Newsroom

jorge_cham.jpg

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Jorge Cham, creator of the “Piled Higher and Deeper” comic strip, will give a free presentation at 9 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 8, in the Austin Auditorium at the LaSells Stewart Center on Oregon State University’s Corvallis campus, 875 S.W. 26th St.

The title of his OSU presentation, sponsored by the College of Engineering, is “The Science Gap,” which refers to the disconnect between researchers and the public both in terms of perception and communication. In 2012, Cham gave a TEDx talk at UCLA on the same topic.

“Piled Higher Deeper” – PHD for short – is often described as the “Dilbert of academia” and has an online readership of more than 7 million. The strip has also appeared in university newspapers at Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon and other institutions.

Born and raised in Panama, Cham is a roboticist with a master’s and Ph.D. from Stanford who from 2003 to 2005 was a research associate at Caltech, focusing on smart neural implants.

Cham is also co-author of the book “We Have No Idea” and will do a book signing following his presentation. The book by Cham and Daniel Whiteson, a particle physicist, unfolds along the theme that humanity has yet to figure out what composes 95 percent of the universe.