2008 Assembly of Delegates:
Canadian & International Constituency Director

2008 Sigma Xi Annual Meeting and Student Research Conference

November 20-23, 2008
Marriott Renaissance Hotel
Washington, D.C.

Name: Antonio Pita-Szczesniewski

Present Position: Director International Liaison Office, Switzerland
Organization: Tecnologico de Monterrey

Address: Av. de la Gare 16
Fribourg FR 1700
Switzerland

Telephone: +41263228156
E-mail: apita@bluewin.ch

Chapter Affiliation: Swiss Chapter

Candidate's Statement: Although Sigma Xi is a global society, it needs to address the fact that its international membership is spread out, as well as scarcely interconnected and not fully integrated into the society’s affairs. Presently our international members take advantage of the networking capabilities that the society offers and the few existing Chapters/Partners have certainly played their role of fulfilling the society’s mission. Nevertheless, when I started my position as Director of this Constituency group, I articulated that my 3 year goal would be twofold: 1) help the International Committee to not only establish the proper infrastructure to help Sigma Xi become “the” global society, but to increase efforts to create new Chapters/Partners, and 2) interconnect the international members through newsletters and nurture the Chapters/Partners by clustering them into regions in order to establish exchanges of information on professional interests, hold conferences and host guest lecturers. The first goal has rendered some benefits that have been accomplished as a team effort of the International Committee, some of which have been more involvement of the society in International issues, the proposal of making “Water” the theme of this year’s Annual Meeting and the establishment of 2 new international Chapters/Partners. The second one is in the making and as a starter, an international Eblast web communiqué has been proposed. However, even if this plan gets under way, reaching the established objectives requires time and Board interaction, which are some of the reasons of why I have accepted being nominated to run for a second term. I also strongly feel that my past experience and present position allows me to leverage the necessary resources to fulfill these objectives. Thus, if re-elected, I will continue my efforts to get the Board's support to establish a true international community of Sigma Xi members and assiduously work towards not only creating new Chapters/Partners, but towards effectively nurturing those that already exist and to help cluster the new ones into natural geographic regions as they develop.

Sigma Xi and Other Activities: PAST ACTIVITIES: Founder, Member, President, Secretary & Treasurer of the Tecnologico de Monterrey Chapter (1972-2002). Member of Southwest Regional Committee on Nominations (2001-2003). Director of Southwest Region (1988-2001). Member of National Committee on Nominations (2001-2003). PRESENT ACTIVITIES: Member of International Committee (2001 to present). Member of Committee on Awards (2006 to present). Director of Canadian/International Constituency Group (2006 to present). President of Swiss Chapter (2006 to present).

Biographical Information: Married, 4 children. BES in Civil Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University (1960); Master’s (1962) and PhD (1967) in Solid and Fluid Mechanics from the University of Iowa. Worked for 15 years as a full time professor at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico, and won various excellence in teaching awards, co-authored a book on new educational methodologies and published 12 articles in journals. In 1979 he joined the Corporate R&D Center of Vitro, a large Mexican Multinational Glass company and in 1987 he became the Director of this center until, upon his recommendation, it was decentralized in 1991. He was later Director of Technology for one of Vitro’s divisions (1991-1998), Senior Researcher of strategic projects for Vitro’s Corporate Technology Unit (1998-2002) and Director of R&D for Vitro Europa (2002-2003), a new Research and Technology Development facility that Vitro established in Fribourg, Switzerland. He has written numerous specialized technical reports and holds 3 international patents on glass forming and melting processes. He retired from Vitro at end of 2003 and presently does consulting work on Technology Management as well as liaison work for Cemex, a large Mexican Multinational Cement company, for the development of research projects with European universities or centers of private and public research at Cemex’s Global Research Center, located in Switzerland. He is also Director of the Swiss liaison office for the Vice President of International Affairs of the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey.