Ram Y. Uppuluri, attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund Organization in Washington, D.C., will be the fourth and final speaker in this year's Community Lectures Series sponsored by Friends of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Prior to his talk at the auditorium of the American Museum of Science and Energy on South Tulane Avenue, his mother, Shigeko Uppuluri, will be honored as the winner of the fourth annual International Friendship Bell Award.

This award, given by the Oak Ridge Community Foundation and presented each year close to the anniversary of the Friendship Bell's dedication in A.K. Bissell Park in May 1996, honors a person "with close affiliation to the Oak Ridge community over a period of time and whose service within the past ten years reflects the spirit of the Friendship Bell."

Shigeko Uppuluri and her late husband, Ram, well-known Oak Ridge National Laboratory mathematician, were the originators of the concept of the bell as a project marking Oak Ridge's 50th anniversary celebration of 1992-93.

The June 19 lecture program will begin at 8 p.m. Uppuluri's talk will be followed by a reception in the museum lobby.

Alvin M. Weinberg, former director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Institute for Energy Analysis of Oak Ridge Associated Universities, will introduce the speaker.

Uppuluri, a former reporter for both The Oak Ridger and The Nashville Tennessean and a candidate for the Third District Democratic nomination for U.S. representative in 1994, has been with Environmental Defense, environmental advocacy group, since 1999. His lecture topic is "It's Easier Said Than Done! Science Policy, Politics and the Ongoing Debate Over Global Climate Change."

As with all speakers in this year's FORNL lecture series, Uppuluri is a graduate of Oak Ridge High School, his year 1979. He went on to Princeton University, where he majored in English literature and graduated in 1984. In 1986 he joined the staff of then U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee. In 1991, he graduated from Vanderbilt University's School of Law, after which he served on the staff of then U.S. Sen. Albert Gore Jr., Democrat of Tennessee.

In 1992 Uppuluri helped establish the Joint Institute for Energy and Environment, a collaborative effort involving the University of Tennessee, the Tennessee Valley Authority and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He later was senior manager of public relations for the Tennessee Valley Authority in Knoxville and then, in 1995, senior adviser in the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs with the U.S. Department of Energy.

Currently with Environmental Defense, his work, he says, "focuses on international climate change negotiations, the role of developing countries and the impact of the aviation industry activities on air quality."

He and his wife, Jackie Krieger, live in Washington, D.C.

Supporting the Community Lecture Series for FORNL are UT-Battelle LLC; Bechtel Jacobs Co. LLC; Duke Engineering; the American Museum of Science and Energy; and The Oak Ridger.

The pubic is welcome at both lecture and reception with no charge.

All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger