Carol L. Nolan, director of biopharmaceutical technical operations for Glaxo SmithKline, the multinational pharmaceutical concern, and a 1973 Cornell University alumna, will be on campus Thursday, Nov. 2, to deliver the seventh annual Raymond G. Thorpe Lecture in the Cornell University School of Chemical Engineering.

Her talk, titled "Engineering Challenges in Biotechnology: Turning Bugs Into Drugs," will be at 4:30 p.m. in 255 Olin Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.

At Glaxo SmithKline, Nolan has worked on projects including antibiotics, amino acids, peptides, enzymes, vaccines and protein therapeutic agents. Her specific expertise is the purification of products from microbial fermentation and mammalian cell culture.

Glaxo SmithKline was formed from the recent merger of Britain's Glaxo Wellcome and rival SmithKline Beecham. Nolan has been a researcher at several other pharmaceutical companies and was previously professor of chemical engineering at Lafayette College. She earned her B.S. degree at Cornell's School of Chemical Engineering in 1973 and her M.S. in chemical biochemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

The purpose of the Raymond G. Thorpe Fund is to enhance undergraduate education by bringing industrial and academic visitors to the school. It was established in 1989 by alumni and friends to honor Thorpe on his retirement after 39 years on the faculty. Thorpe twice received the College of Engineering's Excellence in Teaching Award and was selected by each of the first four Cornell Presidential Scholars from chemical engineering as the faculty member who most influenced them during their careers at Cornell. Thorpe has continued to serve the engineering college since his retirement as the senior advisor in the college advising office and as one of the managers for the senior plant design course in chemical engineering.

Previous Thorpe lecturers were Samuel Bodman, president of Cabot Corp.; H. Laurance Fuller, co-chairman of BP Amoco Corp.; Paul Orefice, former chairman of Dow Chemical Co.; Kenneth Ackley, former president of Innovation Packaging and senior lecturer in the School of Chemical Engineering; and Samuel C. Fleming, director of CareGroup Inc. The 1999 lecturer was Marshall E. Frank '62, the managing director and president of Chem Systems Inc.