Dr. James M. Coffin, Worldwide Vice President and General Manager of Dell Healthcare and Life Sciences, will be the featured speaker at Louisiana Tech University’s College of Engineering and Science Fall 2012 Convocation Wednesday, October 10 at 3:30 p.m. in Howard Auditorium on the Louisiana Tech campus. A 1985 Louisiana Tech graduate with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, Coffin will discuss the role genomics and technology play in creating innovative treatments for pediatric cancer.  The event is free and open to the public. Coffin, who was recently recognized as a distinguished alumnus of Louisiana Tech’s College of Engineering and Science, is a frequent worldwide lecturer on innovation in the field of electronic medical records, personalized medicine, high-performance computing and leading edge silico techniques to accelerate drug discovery. At Dell, Coffin leads the worldwide healthcare and life sciences team in developing the latest innovative information technology solutions and services for all organizations in the healthcare industry, and drives Dell’s leadership in helping its customers deliver information-driven healthcare. Coffin and his team work closely with a wide variety of customers, including medical centers and academic institutions as well as leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies, to pioneer Dell’s efforts in leading edge information technology into areas like personalized medicine, claims processing, medical imaging, and pharmaceutical and biotech drug discovery.  His business unit at Dell infuses the field of life sciences and healthcare with end-to-end solutions, including high-performance computers, servers, storage and services, addressing the needs of the customers in information technology’s fastest-growing market. Prior to joining Dell, Coffin spent more than 12 years at IBM, holding a variety of positions including Worldwide Vice President of Healthcare and Life Sciences Solutions.  There he built and managed multi-billion dollar businesses on behalf of IBM. Prior to joining IBM, he was considered a leader in the application of computational chemistry techniques and high performance computing to real world chemical and biological problems.  He was also the Worldwide Manager of Application Support for the Polymer, Catalysis and Materials Consortium at Biosym Technologies, which is now Accelrys. Coffin holds a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Arkansas and studied at Cambridge University as a Cambridge Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow.  He was also a member of the scientific staff of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois.  He and his wife and daughter live in Austin, Texas. Written by Catherine Fraser – cfraser@latech.edu