Ray Rothrock, a venture capitalist and former student of the Department of Nuclear Engineering at Texas A&M University, has established the Ray Rothrock Lecture Series. The series will feature a variety of national and international speakers discussing the possibilities for change and innovation within the nuclear industry. The series is expected to begin in the fall of 2016 at the Texas A&M campus in College Station, Texas. Each speaker will discuss a different topic regarding the impact of the nuclear industry in an effort to reach out to students to change the way they perceive the opportunities they can pursue with a nuclear engineering degree.
“Nuclear innovation is alive and well in America,” Rothrock said. “There are so many individuals, some of them in the Department of Energy, others who are CEOs and engineers of startup companies, who are all innovative in their thinking and approaches to advances in the nuclear industry and we want to share that thinking with the students.”
Rothrock was inspired to establish the lecture series to expose students to what he calls “the bigger nuclear universe”. According to Rothrock, many students develop limited vision in regard to what opportunities are available to nuclear engineers in the professional world.
“When I go down to talk to students at any university, a good portion of them wind up in an energy business other than on the nuclear side,” Rothrock said. “There is nothing wrong with that, but they need to have their horizons broadened beyond what traditional recruiters at A&M and elsewhere provide, including national labs and government-based organizations. It would be great that they know there are some non-Westinghouse opportunities out there.”
Rothrock has planned to fund the series for three or four years, with six to eight speakers per year. In selecting the individuals who would be speaking at Texas A&M, Rothrock has encouraged and sought out individuals he feels have been innovative in their approaches toward the nuclear industry.
“These individuals are all tremendous speakers and I think will be able to connect with students about how changes occur with the way people look at nuclear,” Rothrock said. “We want to bring in people from the outside and talk about current issues that are related to nuclear power, such as how it can benefit the environment and eliminate waste. These topics draw big crowds and are topics that aren’t traditionally being talked about in the classroom, but interest many young students.”
Rothrock earned his bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from Texas A&M in 1977 and later became a partner in the venture capital firm Venrock, a firm dedicated to creating and financing technology solutions. Rothrock has long remained a proponent of nuclear clean energy. His co-production of Pandora’s Promise in 2013, a film that made the case for nuclear power as a clean and safe energy source, helped to reinitiate a national conversation about where nuclear power fits in the clean energy universe. In his current work, Rothrock and his associates work with legislators, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Department of Energy (DOE) to promote an environment that will foster the development of advanced reactors by nuclear startups and encourage the use of nuclear energy power sources.
“I’m glad to be able to do this,” Rothrock said. “The lecture series is funded with money I provided to the department that was intended to explore. When they came back with the idea for using it for a lecture series, it really rang true because exposing students to the bigger nuclear universe is, I think, really important.”