Millennium Café

Roger Williams, Retired Alumni Association Executive Director, & Clive Randall, Director of the Materials Research Institute

Please join us at 10:00 am on 5/19 for a unique edition of the Millennium Café where we’ll welcome Roger Williams and Clive Randall to discuss “Resilience in Times of Crisis  - Lessons from the First 100 Years in Penn State History.”  As we navigate the challenges and opportunities brought about by our current pandemic, we’ll reflect upon past examples of PSU leaders and strategies, many within the sciences, which brought the University through multiple global crises.  In doing so, the foundations were laid for our transition into a world-class university. This will not be a presentation but rather a dynamic conversation where you will have the opportunity to participate.

Erika Swift | Center for Medical Innovation at Penn State College of Medicine

While each medical technology follows its own development path, there are common challenges that must be addressed to minimize risk and secure funding/investment. Learn what programs and resources are available to Penn State Faculty & Staff to advance medical technologies toward commercialization.

The PPG Elevator Pitch Competition is evolving given the nature of today's social distancing restrictions. One's ability to quickly and efficiently communicate a concept in a virtual environment has recently become important. We believe that this is a skill that must be learned and practiced. To facilitate the process, we will be holding a virtual elevator pitch competition on the morning of Tuesday, June 2nd. You will "pitch" the importance of your research before judges from industry. There will be 2 virtual training sessions the week of May 11th, and the competition is open to current graduate students only. The top 5 winners will receive $750/$500/$250/2 consolation gift cards of $50 respectively.  If this is of interest, join the Millennium Café this week to hear about the competition and you can also look for details on the MRI home page. Generous support for this program is provided by The PPG Foundation.

Jean Paul Allain | Nuclear Engineering

Patterns in nature driven by far-from-equilibrium processes can result in self-organized structures that can dictate function and behavior. This talk will give a brief summary of our group’s passion for self-organized patterns and our ability to synthesize them on any class of material. A wide variety of complex materials from porous refractory alloys that are self-healing to natural biopolymers for tissue engineering applications will be highlighted as I cover some general aspects of nanopatterning, irradiation synthesis, and their potential applications. In-situ surface characterization and computational tools that enable nanopatterning design will also be briefly presented.

Ibrahim Moustafa | Hafenstein Lab

Understanding the structural basis of viruses is a key to learn how they work & how to eliminate them. This is true for Covid-19 as well as other viruses. In this talk, I will show how we apply a structural approach integrated with computational methods to identify compounds that could potentially develop into antiviral therapeutics. The virus example used in the presented study is Coxsackivirus B3 (CVB3), an enterovirus and a leading cause of viral myocarditis in humans.

Join us for the first live musical performance @ the Zoom Cafe! Cole Hons, Huck Institutes’ Director of Communications & Marketing, will open and close the Café with uplifting songs of community resilience, understanding, and cooperation.