Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Las Positas College Partnership Launches Science and Engineering Seminar Series

The new Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)/Las Positas College Science and Engineering Seminar Series, designed to enhance the partnership shared by the two Livermore institutions, provides a forum for laboratory scientists and engineers to share their broad range of basic and applied research with the college’s scientific community of students, staff, and faculty.

"We are very pleased to offer this seminar series in conjunction with Lawrence Livermore National Lab, with which we always have maintained a strong partnership over the years," said Dean of Math, Science, Engineering, and Public Safety Neal Ely, Ph.D. "In the interest of furthering our already close ties, as well as providing a forum for lab scientists to share their important and timely research with our scientific community of students, staff, and faculty, we have begun this seminar series addressing some of the most important scientific issues of our time," he said.

"The series offers a way to look at how science is done," said biology instructor Nan Ho. "A unique feature of the series, especially for a community college, is the focus on the ‘big science’ that LLNL does that requires cross-disciplinary expertise." -She explained how the idea of the series evolved during her summer research at LLNL, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Ho has a three-year appointment in the Academies Creating Teacher Scientists program.

The seminar lectures will be followed by question and answer periods. Following are the two seminars scheduled for this semester in the series entitled, "Theory to Practice: How Science Gets Done:"

- Monday, March 14. "The Power of Bioinformatics: Computer Scientists and Biologists Join Forces to Address Challenges of Evolving Biothreats," presented by Elizabeth Vitalis, Ph.D., Biomedical Scientist, and Tom Slezak, M.S., Computer Scientist.

  - Thursday, April 7. "Trauma Diagnosis: Physicists, Biologists, and Engineers Merge Efforts to Develop New Medical Devices," presented by John Chang, Ph.D., Engineer.

As a public service, Las Positas College invites interested members of the community to attend the seminars on campus. They are held 6-7:15 p.m. in the Multi-Disciplinary Building (Building 2400). The seminars are free. Parking is $2; permits can be purchased in the parking lots. Registration is not required; seating is first come, first served. For more information about the series, please visit the website, http://www.laspositascollege.edu/news/scienceSeries.php.