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Corvallis, Ore.(July 5, 2006)—NASA astronaut and Oregon State University alumnus Donald Pettit, who spent six months aboard the International Space Station following the space shuttle Columbia tragedy, will be the keynote speaker for Da Vinci Days, an annual 3-day festival that celebrates art, science, and technology.

Pettit served as flight engineer and science officer aboard the International Space Station in 2003 for the three-man Expedition-6 crew that included American Ken Bowersox and Russian Nikolai Budarin. While aboard the Space Station, Pettit accomplished a wide range of research experiments and performed two spacewalks.

After the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere, NASA and Russian scientists scrambled to bring Pettit and his crew members safely back to Earth aboard the tiny Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Pettit demonstrated courage and grace as his crew, and the world, grieved.

"We're proud to have alumni like Don Pettit—extraordinary people who inspire others to become engineers and scientists to help solve the world's complex problems through innovation and creativity," said Ron Adams, OSU dean of engineering.

The OSU College of Engineering is sponsoring Pettit's keynote address, which he will deliver at 7 p.m. on Saturday, July 15 at the LaSells Stewart Center on campus.

Pettit was born in Silverton, Ore. and graduated from OSU with a degree in chemical engineering in 1978. He went on to earn a doctorate from the University of Arizona in 1983. From 1984 to 1996, he served as staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. In 1990, as a member of the Synthesis Group, he worked on technology to return humans to the moon and to explore Mars. In 1993, he served on the Space Station Freedom Redesign Team.

OSU honored Pettit in 2003 with its Distinguished Service Award and an Oregon Stater Award in 1999.

During Da Vinci Days, the OSU College of Engineering will have more than a dozen technology displays set up on lower campus in the "Discover OSU" section of the festival, including a wave tank, the national champion Mini-Baja race car, biodiesel and bio-hydrogen displays, a wave energy buoy and more. For more information on Da Vinci Days, visit http://www.davinci-days.org.