CARNAHAN FUNDS ENDOWED CHAIR
HOUGHTON-The Michigan Tech Fund today announced the receipt of a $2 million pledge from former Ann Arbor businessman Robert Carnahan to establish the Dr. Robert D. Carnahan Business of Technology Endowed Chair at the University.
Dick Robbins, national campaign chair for the Leaders for Innovation Campaign for Michigan Tech, said the holder of the newly endowed chair will lead a University-wide effort to integrate undergraduate and graduate education in business, engineering, and the sciences with the research and other entrepreneurial activities of the University.
"Results of such applied research, combining cutting-edge technology and the art of entre-intrapreneurship, will provide industry and Michigan Tech's students with a competitive edge in the global marketplace," said Robbins. "This investment establishing the endowed chair will position Michigan Tech as a national leader in bringing technical innovation and entrepreneurship to the classroom and industry."
In making his gift, Carnahan explained, "My entire education at Tech--room, board, travel and so forth, cost a total of $2,500 for all four years. Wow, what a payback! I've been blessed with a lot of good luck and not too many bad decisions. I know this is one of my best decisions ever."
When Carnahan graduated from Michigan Tech in 1953 with a B.S. in metallurgical and materials engineering, a whole new era was at hand in materials technology, a revolution which was only barely discernible at that time. But Carnahan also had an even more revolutionary idea--the marriage of effective engineering and a daring sense of venture in creating new products, new markets, and new systems.
On graduating from Tech, he served three years in the Navy and then began his career in research and development. Even as he later earned his PhD in materials science from Northwestern, he was delving into new materials technology and developing the spirit of entrepreneurship which has characterized so much of his professional life and left an indelible mark on his philanthropy. By 1980, he had worked his way up to senior vice president for science and technology at US Gypsum, but, motivated in part by his basic drive to find new technologies and to confront sensible risk, he left that position to become president and chief operating officer of Thixomat, a company he co-founded in Ann Arbor, Mi. Thixomat is an entrepreneurial consortium of industrial partners involved in the worldwide marketing of Thixomolding, a revolutionary materials technology for the production of net shape components.
As Carnahan has continued to play a leadership role in hisindustry, he also has made his mark as an analytical thinker, innovator, and developer of new ideas in materials engineering. A member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he holds fourteen industrial patents, is the author of more than sixty publications, and has become a world leader in materials science.
He is a member of the MTU National Advisory Board and has actively supported Michigan Tech through membership in the McNair Society, Presidents Society, Second Century Society, and the Century II Campaign. He was a Michigan Tech Fund Trustee from 1984 to 1994 and in 1983 received the MTU Board of Control Silver Medal in recognition of his personal and professional achievements. He presently resides in Park City, Utah.
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