ITHACA, N.Y. -- Three symposia featuring distinguished speakers in the arts and sciences will take place concurrently Thursday, Oct. 16, at 10 a.m. on the Cornell University campus in honor of the inauguration of President Jeffrey S. Lehman. The public is invited to attend.

o Richard Meier, one of the world's most influential architects, will speak on "The New Architecture of Optimism," in the Statler Hotel Auditorium.

o N.R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman of Infosys Technologies Ltd., who has been called "the Bill Gates of India," will speak on "Cornell -- The Unfinished Agenda: The Musings of a Corporate Person," in the Large Conference Room of the Biotechnology Building.

o Nationally acclaimed poet Alice Fulton and prize-winning poet and essayist Kenneth McClane, both professors in Cornell's Department of English, will read from their work at "Subversive Pleasures: A Poetry Reading," in Sage Chapel.

Meier, who heads the New York City-based international architectural firm Richard Meier & Partners, earned a B.Arch. degree at Cornell in 1957. He was the winner of the Pritzker Prize, the architectural equivalent of the Nobel Prize, in 1984. His notable designs include the Atheneum in New Harmony, Ind., the High Museum in Atlanta and the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

Murthy is chairman and chief mentor of Infosys Technologies Ltd., a global information technology consulting and software-services provider. The first company in India to be listed on the Nasdaq, it now has $753 million in revenues. Cisco Systems and Dell are among its clients.

Fulton's poetry collection Felt was awarded the 2002 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress for the most distinguished book of poems written by an American in 2001-02. She has received a "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation, and her work has appeared in five editions of The Best American Poetry series.

McClane is the W.E.B. DuBois Professor of Literature at Cornell, where he has taught English and creative writing for 27 years. He is the author of seven poetry collections. His volume of essays Walls: Essays 1985-1990 was cited for breaking new ground in African-American personal narratives by the American Library Association's Choice magazine.

-30-