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Bill's 70th Birthday: A Week of Celebration

Part D. The Faculty Distinguished Lecture at Meredith College

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Last edit 2016-03-26.
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General Introduction. One's 70th birthday is a major milestone. When the opportunity arose to visit with family and old friends and extend the celebration to one week, the planning began. The activities are divided into four parts: A. Family Activities, B. Duplin Winery, C. Monument of Captain James Outlaw, and D. The Faculty Distinguished Lecture at Meredith College (this post).

An invitation from Meredith College to attend the annual Faculty Distinguished Lecture was the genesis of our trip to North Carolina. Overall, this trip became my week-long 70th birthday celebration, as described in complementary posts.

Our connection to Meredith, is through Dr. Karthik Aghoram, whom I hooded on August 5, 2000, on the basis of his discovery of an abscisic-acid up-regulated gene in guard cells. After a post-doctoral with Ralph Dewey at NC State, Karthik joined the faculty at Meredith where he is now an Associate Professor. He and his family live in nearby Apex, NC, ranked in 2015 by Money Magazine as the best place to live in the U.S. Karthik's spouse, Shweta, is an engineer. Obviously, I'm proud of KA--as I called him in the lab--and am gratified that life has been so good for him.

Karthik and Shweta hosted us for lunch at the Iris restaurant at noon before the lecture (right).

 

Of course, I wanted to be sure to have a good record of the occasion, so we arrived early for the lecture and took a brief self-guided tour of the campus. Above, I stand before Jones Chapel.

 Karthik's lecture was entitled "Less Land, More Food, No Fights." What a wonderful job he did, both in synthesis and delivery! So proud. (I shamelessly lifted this image from the Aghorams' FB page. We were seated down front with Dr. Dewey, hence the back of Nedra's head!).

The lecture was followed by a well-attended reception, which gave Ralph, Karthik, and me (left) some time to get together and talk.

Thanks to Karthik and Meredith College for the meaningful and enjoyable visit.

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