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By David Goldberg, September 4, 2009 9:24 pm

The 2010 Forum for Philosophy, Engineering & Technology (fPET-2010) to be held 9-10 May 2010 (Sunday Evening-Monday) at the Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO USA has issued its first call for papers.

Abstracts (500-750 words) are due by 28 December 2009 (Monday) using the fPET-2010 submissions page on the the webpage www.philengtech.org/submission.  The call for papers may be viewed online here or downloaded as a PDF file here.

For more information about the forum contact Diane Michelfelder (michelfelder@macalester.edu) or Dave Goldberg (deg@illinois.edu).

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By David Goldberg, September 4, 2009 9:23 pm

fPET-2010 is pleased to announce that Cherrice Traver of Union College has joined the steering committee:

Cherrice Traver is the Dean of Engineering and David Falk and Elynor Rudnick-Falk Professor of Computer Engineering at Union College. She received her BS in Physics (summa cum laude) from the State University of New York at Albany in 1982 and her PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia in 1988. She has been a faculty member at Union College in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department since 1986, and directed the Computer Engineering program from 1997 to 2005.

Recently Dr. Traver has been involved in initiatives at the interface of engineering and the liberal arts. She has led two national symposia on Engineering and Liberal Education at Union College and she was General Chair for the 2008 Frontiers in Education conference.

Courses that she has taught include Electric Circuits, Digital Design, Embedded Systems, Comparative Computer Architecture, and VLSI. She has co-taught international project courses in Turkey and in Spain. Her research has been focused on timing issues in digital systems.  She has directed local and national outreach programs, including Robot Camp and the P. O. Pistilli Scholarship. She serves on the MOSIS Educational Advisory Committee and the Dudley Observatory Board of Trustees and is a member of Sigma Xi, ACM, and a senior member of the IEEE.

More information is available here.

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By David Goldberg, September 2, 2009 5:16 pm

The 2010 Forum on Philosophy, Engineering & Technology (fPET-2010) just received word from Philip A.E. Brey (U. Twente), President of the Society for Philosophy & Technology (www.spt.org), that SPT has agreed to sponsor fPET-2010.  Similar cooperative arrangements were in place with SPT for the WPE events, but as part of this new arrangement, SPT will name a member of the fPET steering committee and a number of members to the fPET program committee.

fPET already has many SPT members among the  ranks of its organizers.  This past summer, SPT held a special reflective engineers track that attracted a number of provocative submissions and excellent attendance, and this new agreement between fPET and SPT continues the building cooperation between philosophers and engineers begun with WPE-2007.

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By David Goldberg, September 1, 2009 6:58 pm

Two WPE attendees made posts about their work that came to fPET attention through routine blog search:

Ron Chrisley posts about his WPE-2008 talk Engineering For Conceptual Change: The Enactive Torch here.

Maarten Ottens posts about his WPE-2007 talk Limits to Systems Engineering here.

This site will follow WPE and fPET related news and blog stories.

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By David Goldberg, September 1, 2009 10:19 am

The following members of the 2010 Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology (fPET-2010, 9-10 May 2010, Sunday Evening-Monday) program committee have been confirmed as of 1 September 2009:

Stephen C. Armstrong, AMGI-Bywater
Caroline Baillie, University of Western Australia
Sarah Bell, University College London
Louis Bucciarelli, MIT
Philip Chmielewski, Loyola Marymount University
Steen Hyldgaard Christensen, Aarhus University
Michael Davis, Illinois Institute of Technology
Darryl Farber, Pennsylvania State University
Jun Fudano, Kanazawa Institute of Technology
Dennis Gedge, Consulting Engineer
Alastair Gunn, University of Waikato
Billy V. Koen, The University of Texas at Austin
Russell Korte, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Peter Kroes, TUDelft
Michael C. Loui, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Byron Newberry, Baylor University
Steven P. Nichols, The University of Texas at Austin
Ibo van de Poel, TUDelft
Hans Poser, TUBerlin
Donna M. Rizzo, University of Vermont
Jon A. Schmidt, Burns & McDonnell
Karl A. Smith, University of Minnesota & Purdue University
Peter Simons, Trinity College Dublin
Herman T. Tavani, Rivier College
Pieter Vermaas, TUDelft

The committee represents a balanced mix of noted philosophers, engineers, and interdisciplinary thinkers.  For more information about the fPET-2010 program committee or the forum itself contact co-chairs Diane Michelfeleder (michelfelder@macalester.edu) or David E. Goldberg (deg@illinois.edu).

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By David Goldberg, August 29, 2009 7:50 pm

Thanks to newly enlisted Web and Technology chair, Xavier Llora, the website for the 2010 Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology (fPET-2010) has a new look.  Technology upgrades include the use electronic submissions and registration as well as a variety of widgets to make the site easier to read and use.

Dr. Xavier Llora is research assistant professor, and member, of the Illinois Genetic Algorithms Lab (IlliGAL) at the University of Illinois. He is also a member of the Data-Intensive Technologies and Applications at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

More information Xavier Llora may be found here.

