Spectrum Lectures
The Spectrum Lecture Series is a science-oriented lecture series aimed at a non-scientific audience. Typically, there are three to four lectures per academic year on a variety of science topics, which will be posted on this webpage as details become available.
Upcoming Lectures
Date and time: Monday, April 24, 2023, 4:30 p.m.
Location: Bioscience Education Center Building – Room BE 151 – 152, Montgomery College, Germantown,
MD
Speaker: Mark Sankey, Principal, Mark R. Sankey & Associate, LLC
Sustainability is a subject capturing much attention. What is “sustainability?” Technology and its impacts are accelerating and many people work earnestly to help us keep pace. Ongoing concerns over natural disasters and the climate have stirred action. What are the issues and what can we do? Since the industrial revolution, we have been dealing with the social and environmental ramifications of our creations and industries. We want our stuff but what is the real cost, the total cost? We live in an industrialized world dependent on electric energy. How do we balance our lifestyles with the desire to maintain the beauty of the world around us? We will take a brief look at how we got here. And then we will see where we are and what better steps we can take locally, nationally, and globally.
Mark Sankey grew up through the 60’s and 70’s amid increasing environmental awareness. After gaining a B.S.in Chemical Engineering he landed with an industrial air pollution control company, Research-Cottrell. That began a 40-year journey in marketing and project work leading him to Bechtel in 2005. He has spent time at plants under construction as a project manager and as an engineering specialist, and operated alongside VPs, project directors, lawyers, and welders and electrical subcontractors. While with Bechtel, opportunity with Engineers Without Borders provided two trips to Uganda to develop water supplies for villages. After retirement in 2015, international exposure continued as Mark pursued energy and environmental consulting work in Uganda. He has served on an ASME committee on energy, environment, and waste during their review of proposed EPA policies. Mark has presented papers at Air & Waste Management Association and other industry conferences, and is published in trade journals including Power Engineering, He is a current member of the Frederick County Sustainability Commission. He advocates for electric supply reliability and sound energy and environmental policy.
As always, Spectrum Lectures are appropriate for a general audience and admission is free. No tickets are required. For questions or to request accommodations for physical disability, please contact Rick Pires at Richard.Pires@montgomerycollege.edu or 240-567-7798.
Previous Lectures
Thursday, February 27, 2020, 4:30 p.m.
BE151, Germantown Campus
Dr. Cristina Rabadán-Diehl
Associate Director, Westat
This lecture is intended to inspire individuals interested in science to consider nontraditional and alternative career paths.
Wednesday, November 20, 2019, 4:30 p.m.
BE-151, BE Building
Lauren Canary
National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable
Washington DC
Wednesday, February 27, 2019 at 4:30 p.m.
BE-151, BE Building
Dr. Joshua Levin is Associate Director, Manufacturing Quality at Personal Genome Diagnostics,
Inc. The purpose of his discussion is to describe how DNA sequencing is being used
as a diagnostic tool for cancer, and the technologies developments that made this
possible.
Spectrum Lecture February 27, 2019 (PDF, 
)
Wednesday, November 14, 2018 at 4:30 p.m.
BE-151, BE-Building
Dr. James Sniezek is the Instructional Dean for the Chemical and Biological Sciences
united and is based at the Takoma Park/Silver Spring campus. He worked on organisms
from the hydrothermal vents for his Master of Science degree and , for his part of
his Doctorate Degree, investigated and described protozoa that live on whales. For
his post-doctoral, he researched at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center,
studying the Production Estimates of Planktonic Ciliates in the Rhode River by Community,
Trophic Category, and Specific Species.
Spectrum Lecture Nov 14, 2018 (PDF, )
Tuesday, April 24, 2018 at 4:30 p.m.
BE-151, BE-Building
Dr. Travis Gallagher is a scientist in the Bio-molecular Structure and Function Group
at the institute for Bio-science and Biotechnology Research at NIST. He will discuss
how knowing the structure of a protein can help explain what that protein does.
Spectrum Lecture April 24, 2018 (PDF, )
Wednesday, November 8, 2017 at 4:00 p.m.
BE-151, BE-Building
Dr. Avi Mandell is a scientist in the Planetary System Laboratory, his research focuses
on the characterization of extra-solar planets and the formation and evolution of
planetary systems. He works on analyzing observations of transiting and directly imaged
exoplanets and circumstellar disks.
Spectrum Lecture Nov 8, 2017 (PDF, )
Wednesday, October 11, 2017 at 4:30 p.m.
BE-151, BE-Building
Dr. Andy Podolsky holds a Ph.D. in Colonial American history from Northwestern University.
