Engineering for a Sustainable World

Abstract

[evdate 1990-09-18] THE HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 12/F World Shipping Centre, 7 Canton Rood, Tsimshatsui, Kowloon. Hong Kong. Facsimile No. ' Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Chia-Wei Woo. BS MA. PhD

For immediate press release Date: 6 September,90

ENGINEERING FOR A SUSTAINABLE WORLD A Presentation for the General Public by Paul B. MacCready VENUE: Theatre, City Hall DATE: 18 September 1990 TIME: 8:00 pm Dr Paul B. MacCready, awarded Engineer of the Century by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1981 and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, will be in Hong Kong to deliver a public lecture on the environment and technology on 18 September 1990, at 8:00 p.m. He will also be one of the keynote speakers at the Environment '90 - Workshop on Environmental Science and Technology which will be held during the same week. The public lecture event is jointly organized by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the Society of Hong Kong Scholars and the Science Museum.

Dr MacCready received world-wide fame in 1977 and was 'awarded the Henry Kremer Prize when he and his team designed and fabricated the Gossamer Condor, the first human-powered aircraft which .flew a distance of 2km around a figure-eight course, a feat attempted by a dozen others in the past 18 years without success. In 1979, his Gossamer Albatross, another human-powered aircraft flew across the' British Channel which again won him the Henry Kremer Prize. Two years later he built the Solar Challenger - an aircraft powered by 16,128 solar cells - which reached a height of 3,300m and flew 262km from France to England. In 1986, he built and flew an ornithopter - a realistic, radio-controlled, computer-brained wing-flapping replica of the pterodacyl which is the largest creature ever flown on earth.

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.- 3 : . He was equally successful on the ground. With General Motors, his team built a solar-powered electric car, the Sunraycer, that won a 3,006km trans- Australian race, and was two and a half days faster than his, next competitor amongst a field of 23. The team also designed a battery-powered electric car, named Impact, which can accelerate from 0 to 96 k.p.h. in 8 seconds. General Motors has announced plans to mass produce this vehicle. Five of his vehicles have gone to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., and are displayed there or at associated museums. As an educator, Dr MacCready teaches what he practises. He advocates teaching "thinking skills" in school which he feels are necessary to meet growing

technological and social problems. He strongly believes that, with the era of limits imposed by a non-expanding earth that has a deteriorating eco-system, matters of population, religions, and thinking rationally about the earth's future

are more important than technological matters for our goal of a comfortable sustainable world. _ Dr MacCready received his undergraduate education in Physics and Mechanical Engineering at Yale, and his PhD in Aeronautics at California Institute of Technology. He also took fighter-pilot training during the Second World War. He is the co-founder and the President of AeroVironment Incorporated, a company which specializes in air pollution, hazardous waste management, alternative energy and energy efficient vehicles. Dr MacCready received many other awards and prizes from various professional institutions for his phenomenal achievements, including the prestigious Guggenheim Medal awarded by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. It is indeed a

great honour to have this distinguished engineer, scholar, educator and thinker,

truely one of a kind, to visit Hong Kong. The lecture is in English. For tickets and further information please contact MS Mandy Chan and MS Lim Lie Tjing, tel: 302 1446 and 302 1474. For further information please contact: Office of Public Affairs: 3021468