“Perspectives about Academic Career Development from a Newly Minted Professor Emeritus”
Thursday, Feb. 1 at 3:00pm
Malachowsky Hall Nvidia Auditorium
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Abstract

In this talk, I will discuss some perspectives on various aspects of an academic career in engineering, based on experiences I’ve had over nearly 40 years on the faculty of four research universities. After addressing the basic question of why one might pursue a teaching career, I’ll discuss the process of getting hired, starting and sustaining a research program, finding successful collaborations, and the challenges of teaching engineering. I’ll share some thoughts on how to manage the launch of spin-off companies to commercialize academic research. I’ll conclude by discussing how changes in research funding and in universities are affecting the careers of engineering faculty.

Biography

Dr. Roger T. Howe is the William E. Ayer Professor Emeritus in the Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He received a B.S. in physics from Harvey Mudd College in 1979 and an M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981 and 1984. After faculty positions at CMU and MIT from 1984 – 1987, he returned to Berkeley for 18 years, where he was a Professor and a Director of BSAC. His research group at Stanford focused on nanoscale system design and fabrication for wide range of applications. He was the Faculty Director of the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility from 2009 – 2017 and was Director of the NSF’s National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN) from 2011 – 2015. In 2016, he co-founded Probius, Inc. to commercialize research in his group on broad-spectrum biomolecular sensing.