2009 Event Speakers

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  Dr. Luis M. Proenza

  President, The University of Akron

  Dr. Luis M. Proenza is chief executive officer of The University of Akron. In his first 10 years at UA, he has led its transformation into the public research university for northern Ohio and one of the most attractive metropolitan campuses in the nation. Under Dr. Proenza's leadership, UA has undertaken a $500-million campus enhancement program, a university-community alliance to revitalize a 50-block area surrounding its campus, a BioInnovation Institute in partnership with three area hospitals and a medical school, and academic program enhancements that have made the University one of only 12 Carnegie Cluster Leaders nationally.

  Dr. Proenza has been involved in national science and technology policy matters since the 1970s when he was study director of the National Research Council-National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Vision, then The University of Georgia's Liaison for Science and Technology Policy, a member of the National Biotechnology Policy Board-National Institutes of Health, and Advisor for Science and Technology Policy to the Governor of Alaska. In 1992, U.S. President George H. W. Bush appointed Dr. Proenza to the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. Dr. Proenza became its vice chairman. He later was Chair of the Science and Mathematics Education Task Force for the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board.

  In 2001, President George W. Bush named Dr. Proenza to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the nation's highest-level policy-advisory group for science and technology. Dr. Proenza co-chaired PCAST's committee on Public-Private Partnerships and worked on panels on U.S. Research and Development Investments, Technology Transfer, Alternative Energy, Energy Efficiency and Advanced Manufacturing, Personalized Medicine, Information Technology, and Nanotechnology. He now  serves on the Council on Competitiveness' executive committee and its National Innovation Initiative Leadership Council, and co-chairs its Regional Leadership Institute Steering Committee. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a board member of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (formerly the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges) and the States Science and Technology Institute, former chair of APLU's Commission on the Urban Agenda and APLU co-chair of the APLU/AAU Patent Reform Committee, with Yale University President Rick Levin as Association of American Universities co-chair.

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