The Spirit of Leonardo: Complexity, Interdisciplinarity and Engineering Sciences 

The Lassonde School of Engineering and Dean Janusz A. Kozinski will be hosting a special lecture featuring Dr. İskender Gökalp, Director at the  Institut de Combustion, Aérothermique, Réactivité et Environnement (Icare), CNRS in Orléans, France.

We invite you to join us as Dr. Gökalp explores the role that engineering sciences curriculum and research activities play at universities in fostering technical and social creativity and innovation.

Date: Tuesday July 30th, 2013

Refreshments: 11:30AM - 12PM

Lecture: 12PM - 1PM

Location: Life Science Building, Room 103

ABSTRACT:
Most of the present advanced technologies and socio-technical systems have been designed, developed and optimized by engineering sciences such as thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, mechanics of solids, combustion etc., together with more basic disciplines such as materials sciences, chemical-physics, plasma physics etc. In recent decades two developments also helped strengthen engineering sciences: they are computational sciences and advanced diagnostics, mostly optical and laser based. Finally, the optimization of socio-technical systems, such as network industries, also necessitates the mobilization of social sciences and humanities.

The necessary level of interactions between all these advanced knowledge bodies or disciplines, impossible today to be mastered by single individuals, imposes the development of various disciplinary interaction regimes (DIRs). The basic ingredients of DIRs are analogies, commensurability attempts, association of ideas and references to universal concepts such as space and time, use of hybrid concepts, among others.

The presentation will illustrate the construction of several DIRs using examples from energy systems, space technologies and network industries.

For more information, please click here.