June 4 - 5, 2019 | Buffalo, NY
This annual symposium is dedicated to the late Erich Bloch, former director of the National Science Foundation who helped endow the Department of Materials Design and Innovation at UB.
2018 Erich Bloch Symposium at Jacobs School of Medicine
2019 Erich Bloch Symposium
Discovering Pathways to Innovation
About Erich Bloch
Erich Bloch (January 9, 1925 – November 25, 2016) was a German-born American electrical engineer and administrator. He was involved with developing IBM’s first transistorized supercomputer, 7030 Stretch, and mainframe computer, System/360. He served as director of the National Science Foundation from 1984 to 1990.
Bloch, the son of a Jewish businessman and housewife, lost his parents in the Holocaust, survived the war in a refugee camp in Switzerland and immigrated in 1948 to the United States. He studied electrical engineering at ETH Zurich and received his bachelor of science in electrical engineering from the University of Buffalo.
Bloch joined IBM after graduating in 1952. He was engineering manager of IBM’s STRETCH supercomputer system and director of several research sites during his career. In June 1984, Ronald Reagan nominated Bloch to succeed Edward Alan Knapp as director of the National Science Foundation. The same year, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. In 1985, Bloch was awarded one of the first National Medals of Technology and Innovation along with Bob O. Evans and Fred Brooks for their work on the IBM System/360.
After stepping down as director of the National Science Foundation, Bloch joined the Council on Competitiveness as its first distinguished fellow. The IEEE Computer Society awarded him the Computer Pioneer Award in 1993 for high speed computing. In 2002, the National Science Board honored Bloch with the Vannevar Bush Award. He was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum in 2004 “for engineering management of the IBM Stretch supercomputer, and of the Solid Logic Technology used in the IBM System/360, which revolutionized the computer industry.”
In 2014, Bloch donated $1.5 million to the University at Buffalo to establish the Erich Bloch Endowed Chair for the new Department of Materials Design and Innovation.
The MDI Summer Institute is an extra-mural program of UB’s Department of Materials Design and Innovation that supports a broad range of outreach activities to promote research and education platforms in materials design. Its flagship event is the annual Erich Bloch Symposium.
The events
The Summer Institute includes additional events in conjunction with the Erich Bloch Symposium. Following the symposium, on June 5, 2019, the Collaboratory for a Regenerative Economy (CoRE) will host a workshop – the CoRE Solar Summit, and will continue through June 6th, 2019. Attendance to this event is by invitation.
Location
This year's symposium will be held at Davis Hall, University at Buffalo, North Campus.
Event Start Date: June 4, 2019 This content is archived.