The Department of Mechanical Engineering's Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series continues on October 22 with a talk by Dr. Philippe Villers (SM '60) from 4-5pm in the Bechtel Lecture Hall (Rm 1-390). The title of Dr. Villers's talk is "From Engineer to Entrepreneur: The Good and the Bad."
Dr. Villers, who earned his master's degree with Whitaker Professor Emeritus of Biomedical Engineering Robert Mann, founded Computer Vision in 1969. He also founded Automatix, Inc. in 1980 and Cognition Inc. in 1985. He is now president of GrainPro Inc., a startup company that makes hermetically sealed organic grain-storage systems to reduce Third World grain losses to rodents and insects without the use of pesticides.
Dr. Villers is also founder and president of the Families USA Foundation, which focuses on establishing a better consumer voice for health care reform. He has also conducted human rights missions in Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico and the Soviet Union.
The lecture is part of an annual two-day program to bring mechanical engineering alumni/ae together with students and faculty at MIT. Dr. Villers's talk is free and open to the public.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on October 8, 1997.
