Rensselaer President's Commencement Colloquy to Include White House Cabinet Member, Nobel Laureate, Hayden Planetarium Director, MIT Biotech Leader

TROY, N.Y., May 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, a Nobel-winning cancer researcher, the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, and a renowned biotechnology professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology will join Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson May 28 as she convenes and moderates a discussion on "Re-Igniting the Innovation Economy: Science and Technology."

The President's Commencement Colloquy will be held on Friday, May 28, at 4 p.m. in the Concert Hall of the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, on the Rensselaer campus in Troy, N.Y.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the Frederick P. Rose director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, will open the Presidential Commencement Colloquy with a special presentation.

President Jackson will moderate the round-table discussion to follow with Tyson and Peter R. Orszag, the youngest Cabinet member in the Obama administration and the former director of the Congressional Budget Office;  Robert S. Langer, a leader in biotechnology and the David H. Koch Institute Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Dr. Harold E. Varmus, co-recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine  and president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

President Barack Obama recently announced the appointment of Dr. Varmus to serve as director of the National Cancer Institute.

"Through their work, our honorands are shaping the national agenda on scientific discovery and technological innovation," President Jackson said.  "The question is, coming out of the current recession, what are the essential components to re-ignite the innovation economy? We are at a crossroads, where decisions and investments we make today must lay the foundation for our economic strength and global leadership. During the colloquy, we will look back, to examine what sparked the innovation revolution that has fueled our economy for generations. We will look outward, at the current state of collaboration among business, academia, and government essential to support a healthy innovation ecosystem. And, we will look forward, to see how, by removing barriers to creating new approaches, we can power our economy and uplift society as a whole."

The May 28 President's Commencement Colloquy is open to the public. For more information and/or to register, go to: http://www.rpi.edu/about/colloquy/.

The 2010 Rensselaer Commencement will be held on Saturday, May 29, at 10:30 a.m. in the stadium at the East Campus Athletic Village, on the Rensselaer campus. Peter R. Orszag will deliver the Commencement address and will receive an honorary degree, along with the three other honorands. For more details on Commencement, go to: http://www.rpi.edu/academics/commencement/index.html.

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SOURCE Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute