Feb. 4 Melissa Lapsa with ORNL’s Sustainability Initiative was speaker. Ms. Lapsa leads Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL’s) Sustainable Campus Initiative and is Group Leader of the Whole-Building and Community Integration (WBCI) research group for the Building Technologies Research and Integration Center at ORNL. Currently, she is the Deputy Director of ORNL’s Building Technologies Research and Integration Center.
Feb. 11 Sam Hart with the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce was speaker.
Sam manages the technology mining and matching program, assists companies with technology issues and technology transfers from the University of Tennessee, ORNL, or Y-12. He is a member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, National Defense Industrial Association, and National Institute for Metalworking Skills.
Feb. 18 – holiday
Several members of the Technical Society toured the new Min Kao engineering building at the University of Tennessee on February 18.
On Feb. 25 – Peter J. Blau with Journal WEAR was the speaker. The title of his presentation was “Wear and Friction R&D: Lubricating our Economic Growth”
Wear and friction cost our economy hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Dr. Blau describes himself as a tribologist but he seemed to be a nice person. He described several areas where friction and wear or removal of materials from surfaces was important and challenging.