The host of Discovery Channel’s “Time Warp,” Jeff Lieberman, will speak in Bettersworth Auditorium tonight at 7 p.m. as part of Bagley College of Engineering’s E-Day.
Lieberman’s program, “Beyond Imagination,” falls into this semester’s E-Day theme of “The Art of Engineering” and will be free. Lieberman said in an email he will speak about human perception and the perception of reality in general.
“We glimpse through our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin, a tiny slice of the reality that exists beyond us,” Lieberman said. “Every major revolution forward in the sciences has come from someone taking a step back and sensing a deeper structure in the reality around us; engineering is no different — every true act forward is a creative act, finding something that has never been explored.”
 Lori Bruce, associate dean for Research and Graduate Studies for Bagley, wanted to bring a speaker who would be able to lessen the gap between different disciplines.
“I wanted a speaker who could demonstrate the bridge between engineering and art. He has multiple degrees: physics, math, mechanical engineering, art (…) so he’s a renaissance man,” Bruce said.
Bruce explained Lieberman and his show help people understand how scientific concepts work in a visual way.
“It’s entertaining, but it’s useful from a scientific perspective for visualizing a scientific phenomenon. It can be very aesthetically pleasing but scientific and enlightening at the same time,” Bruce said.
Bruce said Lieberman will be taking part in several events during the day, including welcoming students and his speech.
“I felt very strongly that sometimes even we, as engineers and definitely the public, forget that engineers are designers that’s what makes us engineers. We take science and math and use that to design. Design is the core of being an engineer, so I wanted to bring a speaker that brought art, engineering and design together,” Bruce said.
 
 
 
 
Lieberman said, rather than gaining anything from his speech, he hoped students would lose fear.
“Fear of the unknown, fear of being thought of as a fool, these fears completely stop us from naturally exploring our lives fully — in general but also in the fields of science and engineering, where the best ideas often come after 90 horrible ones, and those 90 were just as crucial as the 91st,” Lieberman said. “The earlier our fear diminishes, the more fun we, as people, tend to have with our existence, and what’s the point of it all anyway if we aren’t enjoying it?”
Anne Carter, a graduate assistant for Bagley, said E-day is an important recruiting event for the Bagley College of Engineering. Lieberman is coming as part of a biannual E-Day for perspective high school juniors and seniors.
“We do have a great engineering program here that’s one of the best in the country. We really want to promote that to students who are looking at engineering as a potential profession,” Carter said.
Bruce explained juniors and seniors are not the only group that will get to spend time with Lieberman. Around 200 middle school students will also take part in a program with Lieberman.
“They will have a hands-on project on campus where they will be given an engineering or scientific phenomenon or process, and they will build a visual representation. In some ways it will be artwork, but it will also help students understand the physics and mathematics behind the concepts,” Bruce said.