Echo Foundation to hold student dialogue with Nobel laureates

Some 100 students from the new Charlotte Engineering Early College (CEEC) will be in the audience when the Echo Foundation hosts a student dialogue with two Nobel laureates on Wednesday, Sept. 10, in Cone University Center’s McKnight Hall.

The forum will run from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. and will be one of the first opportunities for CEEC students to attend an event on campus, which was a major drawing point for many of the students and their parents. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools opened CEEC on Aug. 25 to an inaugural freshman class. It will eventually have about 500 students and feature a STEM-oriented curriculum, with an emphasis on energy and engineering.

The dialogue with Nobel Prize recipients Peter Agre and Martin Chalfie is part of foundation’s “Science for Humankind” nitiative that aims to engage students and provide access to globally recognized leaders in science. Agre and Chalfie, both recipients of the Nobel Prize in chemistry, will participate in a discussion with UNC Charlotte students and high school students from 18 area public, private and home schools.

Since 1997, the Echo Foundation has enriched the lives of students through educational programming aimed at inspiring them to make a difference in their own communities and beyond. From establishing a nonprofit in Ecuador to furnishing a school library in Lexington, N.C., students who have participated in Echo programs and educational global travel initiatives are becoming leaders who seek to provide hope and justice.

Agre is an American physician, professor and molecular biologist who received the Nobel Prize in 2003 for his discovery of aquaporins, water channel proteins that move water molecules through the cell membrane. In 2009, Agre was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1974 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2000. He is currently a professor at Johns Hopkins University. In 2008, he became the second director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute.

Chalfie is an American scientist. He has been a professor of biology at Columbia University since 1982. He shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Osamu Shimomura and Roger Tsien for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, a naturally occurring substance in the jellyfish Aequorea victoria that is used as a tool to make visible the actions of certain cells. He holds a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Harvard University.