Drexel Engineering will host part two of the Dean’s Lecture Series April 17, 2013 at 11 a.m. in Mitchell Auditorium with Dr. Adam Fontecchio, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and associate dean of undergraduate affairs. Fontecchio will lecture on the origin and mission of Drexel University's Expressive and Creative Interaction Technologies (ExCITe) Center - a hub for enabling teams of faculty, students and entrepreneurs to pursue highly multi-disciplinary collaborative projects in engineering, fashion design, digital media, performing arts, computer and information science, product design and many other fields.
During Fontecchio’s lecture, he will focus of recent trends that have indicated a decline in the creativity of U.S. students with his discussion, “From STEM to STEAM - Broadening the Impact of Drexel University Educational and Research Initiatives through the ExCITe Center.” He will discuss how the solution of the STEM to STEAM approach is capitalizing on the potential of combining digital creativity and technical focus to develop the next generation of leaders, spark innovation and drive economic growth.
In addition to opening the ExCITe Center, Fontecchio is a leading researcher in fundamental investigations of liquid crystal interactions to develop novel devices. Using Holographically-formed Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal (H-PDLC) Bragg gratings, he has developed novel multiplexed formation techniques for reflective displays, remote sensing wavelength filtration and a novel strain gauge. He has also investigated the materials development of polymer / liquid crystal systems for optimization of electro-optical characteristics. Fontecchio received his bachelor's, master’s and doctoral degrees in physics from Brown University.
The Dean’s Distinguished Lecture Series is free and open to the University. The schedule for the upcoming series will be available soon.