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ALBANY -- Two leaders in the areas of science and education will bring their personal messages to young people at the State Museum January 28 as part of the African-American History Month “Celebration of Math and Science: Honoring the Contributions of African-Americans Past, Present and Future.”

Dr. George C. Campbell, president of Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, and Dr. Marshall Jones, author and General Electric (GE) research scientist, will discuss their life experiences and the paths that brought them to where they are today.

The forum, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Kenneth B. Clark Auditorium, is open to all but is designed especially for middle and high school students. A question and answer session for middle school students will be held from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. and another for high school students will follow the formal presentations. Price Chopper will provide refreshments.

Founded in 1859, The Cooper Union is an all-honors college and one of America’s most selective institutions of higher education. Its historic Great Hall has provided a platform for American presidents from Abraham Lincoln to William Jefferson Clinton and has provided a forum for major social reform movements of the 19thand 20thcenturies.

For 11 years prior to his current appointment Dr. Campbell was president and CEO of NACME, Inc., a non-profit corporation focused on engineering education and science and technology policy that offered the nation’s largest private engineering scholarship program for economically disadvantaged students. Previously, he spent 12 years at AT&T Bell Laboratories. For seven years he served as a U.S. delegate to the International Telecommunications Union. Earlier in his career, Campbell was a member of the faculties of Nkumbi International College in Zambia and Syracuse University. He is co-editor of “Access Denied: Race, Ethnicity and the Scientific Enterprise,” Oxford University Press. Campbell has been a regular guest commentator for PBS-TV's “Nightly Business Report” and has been profiled in a lead article in The Wall Street Journal. He earned a doctorate in theoretical physics from Syracuse University, a bachelor’s degree in physics from Drexel University and is a graduate of the Executive Management Program at Yale University. Among Campbell's awards are the 1993 George Arents Pioneer Medal in Physics and the Drexel University Centennial Medal. On behalf of NACME, he accepted a U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence and the U.S. Department of Labor's EPIC Award. He's a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the New York Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Jones is the author of the children’s book, “Never Give Up- -- the Marshall Jones Story.” A mechanical engineer, he is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a Coolidge Fellow at GE Global Research in Niskayuna. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, and his master’s and doctorate in the same field from the University of Massachusetts. He worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1965 to 1969 and joined GE in 1974. Jones has spent most of his GE career addressing laser material processing, laser device development and fiber optics, He holds 49 U.S. patents. In 1982 he was a member of an International Industrial Study Mission to Japan on Laser Technology. His research on laser/fiber optic/robot systems was voted one of the nation’s top 100 innovations of the year by Science Digest magazine in 1985. The University of Massachusetts awarded him the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award in 1986 and the Chancellor’s Medal in 1987. In 1990, he was elected a Senior Member of the Laser Institute of America.

The New York State Museum is a cultural program of the New York State Department of Education. Founded in 1836, the Museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the U.S. Located on Madison Avenue in Albany, the Museum is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission is free. Further information can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

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