College Announces 2010 Graduation Speakers
George Smith, a 1955 College alumnus and co-recipient of 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics, will be the guest speaker at this year's graduation ceremony for the University of Pennsylvania College of Arts and Sciences on Sunday, May 16, at 6:30 p.m. at Franklin Field. Joshua Bennett, C'10, will be the student speaker.
Smith, together with Willard S. Boyle, invented the charge-coupled device (CCD), an integrated circuit that converts light into an electronic charge. This technology was central to the development of digital imaging, revolutionizing communications, photography, medical diagnostics, and astronomy.
Smith earned his bachelor's degree in physics from Penn and in 1959 earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Upon graduation, Smith joined Bell Labs, where he remained for his entire career. There he attained 31 patents, including Patent Number 3,858,232, established in 1969, for his work with Boyle on the CCD. The silicon-based circuit spawned dramatic advancements in broadcasting, digital cameras, endoscopy, desktop videoconferencing, fax machines and bar code readers. CCD technology also allowed humankind to see the far reaches of the universe through the Hubble Space Telescope.
Smith has received numerous other professional accolades, including election to the National Academy of Engineering; the Charles Stark Draper Prize; the Edwin Land Medal; the Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute; the IEEE Morris Liebman Award; the Progress Medal of the Photographic Society of America; the Edwin H. Land Medal by the Society for Imaging Science and Technology; and the C&C Prize of the NEC Foundation. Smith retired from Bell Laboratories in 1986, after which he completed a five-year around-the-world trip aboard his sailing vessel, Apogee.
Bennett, who is from Yonkers, New York, is majoring in Africana Studies and English. He was recently one of 35 winners of a prestigious 2010 United Kingdom Government Marshall Scholarship for graduate studies in the U.K.
An accomplished spoken-word poet, Bennett is an HBO "Brave New Voices" poetry-slam champion. He has performed at the NAACP Image Awards and for President Obama and the First Lady at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music and the Spoken Word. Bennett is also a member of Penn's Excellano Project spoken-word team; co-founder and former political action chair of the Penn NAACP chapter; co-founder and chair of the advocacy group Black Men United; and co-founder and co-editor of the Esu Review, the first U.S. undergraduate research journal of Africana studies. He is an active member of Penn's Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, participates in the University Scholars program and volunteers as an undergraduate research peer advisor.
After graduation, Bennett will use his Marshall Scholarship to study at the University of Warwick, where he will pursue an M.A. in theatre and performance studies. He eventually plans to pursue a Ph.D. in English, with the goal of teaching literature and stage performance at the university level. He also has ambitions to tour internationally with the one-man show he intends to develop while at Warwick.
