Inaugural Vernon D. Roosa Lecture Tuesday, Sept. 17

Brendan Clark ’21

Managing Editor

Trinity College’s inaugural Vernon D. Roosa Professor of Applied Science lecture will be given by Susan Masino next Tuesday, Sept. 17 at 4:30 p.m. Masino, whose lecture is titled “Brain Health, Inside and Out: Digesting Basic and Applied Research to Inform Public Policy,” serves as the Vernon D. Roosa Professor of Applied Science and will speak to students, faculty, staff, and the public in the Washington Room of Mather Hall. A small reception will follow the event.
Masino’s previous academic research interests include “mechanisms and opportunities to promote and restore brain health with the relationship among metabolism, brain activity, and behavior.” Masino has specifically focused on a form of “metabolic therapy called the ‘ketogenic diet.’” The diet has also been used to “treat seizures, and has implications for brain health and diverse disorders,” according to an email announcing the lecture from President of the College Joanne Berger-Sweeney.
Masino is also involved in environmental and sustainability issues, specifically relative to “New England’s forests” according to Berger-Sweeney’s email. Honors include the Charles Bullard Fellowship in Forest Research, in collaboration with Harvard Medical School. Interim Dean of the Faculty Sonia Cardenas added that Masino “is an exceptional scholar, teacher, and leader in the community.” Dean Cardenas further noted that she “looks forward to her ongoing productivity and success.”
Vernon D. Roosa, Honorary Doctorate of Science Class of 1967, established the Vernon D. Roosa Chair in Applied Science in 1976. Roosa, who resided in West Hartford until his passing in 1989, gained fame for his single, compact diesel engine pump which has since appeared in many tractors and trucks. Roosa’s obituary in the New Platz News noted that “more than 30 million of Roosa’s efficient, compact pumps have been produced around the world since 1947.” Roosa, who never attended college, credited “perseverance” for his success, noting that he “worked and worked and worked.”
Roosa’s philanthropy continues to have impact at Trinity, with this year’s inaugural lecture and the continued occupation of the chair he established. Previous Roosa chairs include Joseph D. Bronzino, the current Vernon D. Roosa Professor of Applied Science, Emeritus, who retired in 2010. Roosa also gave monies to support a chair in “manufacturing engineering at the University of Hartford” and was particularly concerned at the time of his death with the needs of “handicapped children.”