Dean's Distinguished Lecture with George M. Whitesides

Dean’s Distinguished Lecture

Annual speaker series featuring distinguished guests who offer transdisciplinary conversations for all in the Fulton Schools.

The Fulton Schools Executive Committee identifies prominent individuals to speak on a variety of science and engineering topics for this special lecture series.

These leaders in engineering and the sciences engage in transdisciplinary conversations with Fulton Schools faculty and students on emerging areas of research and knowledge development.

The distinguished visiting scholar also has the opportunity to see and learn about the exciting work going on in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

Recommend a speaker

The Executive Committee looks for accomplished scholars who can speak to a diverse audience on a topic of wide interest across the seven Fulton Schools.

Upcoming lectures

The Protection of Venice from Tidal Flooding: the Story of the Venice Gates

portrait of Rafael Bras
Rafael Bras

Rafael Bras

K. Harrison Brown Family Chair and Regents Professor
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology

Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025
2:30–4:30 p.m. 
Paul C. Helmick Center (HLMK, formerly CAVC) 101 auditorium, Tempe campus [map]

Attendees can submit questions to be answered during a question and answer session online before or during the event. Registration closes Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025.

Rafael Bras, the K. Harrison Brown Family Chair and Regents Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, will deliver a lecture titled “The Protection of Venice from Tidal Flooding: the Story of the Venice Gates” as part of the Fulton Schools Dean’s Distinguished Lecture Series.

Bras will explain how Venice, Italy, fights flooding exacerbated by past subsidence and present sea level rise using a series of gates across the three inlets of the lagoon of Venice. The gates separate the Adriatic Sea from the lagoon in periods of high meteorological tides to prevent flooding.

The construction of the multibillion-dollar system is complete and represents an engineering and science marvel. Completing the project has been a long road involving innovative and creative engineering, political intrigue and scandal, and triumph and vindication for the design. This talk presents the problem, discusses why this particular solution was chosen, illustrates the elements of the built system and discusses the political, social and management issues that threatened completion and the long-term survival of the city.

portrait of Rafael Bras
Rafael Bras

Past lectures

  • Jiawei Han

    Jiawei Han, the Michael Aiken Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discussed Text Mining — A Pretrained Language Model-Based, Annotation-Free Approach on February 24, 2023.

    Read more about the lecture

    Watch this lecture on YouTube

  • Robert Calderbank

    Robert Calderbank

    Robert Calderbank is a Distinguished Professor at Duke University, where he directs the Rhodes Information Initiative. He is known for contributions to voiceband modem technology, to quantum information theory and for co-invention of space-time codes for wireless communication. He presented the lecture “Back to the Future” on Thursday, April 21, 2022.

    Read more about the lecture

    Watch the lecture recording — use passcode uh+y8ik@

  • Ellen R. Stofan

    Ellen Stofan

    Ellen R. Stofan, the Undersecretary for Science and Research and the John and Adrienne Mars Director of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, discussed the geology of other planets in “Exploring Outward and Homeward: The Past, Present and Future of Moving Us Beyond Earth” on Tuesday, April 27, 2021.

    Read more about the lecture

    Watch this lecture on YouTube

  • Robert Langer

    Robert Langer

    Robert Langer, considered the “Edison of medicine,” spoke about advanced drug delivery systems, biomaterials and tissue engineering in his lecture “Robert Langer’s quest to solve global health challenges using biotechnology” on Friday, February 7, 2020.

    Read more about the lecture

    Watch the lecture recording

  • Megan Smith

    Megan Smith

    Megan Smith, a prominent engineering entrepreneur, delivered the Dean’s Distinguished Lecture titled “Innovation Unleashed: Engineering Systems and Collective Genius” on Friday, April 5, 2019.

    Read more about the lecture

    Watch the lecture recording

  • George M. Whitesides

    Deans Lecture 2018

    In this lecture by George M. Whitesides entitled “Soft Robotics,” listeners learned about how flexible invertebrates such as starfish, worms and octopi can inspire robot designs that provide opportunities in materials and polymer science.

    The lecture was held Wednesday, April 4, 2018.

    Read more about the lecture

    Watch this lecture on YouTube

  • Pramod P. Khargonekar

    Khargonekar

    Pramod P. Khargonekar provided an overview of the Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation, beginning with a description of the mission and vision followed by various research and education programs. He discussed major trends and novel programmatic directions, ending with a discussion of the key strategic issues in engineering education.

    The lecture was on Friday, Sept. 20, 2013.