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Watson School celebrates Engineers Week with events

Community Day, alumni reception and more are planned Feb. 16-22

The Watson School will host its annual Community Day on Feb. 22 as part of National Engineers Week. The Watson School will host its annual Community Day on Feb. 22 as part of National Engineers Week.
The Watson School will host its annual Community Day on Feb. 22 as part of National Engineers Week. Image Credit: Jonathan Cohen.
By Chris Kocher
February 03, 2020

The Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science at Binghamton University will celebrate National Engineers Week from Feb. 16-22.

This year’s theme for Engineers Week is “Pioneers of Progress,” which honors the technological accomplishments of the past and present but also looks ahead to the future.

“I am proud and humbled to be part of the Watson School, which continues to make groundbreaking discoveries that propel the world forward,” said Dean Krishnaswami “Hari” Srihari, who has led the school for the past decade.

The National Society of Professional Engineers first celebrated Engineers Week in 1951 to coincide with President George Washington’s birthday on Feb. 22. Many historians consider Washington the nation’s first engineer, notably for his work as a surveyor.

Among the local events to mark Engineers Week will be a dinner from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.Tuesday, Feb. 18, at the Holiday Inn in downtown Binghamton, sponsored by the Broome County chapter of the New York State Society of Professional Engineers. Its keynote speaker will be M. Stanley Whittingham, who won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research leading to the development of the lithium-ion battery.

Whittingham — a distinguished professor of chemistry at Binghamton University and director of the Northeast Center for Chemical Energy Storage — will discuss the origins of his world-changing technology and its potential effect on energy storage, as well as his Nobel experience in Sweden.

An alumni and friends reception will be held from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 20, at the rotunda of the Innovative Technologies Complex (85 Murray Hill Rd., Vestal).

All Watson School students, alumni and community partners are invited to network and hear from alumna Lavanya Gopalakrishnan, MS ’98. She will provide remarks on her professional experience as a senior director in Cisco’s Customer Experience organization, and how her Watson School education helped to propel her career from startups to large, multinational technology companies and beyond.

Capping off the week on Saturday, Feb. 22 will be our annual Community Day centered at the ITC rotunda. Children, ages 6 to 16, and their families are invited to engage in more than a dozen hands-on activities that illustrate principles of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

From 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., youths can construct simple machines, draw with 3D pens, fold and fly paper airplanes and more. Teens can learn to write basic computer programs with our new Girls Who Code student group. There also will be the ever-popular egg drop, where children build a protection for an egg and test whether it can withstand a one-story fall.

For the full schedule of Engineers Week activities, go online to www.binghamton.edu/watson/eweek.