He will share his knowledge about wombats, his experience supporting their conservation,
and most importantly what can be done to prevent the Northern Hairy-Nosed wombat from
going extinct.
Spectrum Lecture Oct 11, 2017 (PDF, )
Thursday, March 30, 2017 at 4:30 p.m.
Globe Ball, HT-Building
Dr. Melissa Phillips is a research chemist in the Chemical Sciences Division at the
National Institute of Standards and Technology since 2008. She will discuss the research
of developing standards to assess the nutritional content and labeling accuracy of
food products.
Spectrum Lecture March 30, 2017 (PDF, )
Thursday, February 22, 2017 at 4:30 p.m.
BE-151, BE-Building
Dr. Armen Ghazarian is a program director in the Environmental Epidemiology Branch
of the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program. He will discuss the overview of
epidemiology of testicular cancer and provide insight of what might be the cause of
the increase in incidence in the US.
Spectrum Lecture February 22, 2017 (PDF, )
Wednesday, February 15, 2017 at 12:00 p.m.
BE-151, BE-Building
Matthew Staymates is a mechanical engineer and fluid dynamicist, he has worked at
NIST for over 10 years. During the discussion, he will expand on the large research
program at NIST that is focusing on the measurement challenges associated with trace
contraband detection and forensic science.
Spectrum Lecture February 15, 2017 (PDF, )
History of the Spectrum Lecture Series
In an effort to expose students of Montgomery College to aspects of science not typically covered in first and second year college-level science courses and to serve as a source of science information to the general community, Dr. Robert Coley organized the first of what would become an ongoing series of lectures called the Spectrum Lecture Series. The name Spectrum Lecture Series was chosen because it was hoped that the lectures would cover the entire range, or spectrum, of scientific endeavor, extending beyond the basic sciences taught at the College.
The first series of lectures was held during the 1980-81 academic year. Professor Coley chose a single topic, energy, and built a series of nine lectures, all of which looked at different aspects of energy. The inaugural lecture was presented by a faculty member from Johns Hopkins University who gave an overview of the earth’s energy resources. This was followed by lectures dealing with fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and alternative sources of energy. There was also a lecture on the geopolitics of energy and another on saving energy in the home.
Nine lectures per year proved to be too large a burden to carry, so in subsequent
years, Professor Coley reduced the number of lectures, finally settling on the present
day four lectures per academic year. He also abandoned the idea of having a year-long
focus on one particular topic. Rather, each year’s series consisted of an eclectic
mix of topics. Some lectures were about things that were of current interest and
“in the news,” hot topics such as superconductivity, AIDS, the Hubble Space Telescope,
polar sea ice melting, nuclear waster disposal and nanotechnology, but most of the
lectures dealt with things of general interest in an attempt to show the importance
and relevance of science in our lives. Lecture topics truly covered the “spectrum”
of science. There were lectures dealing with topics as diverse as animal communication,
design of the new generation of nuclear reactors, bioremediation or the use of bacteria
to clean up chemical wastes in the environment, the use of chemistry in art conservation
and analysis, and the golden lion tamarind project of the National Zoo. Other lectures
dealt with the designing of drugs to treat disease, animal cloning, fuel cells, bioethics,
and anthrax and other biological weapons of mass destruction. Recently, the lecture
series has even been touched by the Nobel Prize. One of our lecturers, Dr. William
Phillips, a physicist from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),
presented a fascinating lecture on his Nobel Prize winning research in the use of
laser light to cool and trap atoms. Students were able to see and touch an actual
Nobel Prize medal when Dr. Robert Shull, also from NIST and who presented a lecture
on nanotechnology, brought in the medal won by his father, Clifford Shull, in 1993.
In 2005, one year before Dr. Coley’s retirement, Professor Susan Bontems, another chemistry
faculty member at Germantown, assumed the role of coordinator of the Spectrum Lecture
Series. Her efforts have maintained the variety and the quality of the Spectrum Lectures.
Since 2014, the Series has been coordinated jointly by Professor Margaret Birney and
Professor Richard Pires.
When it began in 1980, the Spectrum Lecture Series was one of only a very few venues
for extracurricular lectures in the whole of Montgomery College. Today, there are
many lectures presented by many departments throughout the College. When it began,
lectures were held in a 95-seat lecture hall, and a good crowd numbered from 25 to
30 attendees. Today the lectures are held in Globe Hall, a 500-seat facility, and
they typically draw several hundred students, faculty members and members of the community.
It is hoped that the Spectrum Lecture Series will continue to provide quality science
lectures to the campus, the College, and the community for many years to come.