Matthew Szulik, chairman, chief executive officer and president of Red Hat, will speak at Cornell University on Monday, Feb. 6, at 5 p.m. in Room 101 Phillips Hall. His talk, "Open for Change," will address open source technology.

The presentation is free, open to the Cornell community and sponsored by the Cornell Theory Center and the Faculty of Computing and Information Science.

"As a vehicle for economic and social change, the power of open source is immeasurable," Szulik said. "It's changing how people learn, how developers create and how companies do business."

"Open source" refers to software whose source code is freely available, allowing a large community of users to examine it for flaws and contribute corrections and improvements. Red Hat is a leading provider of a packaged version of the open source operating system Linux.

Szulik is passionate about improving the educational opportunities for students worldwide through open source, and he often speaks to industry, government and education leaders on open source computing. He will share his vision of how the open source model is allowing greater affordability and access to technology, from the world's largest organizations to its poorest societies.

Szulik is chairman of the Science and Technology Board for the state of North Carolina's Economic Development Board. He is a past chairman and an executive director of the North Carolina Electronics and Information Technologies Association. He was recently recognized by CIO Magazine with its 20/20 Vision Award and was named one of the 50 Most Powerful People in Networking by Network World Magazine.