UB to Offer Western New York Students Free Tickets to Lecture By Nationally Regarded Astronomer

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- As part of the celebration of the inauguration of John B. Simpson, Ph.D., as its 14th president, the University at Buffalo is offering area students a unique opportunity to get involved with science education and research by attending for free a lecture by a nationally regarded astronomer.

UB and the Buffalo Alliance for Education have teamed up to provide free tickets to the Distinguished Speakers Series lecture by Steven Squyres, to be held at 8 p.m. on Oct. 13 in Alumni Arena on the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

Professor of astronomy at Cornell University, Squyres is perhaps best known as the face and voice of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission and the pioneering drive across the Martian surface by the two high-tech robotic rovers "Spirit" and "Opportunity."

Squyres' extraterrestrial expertise and infectious enthusiasm for space exploration have garnered him immense national attention. His main areas of scientific interest focus on Mars, as well as on the moons of the outer planets. The key research areas for which he is best known include the study of the history and distribution of water on Mars and the possible existence and habitability of a liquid water ocean on Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons.

He has participated in many of NASA's planetary exploration missions, including the Voyager mission to Jupiter and Saturn, the Magellan mission to Venus, and the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission. Along with his work on MER, he is a co-investigator on the 2003 Mars Express and 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter missions, a member of the Gamma-Ray Spectrometer Flight Investigation Team for the Mars Odyssey mission and a member of the imaging team for the Cassini mission to Saturn.

While they last, as many as 75 complimentary tickets will be made available to individual schools on a first-come, first-served basis. Request forms may be downloaded from http://www.specialevents.buffalo.edu or from http://www.buffaloalliance.org. Requests to have a form faxed or mailed also may be made by calling 645-6147, ext. 227. Faculty, staff and parents who provide transportation for students attending the lecture also are eligible for free tickets. All enrolled schools will be given the opportunity to provide a school-display Power Point slide for the pre-lecture slide show.

For more information on the Squyres lecture, as well as other lectures in UB's Distinguished Speakers Series, visit http://www.specialevents.buffalo.edu.