McCormick to Celebrate Commencement for Class of 2012
The McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science will celebrate the graduation of its class of 2012 on June 15 and 16, with ceremonies for undergraduates, master’s, and PhD students on Northwestern’s Evanston campus.
The ceremonies will begin at 10:30 a.m. Friday with Northwestern University’s 154th Annual Commencement Exercises, the main graduation ceremony for the University attended by undergraduate and graduate students from all schools. The two-hour program will be held at Ryan Field, 1501 Central St., and will feature an address by Paul Farmer, M.D., a physician, anthropologist, and Harvard professor known for his pioneering work in global health, particularly in Haiti.
Ceremonies specifically for McCormick students will be held Friday afternoon for graduate students and Saturday morning for undergraduates.
McCormick’s Undergraduate Convocation will be held at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in the Welsh-Ryan Arena/McGaw Memorial Hall at 2705 Ashland Avenue. The keynote speaker will be Peter Barris (electrical engineering ’74), managing general partner of New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a global investment firm focused on venture capital. Under Barris’ leadership, NEA has invested in industry-transforming technology companies like CareerBuilder, Data Domain, Diapers.com, Groupon, Juniper Networks, Macromedia, Playdom, Salesforce.com, and TiVo. Barris has been named to the Forbes “Midas List” several times, having personally led investments in over two dozen technology companies that have successfully completed public offerings or mergers. Admission to the Undergraduate Convocation is by ticket only.
McCormick’s Professional Master’s Degree Recognition Ceremony, which recognizes graduates of McCormick’s professional master’s programs, will begin at 2 p.m. Friday in Ryan Auditorium in the Tech Institute, 2145 Sheridan Road. The speaker will be Fred Koller, vice president at the biotechnology company Intrexon and executive director of the Intrexon Institute for Biomolecular Research (IIBR), whose mission is to foster academic collaborations that both enhance Intrexon’s technology portfolio and advance academic applied research. Koller holds a PhD in biochemical engineering and a BS degree in chemical engineering, both from Northwestern, and is author of more than 30 peer-reviewed papers and more than 30 issued patents.
McCormick’s Master’s Degree Recognition and PhD Hooding Ceremony will begin at 5 p.m. Friday. The speaker will be Samuel I. Stupp, the Board of Trustees Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry, and Medicine at Northwestern and director of Northwestern’s Institute for BioNanotechnology in Medicine. A member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the Materials Research Society, Stupp’s research has focused on molecular self-assembly strategies to create highly functional materials of interest in widely varying fields, ranging from regenerative medicine to electronics. In 2005 Scientific American named Stupp as one of 50 “Leaders Shaping the Future of Technology.”
A live webcast will be streamed for the two graduate ceremonies at http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/videostream/.
For a full schedule of Northwestern's Commencement events, visit http://www.northwestern.edu/commencement/schedule/index.html.