The Spotts Lecture

2013 Spotts Lecturer: Keng-Siang Lim, BSCE ’89

“Globalize and Innovate: Making of the 2020 Era Engineer”

February 25, 7:30 p.m., Freed Center for the Performing Arts

Keng-Siang Lim, BSCE ’89, is the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of NextLabs. As CEO he is responsible for the vision, leadership, strategic direction and successful growth of the company and its employees. IDG Demo recognized him at the DEMOfall 2009 with a Lifetime Achievement Award together with 15 other technology luminaries for their significant contribution to the advancement of technology. Lim is credited for his contribution in the Web & SOA technologies, ecommerce, SaaS, and information security software.

Lim has also been recognized by several key organizations as one of the industry’s “most influential people on the Internet.” ZDNet selected him as one of the “50 Smartest People” in 2000. He is widely known to be able to spot new markets and emerging technologies and often recognized as one who is capable of creating new category defining products. Lim is recognized as one of the inventors of the Java application server through his founding of Kiva Software – an application server pioneer. Kiva Software was the first to introduce an enterprise class Java Application Server to market in 1996 and in the process coined the terms Java and Web Application Server and led to the emergence of the Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) and J2EE standards. Through his works and vision on Internet and network security, Sygate Technologies – which he help launched in 1998 – has successfully established itself as the market leader of the enterprise endpoint security enforcement software.

Lim holds a bachelor’s degree with high distinction majoring in computer science and civil engineering from Ohio Northern University and a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is a member of the engineering honor society, Tau Beta Pi. He is the holder of more than 30 approved and pending patents in the Internet and information security-related areas.

About the Spotts Lecture

The Spotts Lecture series was established in 1986 to bring distinguished speakers to ONU on an annual basis to inform students of the probable professional conditions and challenges that engineers and computer scientists will face in the future.

Dr. Merhyle F. Spotts, BSME '23, Hon. D. '81, sponsor of the lecture series, graduated from Ohio Northern's College of Engineering in 1923. After 10 years in heavy and light industry, he obtained a master's degree from Ohio State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He taught at the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins University and Northwestern University. He wrote extensively for technical journals and was the author of four books, including Design of Machine Elements, now in its sixth edition and in worldwide use. He was the recipient of many awards and honors, among them an honorary doctor of engineering degree from ONU.

Past Spotts Lecture Series Speakers