Prof Basil Leftheris, a new member of the Board of Directors of WIT, recently gave a special lecture at the Lodge on "The Quality of Human Achievement".
Basil is a graduate of McGill University and has two Masters degrees, one from the University of Birmingham and the other from Brooklyn University. He obtained his PhD at the Department of Civil Engineering of Princeton University working on Continuum Mechanics. His supervisors included Ahmet Cakmak, another of the WIT Directors, and the renown Robert Scanlan. He worked for four years in the fusion programme at the Forestal Campus of Princeton University. There he carried out model design and diagnostics which required knowledge of electromagnetic forces and their interaction with structures.
Prof Leftheris worked for many years in Aerospace at the well-known Grumman Company and participated in the design of the Luna Module for NASA.
A few years ago, he decided to return to Greece where he was the founder of the Department of Mechanics and the newly created University of Crete. During his talk, he discussed the importance of understanding human quality and the index of intelligence and emotional intelligence. His talk covered the behaviour of cultures and organisations and how they relate to professional tendencies. Basil also discussed how all this leads to creating efficient working groups and to human efficiency in general.
The presentation was followed with great interest by the audience and it resulted in a lively exchange of ideas.
Wessex Institute