Speaking engagements on the rise for Dr. Russell

In today’s world, keeping up with the demands of modern business means new styles of leadership, new technologies, and new global standards. A shift is occurring when it comes to the way assets are deployed, operated, maintained, and upgraded, turning the roles of maintenance and reliability into key functions of business.

When the 2017 Mainstream Conference gets underway in Nashville, Tennessee May 21 -May 24, it will be a celebration of the leadership, technology, ideas and innovations that are transforming the realm of asset management in North America.

And there, among the experts sharing their expertise through keynote speeches will be SUNY Poly’s own Dr. Andrew Russell, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Along with his collaborator Lee Vinsel, Dr. Russell will present a talk called Hail the Maintainers: What Happens After Innovation.

“Our culture worships innovation, which comes at a high cost: innovation fails to capture the essence of human life with technology,” says Dr. Russell. “To put it another way, acts of creation and innovation do not by themselves entail the totality of human experiences with technology. Most human effort around technology involves maintenance, repair, upkeep, and mundane labor. We know that innovation is necessary and drives us forward in culture and business alike, but focusing on innovation to the exclusion of everything else does us all a disservice.”

The talk begins with a brief history of innovation, and describes how modern societies became obsessed with it. An alternative view is then presented – one of a culture that values what happens after innovation. Dr. Russell and Dr. Vinsel will explain why they feel society needs to cultivate a broader understanding of the many roles that technology plays in our lives, and a need to appreciate maintenance, repair, and the unsung workers—the maintainers—whose labor sustains our modern technological existence.

Mainstream is designed for individuals involved in reliability, maintenance, asset management and operations including leaders, managers, directors and other professionals who are responsible for the maintenance or management of physical assets and those who oversee these teams.

His expertise has been in high demand as of late. Dr. Russell has been invited to participate as a speaker at the forthcoming Sackler Colloquium sponsored by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, entitled Modelling and Visualizing Science and Technology Developments.

The colloquium will be held at the National Academy of Sciences Beckman Center in Irvine, CA on December 4-5, 2017.

The Sackler Colloquia address topics at the forefront of science that are of broad intellectual interest. These Colloquia are typically designed to cut across traditional scientific disciplines and provide unique opportunities for leading researchers in rapidly developing fields to meet and interact with one another, and chart the future of interdisciplinary fields.

The colloquium brings together researchers and practitioners from multiple disciplines to present, discuss, and advance computational models and visualizations of science and technology and contemplate questions such as: what jobs will exist in the next decade and what career paths lead to success? Which types of institutions are likely to be the most innovative in the future? How will the burst of the higher education cost bubble affect these institutions? How will changing demographics, alternative economic growth trajectories, and relationships among nations impact answers to these and other questions?

The December Sackler colloquium will focus on four interlinked themes – rankings and the efficiency of institutions, higher education and the S&T job market, innovation diffusion and technology adoption, and infrastructures and standards.

Dr. Russell has also recently been approached by The MITRE Corporation a not-for-profit company that operates multiple federally-funded research and development centers to speak to one of their audiences on the topic of the history of modularity and standards.  The audience will largely be system engineers and other technical professionals that support federal sponsors across Department of Defense, Intelligence, and Civilian Agencies.

He also recently appeared on an episode of the award-winning national podcast and radio show, Freakonomics. The episode, titled “In Praise of Maintenance” can be heard here.