Research on Exercise and Wellness Colloquium Series

Friday, February 28, 2014
from 2:00-3:30 p.m. in Simmons Hall, Room 138

The presenter will be Gary A. Evans, Ph.D.
Professor in Department of  Electrical Engineering,          
Lyle School of Engineering

 

Talk Abstract:  During their lifetime, one in six males will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death in men.  Over 240,000 men in the United States will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year—about the same as the number of women that will be diagnosed with breast cancer.  Yet there is no universally agreed upon treatment for prostate cancer, leaving the patient to choose among surgery, radiation (photon or proton), radioactive seeds, cryosurgery, active surveillance and other procedures including hormonal therapy, chemotherapy, high frequency ultrasound, and alternative medicine.  Adding to the confusion, a U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently recommended against testing for prostate cancer, in part because such cancers sometimes are slow growing and perhaps harmless while the treatments can cause significant health problems including incontinence and impotence.  In this talk, the speaker will describe why he chose to have his prostate cancer treated by proton beam therapy over a ten-week period during the Fall 2012 semester, while teaching his electrical engineering class on semiconductor devices from California. Proton Beam Therapy, while controversial because of high cost, is reported to have minimal or even no side effects during and after treatment by most all patients.  As an indication of the gentleness of the therapy, the speaker ran a marathon towards the end of his treatment.

Brief Bio: Gary A. Evans received the BSEE degree from the University of Washington, Seattle, and the MSEE and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and physics from the California Institute of Technology.  In 1992 he left RCA Laboratories to join Southern Methodist University as a Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department.  He was a co-founder and a member of the Board of Directors of the semiconductor laser company Photodigm (2000 – 2011) and is a past President of the SMU Faculty Senate (2007-2008).  He has over 280 publications and 30 patents related to semiconductor lasers and photonics and is co-editor of the book Surface Emitting Semiconductor Lasers.  Gary was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers for “contributions to the development, fabrication, and understanding of semiconductor lasers,” was an Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal Of Quantum Electronics and continues to serve on numerous national and international technical committees.  

For more information, email Dr. Lynn Romejko Jacobs, at lromejko@smu.edu.