Lecture Previews

College of Engineering Leadership Speaker Series: “Meeting the World’s Energy Needs in a CO2-Constrained Environment: The Role of Nuclear Power”

Today at 5 p.m.

Gregg Hall (Porter Hall 100)

Carnegie Mellon alumnus Aris Candris (E ’74, ’78), the CEO of Westinghouse Electric Company, will present a talk about the potential of nuclear power to help meet the world’s requirement for energy consumption. After the talk, Candris, Carnegie Institute of Technology Dean Pradeep K. Khosla, and members of the engineering staff will host a discussion on the issues of energy and nuclear power. Candris is the inaugural speaker for the College of Engineering Leadership Speaker Series.
The presentation will focus on the challenges in reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the face of a global demand for electricity that may double in the next 50 years. Westinghouse and Carnegie Mellon have shared an innovative history, with Westinghouse helping to make Carnegie Mellon’s nuclear research facilities possible.
There will be a reception afterwards in the Tung Au Lab on the first floor of Porter Hall.
For more information and to RSVP, please visit www.cit.cmu.edu/alumni/leadership_series/02_12_2010/index.html.

Economic Hit Man Details His Experiences Exploiting Latin America and the Middle East

Thursday at 8 p.m.

Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall (4141 Fifth Ave., Oakland)

John Perkins, who transformed himself from a Peace Corps worker to a self-described “economic hit man of developing countries,” will provide a lecture of his experiences working as a chief economist at Chas. T. Main, a major international consulting firm.

At Chas. T. Main, Perkins provided advice to and worked with organizations such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and various Fortune 500 companies. He also served as the CEO for an alternative energy company.

In his books — Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, The Secret History of the American Empire, and Hoodwinked — Perkins details projects that benefited the rich in the world’s impoverished nations. All proceeds from the sale of the books will be donated to Perkins’s foundation, which serves environmental and human rights interests in the Amazon rainforest.

Film Screening: Dabbawallas

Monday at 4:30 p.m.

Gregg Hall (Porter Hall 100)

Paul Goodman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business, will present the documentary Dabbawallas.

In India, a unique food delivery business functions and thrives without the aid of technology that is taken for granted in America. The “dabbawallas,” named from the word dabba, for “box,” and walla, for “person,” transfer lunches from people’s homes to their workplaces between 8:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. every day.

For example, in the city of Mumbai, India, there are 1 million deliveries a week with a 98 percent success rate. The workforce consists of 4,000 dabbawallas that transport more than 100,000 lunches a day. This documentary will investigate this intriguing workforce that relies on human perseverance and creativity, in conjunction with the seminar India Today: Economics, Technology, and People.