At this virtual event, the second in this fall’s Davoudi Emerging Leaders Lecture Series, Reginald DesRoches, Rice University’s next president and the current Howard R. Hughes Provost, discussed the Baker Institute’s role at the university and how it plays an integral part of its strategy going forward.
The event was moderated by Morgan Garvey, the assistant director of stewardship at the Baker Institute. Following their discussion, attendees were invited to participate in an interactive Q&A session.
The Davoudi Emerging Leaders Lecture Series is exclusive to members of the Roundtable Young Professionals. Each event in the series features a conversation about public policy fundamentals, practical information on working in the public policy sphere, and the charge and impact of the Baker Institute itself. Click here for a list of webinars held as part of the spring 2021 Davoudi Emerging Leaders Lecture Series.
The Baker Institute thanks Haydeh and Ali Davoudi for supporting these important conversations.
Follow @BakerInstitute on Twitter, and join the conversation online with #BakerRYP.
Agenda
8:30 a.m. — Presentation
9:00 a.m. — Q&A
Registration
Members of the Roundtable Young Professionals received complimentary admission with the link in their email invitation. For more information about RYP membership, please contact Morgan Garvey at 713-348-8087 or morgan.garvey@rice.edu.
Featured Speaker
Reginald DesRoches, Ph.D., is the Howard R. Hughes Provost at Rice University. In this role, DesRoches serves as the chief academic officer of the university and its 7,500 students, seven schools and more than 700 faculty. He previously served as the William and Stephanie Sick Dean of Engineering at the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice. In this position, DesRoches provided leadership to a top-ranked engineering school with nine departments, 137 faculty and 2,500 students.
DesRoches also chairs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee (NCST) and is on the advisory board for the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Simulation Center and the California Department of Transportation Seismic Advisory Board. He previously served on the National Academies Resilient America Roundtable (RAR), the Global Earthquake Modeling Scientific Board and the National Science Foundation Engineering Advisory Council. In recent years, DesRoches has testified before U.S. House and Senate subcommittees on the science of earthquake resilience, and he has participated in Washington, D.C., roundtables for media and congressional staffers on topics ranging from disaster preparedness to challenges for African American men in STEM fields.
DesRoches received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2002 — the highest honor bestowed upon scientists and engineers in the early stages of their careers. Most recently, he was a recipient of the Distinguished Arnold Kerr Lecturer Award in 2019, gave the John A. Blume Distinguished Lecture in 2018 and received the 2018 Earthquake Engineering Research Institute Distinguished Lecturer Award — one the highest honors in the earthquake engineering field. He is a recipient of the ASCE Charles Martin Duke Lifeline Earthquake Engineering Award (2015), the Georgia Tech Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Advisor Award (2010), the ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (2007) and the Georgia Tech ANAK Award (2008), the highest honor the undergraduate student body can bestow on a Georgia Tech faculty member. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2020.
DesRoches was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and grew up in Queens, New York. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Master of Science in Civil Engineering degrees and a doctorate in Structural Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was elected to the civil and environmental engineering department’s Academy of Distinguished Alumni.
Moderator
Morgan Garvey
Assistant Director of Stewardship, Baker Institute