CAMBRIDGE--Two renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty members--biologist David Baltimore and computer scientist Michael L. Dertouzos--will be among speakers and panelists looking into the future at MIT's annual Tech Day for alumni and alumnae on Saturday, June 8.
The program, titled "Miracle or Mirage: Technology at the Horizon," will bring together MIT faculty members, business executives and others to examine emerging technologies and their possible impacts on our future.
Speakers at a morning session in Kresge Auditorium, starting at 9am, will offer an overview of expected developments in science and technology, and also comment specifically on new developments in biology, materials and recycling, and communications and information technology.
Dr. Baltimore, Nobel laureate, Institute Professor and Ivan R. Cottrell Professor of Molecular Biology and Immunology, will speak on "The Next Gene." Dr. Dertouzos, director of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science and professor of electrical engineering and computer science, will talk on "The Information Age."
Other morning speakers, who will be introduced by MIT President Charles M. Vest, are Bran Ferren, executive vice president for creative technology and research and development at Walt Disney Imagineering, and John T. Preston, co-director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and president and chief executive officer of Quantum Energy Technologies. They will talk, respectively, on "There's No Bits Like Show Bits," and "Materials: Something Old, Something New."
Afternoon panels, from 3 to 5pm, will address the topics: "How will fortunes be made from the new technologies?", "How will we live our lives? Social implications for the future," and "Can we survive our Success? Environmental implications for the future."
Nearly 3,000 alumni/ae and their spouses will attend Tech Week functions. These include a luncheon on Tech Day at which class gifts are presented.
