By Jana Wiersema. From The Republic, April 5, 2023. Read the original article and view a photo gallery.
Dennis Livesay, dean of computing at Michigan Technological University, has been inducted into Columbus (Indiana) East High School’s Alumni Wall of Fame and was honored with an award reception at the school on Monday.
Livesay graduated from East in 1992. He then studied for a couple of years at IUPUI-Columbus (now IUPUC), then transferred to Ball State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. He later earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Since then, he has held a variety of roles at academic institutions, including California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Wichita State University, and Michigan Tech.
Livesay’s career and research have spanned a variety of fields, such as biophysics, chemistry, computing, data science, engineering, and biology.
Livesay lives in Houghton, Mich. with his wife, Lauren Beastall, and son, Maxwell.
His passion for science was something he discovered in high school — with chemistry, in particular, being something he learned to love thanks to East teacher Jack Young, who died in 2012.
While he has held a number of positions in different fields, Livesay will always consider himself a chemist.
“To this day, I sort of live at the interface between chemistry, physics, and computing,” he said. “But it started, that first origins of it was sophomore chemistry in Jack’s class.”
Mike Wolanin | The Republic Columbus East Alumni Wall of Fame inductee Dennis Livesay gives a speech during his induction ceremony at Columbus East High School in Columbus, Ind., Monday, April 3, 2023.