Headlining the opening session of the SPE's first R&D conference, Dean Yannis "Yortsos [challenged] the audience to consider some of the major issues that may hinder innovation, 'namely the shortage of technical people, negative public perceptions of the E&P sector, and the challenge of producing the next trillion while transforming the industry into a leader of clean power initiatives'"

The Brazilian science magazine Galileu's September issue includes a Q&A with Najmedin Meshkati of the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, discussing issues ranging from Iran's nuclear program to quake-prone Japanese nuclear reactors to recent Brazilian air and oil platform disasters. (in Portuguese)

Alice P. Gast (B.S. Chemical Engineering at USC in 1980), has been appointed president of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. Congratulations to her.

When a best-presentations winners envelope was opened at the annual meeting of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) in San Antonio, researchers from USC Viterbi School Prof. Terry Langdon's group had taken the top two honors in their category.

Professors Lynn Orr and Paul Hansma presented the Centennial Celebration lectures for Department on January 26, 2006 at the Gerontology Auditorium.

Energy entrepreneur John Mork and his family have given $15 million to the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering to name the newly merged Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, which includes petroleum engineering, the program from which Mork received his degree in 1970.

August 08, 2005 — POINT OF IMPACT: Indenter drives down into silicon carbide ceramic in an 18.7 million atom simulation created by supercomputers at the USC Collaboratory for Advanced Computing and Simulations Ceramics are both hard and brittle. Now supercomputer modeling of the activity of millions of individual atoms in a ceramic hints that it may be possible to get rid of some of the brittleness.