Ouachita will host Dr. Leigh Fan- ning, president of Versiera, LLC, a software engineering enterprise, as part of the endowed Birkett Williams Lecture series. Fanning’s lecture, “Ethics and Implications: Remem- bering the Private Citizens We Once Were,” is set for Tuesday, October 20, at 7:30 p.m. in McBeth Recital Hall.
The lecture series is held each se- mester and rotates between Ouachi- ta’s seven academic schools. This semester the J.D. Patterson School of Natural Sciences invited Fanning as the guest lecturer.
“Dr. Fanning has been very suc- cessful in her career and has a mul- tidisciplinary background in science, computer science and business,” said
Dr. Tim Knight, dean of the school and professor of biology. “Her expe- riences are so diverse that students from many different majors and back- grounds will find her interesting.”
Fanning earned a Bachelor of Sci- ence degree in Engineering Physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1987. Following over a de- cade of work in industry, she earned her master’s in Computer Science from the University of New Mexico (UNM) in 2007 in the area of compu- tational biology.
In 2014, after starting Versiera, she joined the UNM Molecular Comput- ing Group where she received her Ph.D. in computer science. Fanning is currently co-founding a startup in genomics to commercialize technolo- gies she developed within her Ph.D. research. Her research is centered on constructing molecular models of dif-
ferent drugs and determining which treatment mechanism will work best through computer programming.
The models work as preliminary trials by creating a chemical structure of a drug before it is tested in a lab. Through her research, companies can save a lot of money by first narrowing the potential outcomes of a specific product before undergoing testing.
Fanning’s other interests include programming languages, cyber-pri- vacy, combinatorics, representation methods and information theories.
Fanning is also an entrepreneur, creating Versiera, a software engi- neering enterprise, in 2001. Versiera is a web-based system that provides system administrators with a simple alternative to routine business tasks, thus reducing the price of ownership. It also works to quickly identify func- tionality problems and detect system
performance issues within an organi- zation.
Knight encourages students of all disciplines, especially business ma- jors, to attend the lecture in hopes that they will gain a broader view of entrepreneurship and future career opportunities.
Ouachita’s Birkett Williams lec- ture series was established in 1977 as a gift from the late Birkett L. Wil- liams, a 1910 Ouachita graduate. The series gives students the opportunity to extend their liberal arts education outside of the classroom by invit- ing scholars and public figures with diverse backgrounds to Ouachita’s campus.
The event is free and open to the public. For more information about the event, you can contact Dr. Tim Knight at knightt.obu.edu or visit www.obu.edu/news.