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By David Goldberg, August 29, 2009 7:09 am

TUDelft’s Ibo van de Poel has accepted an invitation to join the fPET steering committee:

Ibo van de Poel is an associate professor in ethics and technology at Delft University of Technology. He studied philosophy of science, technology and society, with a propaedeutic exam in mechanical engineering. In 1998, he obtained his PhD in science and technology studies (STS) with a dissertation on the dynamics of technological development; his supervisor was prof. dr. A. Rip. During the last few years, he has done research and published in the following areas: the dynamics of technological development, codes of conduct and professional ethics of engineers, the moral acceptability of technological risks, ethics in engineering design, and ethics and responsibility in R&D networks. He receives regularly invitations for international conferences and workshops and contributions to encyclopaedias in these areas. Since 1997, he is lecturing in ethics and technology for several engineering course programs at Delft University of Technology. He has been involved in several educational innovations in this area, including the development of the web-based computer program AGORA and the first Dutch textbook on ethics and technology.  He was founding co-chair of the Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering in 2008 (WPE-2008).

Additional information is available here.

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By David Goldberg, August 27, 2009 3:49 am

fPET is pleased to welcome Domenico Grasso to the Steering Committee:

Dr. Domenico Grasso (b. 1955 Worcester, Massachusetts) is Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate College at the University of Vermont. Prior to holding this position, he was the Dean of the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences at UVM. He did his secondary school education at St. John’s High School in Massachusetts and holds a B.Sc. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an M.S. from Purdue University and a Ph.D. from The University of Michigan. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the states of Connecticut and Texas, and a Diplomate of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers

Prior to joining the University of Vermont, Professor Grasso was Rosemary Bradford Hewlett Professor and Founding Director of the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, the first engineering program at a women’s college in the United States, and Professor and Head of Department in Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Connecticut. He has been a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, a NATO Fellow, and an Invited Technical Expert to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Vienna, Austria.

In 1998, Professor Grasso served on a World Bank–funded international team of scholars that established the first environmental engineering program in Argentina. In 2000, the Water Environment Federation named him a “Pioneer in Disinfection.” He recently chaired a U.S. Congressional briefing entitled “Genomes & Nanotechnology: The Future of Environmental Research.” In addition, Professor Grasso was co-founder along with Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman astronaut, of TOYChallenge — a national toy design challenge for 5th to 8th graders to excite them about science, engineering and the design process in a fun, creative and collaborative manner, relevant to everyday life.

Professor Grasso is an environmental engineer who studies the ultimate fate of contaminants in the environment and develops new techniques to reduce the risks associated with these contaminants to human health or natural resources. His research focuses on molecular-scale processes that underlie nature and the behavior of contaminants in environmental systems. He views engineering as a bridge between science and humanity, making it particularly well suited for incorporation into liberal arts universities. His classes, although technically rigorous, also explore the societal and philosophical issues facing engineers and scientists.

Professor Grasso is currently Vice-Chair of the United States Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board and Chair of Vermont’s Environmental Engineering Advisory Council. He was formerly President of the Association of Environmental Engineering & Science Professors, Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Engineering Science and Associate Editor of Reviews in Environmental Science and Biotechnology. He has authored more than 100 technical papers and reports, including four chapters and two books. Federal, state and industrial organizations have supported his research work. He serves on advisory boards at Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, WPI and the National Academy of Engineering.

More information is available here.

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By David Goldberg, August 26, 2009 2:48 pm

fPET-2010 is pleased to welcome Joe Pitt to the fPET steering committee:

Joseph C. Pitt is Professor of Philosophy and of Science and Technology Studies at Virginia Tech, where he has taught since 1971.  He graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1966, taking both his MA and Ph,D. (1972) from the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of three books, Pictures, Images and Conceptual Change; Galileo, Human Knowledge and the Book of Nature; Thinking About Technology. He has edited eleven additional books and published over 100 articles and book reviews in scholarly journals.  Professor Pitt is also the founding editor of the interdisciplinary journal Perspectives on Science; Historical, Philosophical, Social, published by MIT Press. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Techné, Research in Philosophy and Technology, the journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology of which he has served as President.

At Virginia Tech, Professor Pitt, an award winning teacher, created  and was Director of the interdisciplinary undergraduate program in Humanities, Science and Technology from 1978-1988.  He was also the founding Director of the Center for the Study of Science in Society and he was instrumental in the creation of the Ph.D. granting Graduate Program in Science and Technology Studies.  Recently he has been involved in the development of a new interdisciplinary Ph.D. program: The Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical and Cultural Thought (ASPECT).  From 1991 to 1998 and from 2001 to 2007 he served as Head of the Department of Philosophy.  In addition to chairing several major university committees, he served as Senior Faculty Fellow for Special Projects in the Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences for 3 years.

Dr. Pitt’s research interests lie in the area of the impact of technological innovation on scientific change.  He is currently working on a book manuscript, Seeing Near and Far, which explores how innovations in telescopes and microscopes impact astronomy and biology.  Part of the argument he is developing concludes that our understanding of major meta-scientific concepts such as scientific observation, evidence, explanation, etc. also change under the advent of technological innovation, thereby undercutting the notion of some kind of perennial philosophy.

More information is available here.

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By David Goldberg, August 12, 2009 7:55 am

Follow the Forum on Philosophy, Engineering & Technology (fPET-2010) on twitter @philengtech (here).