanded its intellectual reserves to offer insight into other areas, such as business, education health, law, and science. RAND's innovative approach to problem solving has become the benchmark for all other "think tanks" that followed.

At times, grantors or clients may ask RAND to deliver research without suggesting a specific course of action. At other times, RAND may provide a range of solutions with an analysis of advantages and disadvantages. On certain occasions, RAND may formulate or even support clear-cut policy recommendations. What remains constant is RAND's commitment to public service by communicating its findings to a wide audience. This is accomplished in many ways. They include announcements to media, testimony by experts at RAND (often to the U.S. Congress), and publications, many of which are available free on this Web site.

RAND in the 21st century continues to address difficult challenges throughout the globe. In many ways, RAND's future reflects its past: anticipating emerging issues; establishing new angles of inquiry; and mapping the territory for responses by government, business, and society. Commitment to these high standards will continue to define RAND's work in the years to come.

Rotary International (www.rotary.org)

Richard Beatty, Jet Propulsion Lab

Richard Beatty (BS '77) is a mission architect at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where his team develops new Earth-orbiting mission concepts that study weather, climate change, ocean phenomena, and other environmental factors. Outside of work, he is active with the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance (www.thegaia.org), a non-sectarian organization working towards sustainable HIV/AIDS care, prevention, women's empowerment, and community development in east Africa. He spent last summer with GAIA projects in Malawi, and recently returned from a review of earthquake and community relief efforts in Armenia. He is on the board of the Caltech Y and the Gnome Club, and is a member of the Caltech Associates.