Symposium on Economy, Technology, and People

Minking K. Chyu

Dr. Chyu is presently the Leighton and Mary Orr Chair Professor and Chairman of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Department at the University of Pittsburgh. He received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1986.  He was a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University for 13 years before joining the University of Pittsburgh in 2000. His primary research area lies in thermal and material issues relating to energy, power and propulsion systems. He has conducted research projects sponsored by a number of government agencies and turbine industry, such as General Electric, Pratt and Whitney, and Siemens.  Since he joined Pitt, he has initiated a number of collaborative research programs in advanced turbine systems, fuel cells, nanofluids, and thermoelectric conversion.  Professor Chyu is a recipient of four NASA Certificates of Recognition for his contribution on space shuttle main engine program, Air Force Summer Research Fellow, Department of Energy Oak Ridge Research Fellow, and DOE Advanced-Turbine-System Faculty Fellow.  He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Associate Fellow of American Institute of Aerospace and Aeronautics (AIAA), and a US delegate to the Scientific Council of the International Centre of Heat and Mass Transfer (ICHMT).  He was named the Engineer of The Year by the ASME Pittsburgh Chapter in 2002. In 2007, he was selected as Institute of Advanced Energy Solutions (IAES) Residence Fellow by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), Department of Energy (DOE).  He serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Heat Transfer, ASME, Advisory Board Member for the International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems, a Guest Editor for AIAA Journal of Propulsion, and a Foreign Editor for the International Journal of Chinese Institute of Mechanical Engineers.  He has published nearly 300 technical papers in archived journals and conference proceedings.

Neil J. Diamant

Dr. Diamant is Professor of Asian Law and Society at Dickinson College and former Chair of the Department of Political Science. He is author of Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949-1968 (2000), Engaging the Law in China: State, Society and Possibilities for Justice (2005) and Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949-2007 (2009). Before joining the Dickinson faculty in 2002, he taught Chinese politics at Tel Aviv University in Israel.  His articles on various aspects of Chinese law and society have appeared in The Journal of Conflict Resolution, The Journal of East Asian Studies, Politics and Society, The Law and Society Review and The China Quarterly, among others. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1996. He is currently working on political activism among PLA veterans (including lawsuits, petitions, mass protests and online blogging) as well as ideas about constitutionalism in China.

Michael Johns

A 1990 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business (GSB), Michael has had an extensive career in consumer marketing consulting and marketing research in Asia over a 21-year period.  He lived and worked in China, Japan and Singapore, before moving backed to his hometown of Pittsburgh in 2012. He is currently an adjunct business professor at Pitt’s Katz GSB and College of Business Administration (CBA).  He also works part-time as an Executive-in-Residence in CBA’s Career Services Center. In Asia, his last role was as a Senior Partner of Mindshare Asia Pacific, based in Singapore.  He was responsible for developing and managing several key regional consulting clients, most notably McDonald’s in China, Japan and Australia. Michael earned his undergraduate degree at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1984.

Tina Phillips Johnson

Dr. Johnson is an Associate Professor of History and the Director of Chinese Studies at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Her research interests are in medicine and public health in East and Southeast Asia. In addition to numerous articles and lectures, her most recent book is on the history midwifery in early twentieth-century China, entitled Childbirth in Republican China: Delivering Modernity.

Elizabeth Kaske

Dr. Kaske is an Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at Carnegie Mellon's Department of Modern Languages.  Her research interests are in the history of nineteenth- and early twentieth century China. Her latest book was on the Politics of Language in Chinese Education, 1895-1919. She is currently working on fiscal history and the sale of public offices under the Qing Dynasty and teaches a course on Officialdom Literature.

Evelyn S. Rawski

Dr. Rwaski holds a Ph.D. in History and Far Eastern Languages from Harvard University and is currently Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. She has published books on sixteenth and eighteenth-century Chinese agricultural development, elementary literacy, and the emperors and imperial institutions of the Qing dynasty, which ruled China from 1644 to 1911. She has co-edited conference volumes on popular culture, Chinese death ritual, and ritual music, and co-authored a book on eighteenth-century Chinese society.  Her current project, China and Its Neighbors in Northeast Asian History uses Chinese, Japanese, and Korean primary sources and secondary literature to analyze China’s geopolitical, diplomatic, and cultural relationships with Japan and Korea in the 1500-1800 period.

Donald Sutton

Dr. Sutton, a historian in Carnegie Mellon’s history department, specializes on China’s southern frontiers, with a focus on religion and ethnic relations. Among his publications are a history of the Yunnan Army in the warlord period, an ethnography of martial religious temple cults in 20^th century Taiwan, and numerous articles on the Miao of West Hunan and the Tibetan-Han region in Northwest Sichuan. He is completing with Xiaofei Kang (George Washington University) a 600-year history of a town and a pilgrimage center in this border region.