Please join us for a celebration of Bob Conn's 70th birthday from May 9-10, 2013, at UC San Diego. The event will be held at Calit2 and will involve an afternoon program on Thursday May 9 from 1-5pm, and a morning program on Friday May 10 from 9:00-11:00am. Please read the descriptions below to determine which parts you would like to attend.
On Thursday, 9 May 2013, we will have former colleagues who worked with Bob in the U.S. fusion energy research program, as well as in U.S. energy program policy activities, speak about their work together. Some of this earlier work focused on conceptual design activities on magnetic fusion and inertial fusion energy reactor concepts as power producing reactors. These power plant design studies led to the identification of critical physics and technology issues and bottlenecks that needed to be resolved in order to move closer to the day when a power producing fusion system could conceivably be designed and built. That work continued at UCLA, and led to the identification of operating regimes which can form the basis of attractive reactors. The development and demonstration of these regimes forms the basis of a significant fraction of the current research efforts in the world's magnetic fusion energy program. We will also hear about the role that Bob played in guiding the U.S. fusion energy program during some difficult times in the 1990s, when the U.S., for a time, withdrew from the large scale international ITER collaboration. This realignment ultimately set the stage for the U.S. to re-enter the ITER collaboration, which now forms a major focus of the U.S. fusion effort as the world prepares for the era of burning plasma research.
On Friday, 10 May 2013, we will turn our focus to Bob's contributions to UC San Diego and the greater San Diego region as he took on the position of Dean of the School of Engineering. This morning session will feature thoughts from several key individuals from UC San Diego and our local and regional partners, who will discuss the key issues, decisions and institution-building activities that led to the growth of the School into the organization that it is today. Collaborations with industry partners and the Jacobs School and wider UC San Diego faculty and leadership will be discussed, along with remembrances of the foundation of departments well-known institutes of the Jacobs School of Engineering. More about Bob:
Robert W. Conn is President of The Kavli Foundation and Zable Professor and Dean, Emeritus, of the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. He began his academic career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1970 where he became Professor of Engineering Physics, served as a founding director of the University's Fusion Technology Institute and held the Romnes Faculty Chair. Dr. Conn moved to UCLA as Professor of Engineering and Applied Science in 1980. In 1986 he led the formation of UCLA's Institute of Plasma and Fusion Research and became its first director.
From 1993 to 2002, Dr. Conn was Dean of the Irwin and Joan Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego and the Walter J. Zable Professor of Engineering Science. While Dean, he led the School through a period of unprecedented growth in faculty, students and reputation resulting in its current ranking among the top engineering schools in the country. He worked to form two new academic departments, Bioengineering and Structural Engineering. Research centers established during Dr. Conn's tenure include the Center for Wireless Communications and the Whitaker Institute for Biomedical Engineering (in partnership with the School of Medicine). He was asked by the Chancellor on 2000 to lead a partnership across the campus to establish the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). He led the hiring of the founding Director and helped raise the required matching funds well in excess of $100 million. Dr. Conn built partnerships between the university and industry and established the von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Transfer.
Dr. Conn has been a leading researcher in plasma physics, fusion energy, energy policy and materials science. He pioneered, beginning in the early 1970's, the study of fusion systems as potential power reactors, identifying the major physics and engineering challenges facing the development of practical fusion energy. His theoretical and experimental research focused on plasma physics, the plasma boundary layer, surface science and chemical physics. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1987 for his pioneering research contributions to the fields of plasma physics and fusion energy.
Dr. Conn's experience in the private sector includes co-founding Plasma & Materials Technologies, Inc. in 1986, a company that developed etching and thin film deposition equipment used to manufacture semiconductor and from 2002 to 2008, serving as a Managing Director at Enterprise Partners Venture Capital (EPVC), a La Jolla-based VC firm specializing in early-stage high tech and life science companies.
Dr. Conn is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Nuclear Society. Awards for his research contributions include the Ernest O. Lawrence Memorial Award, presented on behalf of the President by the Secretary of Energy; the McGraw Research Award of the American Association of Engineering Education; the Distinguished Associate Award of the U.S. Department of Energy; and the Distinguished Alumni Award of the California Institute of Technology.