NC State hosts symposium for potential engineering doctoral students

NC State hosted the inaugural symposium for the Research Triangle Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Hunt Library on Centennial Campus. Panel members from industry participated in an open forum with students and faculty members with the intention of helping to bridge the gap between academic and industrial research.

Panel members included: Dr. Andrea Liebmann-Vinson, director of biosense for Boston Dickson Technology; Dr. Timothy D. Fornes, senior staff scientist, chemical research with the Lord Corporation; Dr. Damon R. Billodeaux, a visiting scientist with the Eastman Chemical Company’s Eastman Innovation Center; and Dr. Barclay Satterfield, senior chemical engineer with the Eastman Innovation Center.

Students and faculty members from NC State, Duke, N.C. Central University and UNC-Chapel Hill were in attendance. For students, especially those planning to pursue a doctoral degree, the program provided an excellent opportunity to gain an understanding of how different the academic and industrial worlds are.

“In industry, working in a team is very important and is much different than working in academia,” said Liebmann-Vinson, “I walk in in the morning and I know what I’ll be doing and I’ll walk out in the evening and have it done. In industry, it’s more you walk in in the morning and kind of have in your head what you want to do, but it’s a good day to walk out and you have gotten maybe 30 to 40 percent of that done because team dynamics are different, priorities change, and you need to be able to adapt to those.”