POTSDAM -- The associate provost for faculty equity at Massachusetts Institute of Technology will speak at Clarkson University at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 11 about the challenges facing engineering in this decade and the next.

Wesley L. Harris, also a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, will speak on "Grand Challenges for Engineering and Beyond" in Clarkson's Bertrand H. Snell Hall Room 213. Refreshments will precede the lecture at 3 p.m.

Harris is the fourth speaker in the New Horizons in Engineering Distinguished Lectureship Series, which is dedicated to improving the understanding of important issues facing engineering and society in the 21st century.

Harris will discuss the 14 National Academy of Engineering grand challenges for engineering within the 2010-2030 time frame. Following a review of the major accomplishments of engineering in the 20th century, he will focus on the risks and rewards of making advances toward goals of the new challenges.

In his presentation, Harris will outline the requirement for human/educational and fiscal capital in an integrative, flexible framework, given the environment of a global, knowledge-based economy and a major shift in U.S. federal support for basic research. He will also discuss a useful role for U.S. engineering schools, as an enabler in obtaining the goals of the Grand Challenges for Engineering.

Before his appointment as associate provost, Harris served as head of MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His research focuses on theoretical and experimental unsteady aerodynamics and aeroacoustics, computational fluid dynamics, hemodynamics, and the impact of government policy on procurement of high technology systems.

Prior to this, Harris was the associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA and the vice president and chief administrative officer of the University of Tennessee Space Institute.

Harris is a member of the National Academy of Engineering division of engineering and physical sciences committee, its advisory committee on grand challenges in engineering, and its committee on engineering education.