August 2005

Prominent geologist to discuss the impending global oil shortage at NJIT

Kenneth Deffeyes, PhD, an esteemed geologist and professor emeritus at Princeton University, will come to New Jersey Institute of technology (NJIT) to give a lecture titled "The Impending Oil Shortage: A Crisis in Public Policy."

Deffeyes's lecture is scheduled for Sept. 19, 11:30 a.m.- 1 p.m., in the NJIT campus center ballroom. The lecture is free, open to the public and parking is available. Deffeyes's talk is the first in this year's technology and society forum.

Deffeyes will contend that the peak in world oil use is around the corner, and that beginning later this year, the world will have less oil. What are the ramifications of the impending oil shortage for the world?

Deffeyes is professor emeritus of geosciences at Princeton University. He was born in Oklahoma City, and grew up near the oilfields. His father was a pioneering petroleum engineer and Deffeyes had summer jobs in the oil industry. He did his undergraduate work in geological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. After graduating, he served in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and then received a master's degree in engineering and doctorate in geology from Princeton University. Beginning in 1963, he taught briefly at the University of Minnesota and at Oregon State University before joining Princeton in 1967.

Deffeyes had a small role in the development of plate tectonics, and some readers learned about him through journalist John McPhee's books: Basin and Range, Assembling California, and Annals of the Former World. Deffeyes retired from teaching in 1998. He is the author of Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (Princeton University Press, 2001) and Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak, (Hill and Wang, 2005).

Deffeyes's lecture is the first in NJIT's 2005 technology and society forum series. The forums are designed to explore the connections between the technological expertise that students study in the classroom and the real-world geo-political issues that affect the quality of human life.

The next lecture, scheduled for Oct. 26, 3 p.m., in the NJIT campus center atrium, is "Tools with Intentions, Tools with Values," by William McDonough, an expert on sustainable development and green architecture. And on Nov. 9 at 3 p.m. Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Defense Research Council, will discuss obstacles to sustainable industrial development. The lectures are free and open to the public.

New Jersey Institute of Technology, the state's public technological research university, enrolls more than 8,300 students in bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in 100 degree programs offered by six colleges: Newark College of Engineering, New Jersey School of Architecture, College of Science and Liberal Arts, School of Management, Albert Dorman Honors College and College of Computing Sciences. NJIT is renowned for expertise in architecture, applied mathematics, wireless communications and networking, solar physics, advanced engineered particulate materials, nanotechnology, neural engineering and eLearning.