The Cornell Society of Engineers (CSE) annual Engineering Conference will be held at the Statler Hotel on the Cornell University campus April 15-17. The theme of this year's meeting is "The Power of Choice: Technical, Regulatory and Financial Issues Surrounding the Restructuring of the Electric Power Industry."

The program will feature a number of prominent speakers, including Alfred Kahn, former chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board and adviser to President Jimmy Carter and the Robert Julius Thorne Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Cornell, who will speak on "Airlines, Trucking and Telecommunications: Similarities and Differences"; E. Linn Draper, Ph.D. '70, chairman of American Electric Power Co., the nation's second largest publicly held electric utility, who will speak on "Engineering -- The New Electricity Market"; and Jack MacDonough, '66, chief executive of Miller Brewing Co., the second largest brewer in the country and a subsidiary of Philip Morris Companies, who will speak on "Brewing in the 21st Century."

Attendance at the conference is by registration, except for McDonough's pre-conference talk on April 15 at 4:30 in 155 Olin, which is free and open to the public. In addition, the Cornell community and the public are invited to attend two sessions on April 17 in 101 Phillips.

At 9:15, there will be a panel discussion on "Institutional Rearrangement Issues" moderated by Mark Brozina, MAE '80, of Exelon Corp. Speakers will be Susan F. Tierney, Ph.D. '80, of the Economics Resource Group and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy; Robert W. Shaw Jr., '63, of ARETE Corp.; Teresa Flaim, Ph.D. '77, a vice president of Niagara Mohawk; and Steve Little, '76, associate director of Cornell Utilities.

At 11 a.m. a panel discussion on "The Voice of the Consumer" will be moderated by Robert Maroney, '72, of RM Capital Holdings. Speakers will be William C. Harding, '53, a consultant; Kenneth Estabrook, '46, senior partner, Lindaberry, McCormick and Estabrook; and Eugene Zeltmann, president of the New York State Power Authority.

Also, speaking at the conference will be Kenneth Lawrence, president of PECO Energy Distribution, with 1.5 million electric and 400,000 natural gas customers in southeastern Pennsylvania; and Leonard Hyman, MA '70, author ofAmerica's Electric Utilities: Past, Present and Future , and a research analyst who has written and spoken widely in his field

Speakers from the Cornell engineering faculty will include James S. Thorp, '58, Ph.D. '62, the Charles N. Mellowes Professor in Engineering and director of the School of Electrical Engineering, and Robert J. Thomas, professor of electrical engineering and director of the Power Systems Engineering Research Center.

The conference is sponsored by the College of Engineering and the CSE, which is the college's alumni association.