Memorial Service for Franco Cerrina Friday
ENG electrical and computer engineering chair to be remembered
A memorial service for Franco Cerrina, the chair of the College of Engineering’s electrical and computer engineering department, will be held tomorrow, October 1, at 11 a.m. in Marsh Chapel. A reception will follow at noon in the Photonics Center’s Colloquium Room. Cerrina, 62, died July 12.
President Robert A. Brown says that Cerrina will be sorely missed. “Although he had only been with us for less than two years,” Brown says, “Franco had already distinguished himself by his intellect, leadership, and warmth to all who had the chance to know him.”
Before coming to BU as electrical and computer engineering chair in August 2008, Cerrina taught for 24 years at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was the Lynn H. Matthias Professor in Engineering and director of the university’s Center for NanoTechnology, a research organization specializing in advanced semiconductor lithography and nanofabrication. At Wisconsin, Cerrina’s research focused on the application of techniques developed for semiconductor nanofabrication to biological problems.
Cerrina, who earned a PhD in physics at the University of Rome in 1974, held 16 patents and was a cofounder of five companies. He had more than 300 reviewed publications and was a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, SPIE, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
The memorial service for Franco Cerrina will take place tomorrow, Friday, October 1, at 11 a.m. in Marsh Chapel, 735 Commonwealth Avenue. A reception with Cerrina’s family will follow at noon in the Photonics Center’s Colloquium Room (PHO 906), 8 St. Mary’s St.
Leslie Friday can be reached at lfriday@bu.edu; follow her on Twitter at @lesliefriday. Art Jahnke can be reached at jahnke@bu.edu.
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