RPI will be hosting many events next week leading up to the Ribbon Cutting for the new Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies scheduled for Friday, September 10. The week will kick off on Tuesday with a 2-day workshop of the Council on Competitiveness and culminate at the end of the week with ribbon cutting and the announcement of the details of the capital campaign.
According to Vice President for Institute Advancement David Haviland, “the signature event from the public’s perspective is the opening of the building,” but he emphasized that the events commemorate more than just the opening of a new building. He said that the opening of the center “signals a new era for RPI,” and it shows how important RPI believes that biotechnology will be in the future.
Next Tuesday and Wednesday, September 7-8, RPI will host a National Innovation Initiative Regional Workshop of the Council of Competitiveness entitled “The Innovation Continuum.” The council’s members are CEOs, labor leaders, and university presidents, and this regional summit will feature public officials, business leaders, and university leaders from upstate New York and other states in the region. They will discuss successful innovations from around the region and the ideas discussed may be included in the final report of the National Innovation Initiative.
Haviland said that the idea is to find “good models of regional innovation” in order to transfer them to other areas. He noted that a similar workshop to the one planned for next week was previously held at Texas A&M University and there are plans for another workshop to be held at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Most of the event will take place at the Heffner Alumni House, and Haviland said that the panel discussions held during the afternoon sessions would be of the most interest to students wishing to attend. The meals during the event are open by invitation only.
Following the workshop will be a two-day biotechnology symposium on Thursday and Friday. All classes will be cancelled on Friday, September 10 so that the campus community can attend the colloquy and ribbon cutting events scheduled for that day.
Next week’s Polytechnic will feature a preview of some of the events planned for the symposium. For a list of next week’s events as well as a full list of the speakers at the Council of Competitiveness workshop visit
