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Joseph
M. Sussman
JR East Professor
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
and Engineering Systems
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Welcome to the Second Annual
Charles L. Miller Lecture. I am thrilled to see such a large
audience for what I am confident will be an excellent and
historic address by the new Department Head in Civil and
Environmental Engineering, Professor Patrick Jaillet.
I will say a few introductory
words about Charlie Miller, Department Head in Civil and
Environmental Engineering at MIT 1962-69, who died on February
29, 2000. Professor Miller is honored through the naming
of this continuing lecture series. After these introductory
words, I will turn to the program over to Dean Tom Magnanti
to introduce Professor Jaillet, our Miller lecturer for
2003.
It is often said that politicians have greatness
and leadership thrust upon them by the circumstances in
which they serve. Would Churchill have been Churchill without
the Second World War and the Battle of Britain? Would Roosevelt
have been Roosevelt without the Great Depression and the
Second World War to follow? I believe that Charlie Miller
had leadership and greatness within him, but it is also
clear that the circumstances in which he became the Department
Head in what was then Civil Engineering in 1962, required
leadership and greatness.
At that time, serious questions were being
asked about the viability -- even the survival --
of civil engineering at MIT. Perhaps slow to react to a
changing educational and research paradigm, CE had a small
undergraduate enrollment and lacked a cutting-edge research
agenda in some important areas; morale, I am told, was low.
Charlie came in -- incidentally, at the time
an untenured Associate Professor from perhaps the most traditional
branch of the Department: surveying -- with a mandate from
then-Dean of Engineering Gordon Brown to dramatically
change the department.
Miller had two insights that would shape the
Department for decades to come. First, he recognized that
computers -- we now call it information technology
-- would revolutionize the practice and teaching of civil
engineering. Second, he recognized the idea of civil engineering
as the producer of large, complex systems, with a
tremendous capacity to change -- for good or ill -- quality
of life of people around the world, as these civil engineering
systems intersect with economic, environmental and social
systems.
These two initiatives, computers and systems,
may seem obvious after the fact, but recall that he took
over the helm of this department more than 40 years ago,
when computers were thought of as "just a faster way
of doing calculations that people could do anyway",
and systems were viewed as lacking in intellectual substance,
contrasted with more microscopic ways of looking at engineering
problems.
Over the next seven years, Charlie radically
altered the face of the Department with a number of new
faculty appointments, with the establishment of the Civil
Engineering Systems Lab, and the development of the software
for Integrated Civil Engineering Systems, better known as
ICES -- remarkably, still in use today. He revamped the
transportation program through appointments of people like
the late Marvin Manheim, the late Shef Lang, Richard de
Neufville, Dan Roos and Felipe Ochoa, to reflect a systems-design
-- rather than facility-design -- perspective. He appointed
Bob Logcher, who brought a fresh systems and computer orientation
to structural engineering. He laid the groundwork, through
the appointment of Fred Moavenzadeh, for CE at MIT to take
a leadership role in an industry-wide and international
perspective in the construction field. He kept the engineering
science focus of the Department strong through the appointments
of Chiang Mei and Herbert Einstein. And in water resources
he appointed Dave Marks and Frank Perkins, pioneers in the
systems approach to water resource and environmental management.
Charlie made a remarkable contribution over
seven years at the helm of Civil Engineering, and his influence
continues to be felt to this very day. That is why we honor
him with this continuing lecture series, supported by the
Miller Endowment, raised through generous contributions
of alumni and friends, many of whom are here today.
Bob Logcher, Dan Roos and I have the honor
of serving as the trustees of this Fund and we are gratified
to see the turn-out here today.
Let me now introduce our Dean of Engineering,
Tom Magnanti, an Institute Professor, one of only 12 at
MIT, and Professor of Management Science and Electrical
Engineering, who will introduce Patrick Jaillet. Please
help me welcome Tom Magnanti to the podium.
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