News
November 16, 2016Sage to Welcome Dr. Victor Atiemo-Obeng for 2016 Grace Van DerVoort Lecture
The Sage Colleges is pleased to welcome Dr. Victor Atiemo-Obeng as the keynote speaker for its 2016 Grace Van DerVoort Lecture on November 30, 2016 at 4:30 p.m. in Bush Memorial Center on the Russell Sage campus in Troy. Atiemo-Obeng is the Director of the Safe Water Team. His lecture is entitled “The Challenge of Sustainable Living: Do You Have Safe Water? A Billion People Don’t.”
Water, particularly the lack of safe water, presents a challenge to sustainable living. In this presentation, Atiemo-Obeng, Ph.D., will highlight the adventurous work with the Safe Water Team promoting and enabling the distribution of most effective technologies such as the Hydraid® Biosand filters to bring clean, safe water to millions in need of it in Kenya, Ghana, and the Dominican Republic. He will describe several challenges as well as several effective tools and approaches that are contributing to the success of this endeavor.
Atiemo-Obeng honed his passion and aptitude for most effective engineering science research, development and practice at The Dow Chemical Company, the biggest chemical company in North America. He was, first, a summer intern at Dow as an undergraduate student. He received a B.Ch.E. cum laude from The Catholic University of America in 1971. After obtaining a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1975 he was employed by Dow for nearly 34 years, attaining the rank of Dow Fellow and one of the top 100 technical staff. He acquired and leveraged technical expertise and leadership skills to successfully commercialize multi-million dollar processes across a wide range of Dow’s businesses in the US, Canada, Europe, South America, South Africa and China. In support of Dow’s commitment to achieving a diverse work force, Victor co-created the award-winning Building Engineering and Science Talent (BEST) Symposium at Dow to introduce doctoral and post-doctoral scientists from U.S. ethnic minority groups to the wide range of industrial R&D opportunities at Dow. In July 2012 he was invited out of retirement to serve as a Director and Interim Country Manager of Dow Chemical West Africa LLC to establish a new office in Accra, Ghana for commercial operations. Atiemo-Obeng is now fully engaged in an adventure of sustainable living and social entrepreneurship in retirement. He continues to serve as a judge for the US EPA P3: “People, Prosperity and the Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability”, having done so every year since 2009.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
