FOCUS Presents: The Black Scientific Renaissance at Bell Labs

On Thursday, April 15th, ODUS hosted “The Black Scientific Renaissance at Bell Labs,” a virtual panel discussion with Professor William A. Massey ’77 and Professor James E. West
H14. The event was the latest in the FOCUS Speaker Series, a program designed to deepen and broaden Princeton University’s anti-racist programming.
Dr. Massey is the Edwin S. Wilsey Professor in Princeton’s Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering. After graduating from Princeton with a degree in Mathematics, he was admitted to Bell Labs’ prestigious Cooperative Research Fellowship Program, where he met and worked alongside Dr. West. West is now a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He worked at Bell Laboratories for forty years - where he invented the foil electret microphone, which is used in nearly all modern recording electronics - before joining the Johns Hopkins faculty.