Faculty, staff and friends of the College of Engineering gathered on Friday, Oct. 24 for “The Future of Engineering” symposium, held in memory of Professor Emeritus Merrill Ebner.

“Merrill Ebner was one of the founding fathers of engineering at BU, a beloved teacher and mentor to many,” said Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen in his introduction. “We are saddened by his loss but are confident that students will benefit from his legacy for years to come.”

The symposium featured keynote addresses from Philip Cheney, a visiting professor at Northeastern University and former vice president at Raytheon; Thomas Magnanti, a professor and former dean of engineering at MIT; and George Hatsopoulos, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Pharos and the founder of Thermo Electron Corp. 

Cheney spoke about the Gordon Engineering Leadership program at Northeastern University, a master’s degree program that gives engineers with industry experience a boost in their transition into program management positions.

“Engineers are very good technically,” said Cheney. “What we’re trying to do here is give them exposure to the things that help make them team leaders.”

Ebner had visited the students in this program, Cheney recalled, and had studied each individual’s research project in preparation. When he came into the classroom, to the students’ surprise, he asked them very specific questions about their projects.

Magnanti spoke about universities’ role in the globalization of engineering. Today engineering has different employment opportunities, mobility, information transfer capabilities and technologies than in past generations, he said.

“Last century was the century of the large: the GMs, the Boeings, the Shells of the world. This may be the century of the small: carbon nanotubes, turbines the size of buttons and the evolution of small companies,” he said. 

Universities are hurrying to meet the demands of this new, rapidly changing global environment by expanding to locations across the globe, said Magnanti, likening the trend to the California gold rush. As an example, Magnanti discussed the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), “MIT’s first ever foreign research laboratory.”  The project will allow MIT faculty and students to research and explore new resources and opportunities, global technologies and Asian cultures.

George Hatsopoulos spun a tale of his path to becoming an engineer and discussed his thoughts on the energy and financial challenges facing the country.

Most of Hatsopoulos’ family members were engineers and many became professors at the local university in Greece, where he grew up.

“When I was 12 years old, I decided I wanted to do more than that,” he said. He began reading about Thomas Edison and became “infatuated,” not only by Edison’s invention of the light bulb, but by his building a company to apply that invention.

“An engineer should be focused not just on technology and developing solutions, but it occurred to me that an engineer should try to have the ambition to apply that technology to implement it in society,” he said.

Looking to the future, he expressed concern about the looming energy and financial crises, saying that engineers today should apply their expertise to these challenges. A top priority, he said, should be developing high efficiency solutions and alternative energy technologies to decrease the portion of the $700 billion national deficit that pays for oil from foreign countries.

Ebner joined the College in 1964, and taught, researched, and mentored students until, and beyond, his retirement in 2006. He died on March 27 at the age of 76. Ebner’s enduring contributions to the College over more than four decades helped shape the lives and careers of countless students and forged close ties and productive collaborations with his many colleagues and co-workers.

Two of Ebner’s children, Merrill Jr. and Martha, attended the event. Following the three speakers, audience members including faculty and alumni offered informal anecdotes and remembrances of Ebner.

“I considered him to be my closest colleague and associate,” said Professor Ted de Winter. “At the end of the day it’s what you do for other people that counts…. he retired and none of us knew he retired; he was still mentoring students, still in the lab.”

Roger Dorf (’70), who established the College’s Merrill L. Ebner Fund in 2003 to support programs encouraging creative design in manufacturing engineering, reminisced about three qualities integral to Merrill’s personality: his intellectual curiosity, his enthusiasm for life and learning, and the way he cared about his students.

Dorf said, “Merrill taught all the time, and he did it because he loved it. He lived the idea of education and that you can keep learning forever.”