This month the Imperial College London announced that Alice P. Gast, Ph.D. (CA D ’80), will become president and rector of Imperial beginning in September of this year. Dr. Gast is currently president of Lehigh University (PA) and was formerly vice president for research and associate provost at MIT.
According to the press release from Imperial, she “will lead the College’s strategy, including the development of its new 25 acre campus.” Dr. Gast is the 13th president at Lehigh, the first female president at the University, and began as president in 2006. Read the news announcement from Lehigh for more information
Τ
On January 28, the Livermore Valley Performing Arts Center will host Mike S. Montemerlo, Ph.D. (PA G ’97), as part of the Rae Dorough Speaker Series. Dr. Montemerlo is part of a team working on Google’s Self-Driving Car project and he “will discuss and demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of the technology.” Purchase tickets and learn more about Google engineer Montemerlo
Β
Ruth Gordon Schnapp, CA A ’48, passed away in January of this year. She was an accomplished engineer and “lifelong advocate for women’s rights.” She obtained a bachelor’s and master’s degree in civil engineering from Stanford University. “In 1953 she earned her civil engineering license and in 1959 passed the rigorous California structural engineering exam to become the first woman licensed as a structural engineer in the State of California.”
Her 41-year engineering career included work for the California Office of the State Architect, owning her own consulting practice – Pegasus Engineering, and public building projects such as the San Francisco Public Library and the Palace of the Legion of Honor. She was initiated into Tau Beta Pi as the California Alpha Chapter at UC Berkeley in 1995 as an eminent engineer. Click here for the obituary
Π
The Official Blog of Tau Beta Pi 
Leave a comment