SLIPPERY ROCK — Magali Abadie, director for international clinical operations and quality for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's International Services division, will be the “Success Starts Here” speaker when Slippery Rock University's School of Business reopens its ongoing series promoting regional development Tuesday.

The free lecture is at 12:30 p.m. in the Advanced Technology and Science Hall Auditorium.

“We began this lecture series to show how successful entrepreneurs could be in Western Pennsylvania,” said John Buttermore, SRU assistant professor of business and program co-organizer. “As a second mission, we wanted to show our students ... the great resources available in the region.”

Abadie also is helping SRU coordinate a trip for students to visit UPMC's San Pietro-Rome facility this spring.

She joined UPMC in 2007 and provides cancer center and hospital operations expertise to the International Services Division projects and assignments on behalf of the facility. Her current international projects include work in Singapore, Japan, Kazakhstan, India, Italy, Ireland and Colombia.

GROVE CITY — Grove City College physics professor DJ Wagner helped usher in the International Year of Light in the City of Lights.Wagner, who serves as president of the Society of Physics Students, was invited to participate in the opening ceremonies of the United Nations-sanctioned observance of 2015 as the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies on Monday and Tuesday at United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris, France.Wagner was part of a 10-person contingent representing the American Institute of Physics at the event, which recognizes “the importance of light based technologies in meeting the needs of humankind.”The International Year of Light also will commemorate a series of important milestones in the history of the science of light, from the first published studies on optics by Ibn al-Haytham a millennium ago in the Middle East to the introduction of the theory of light as a wave in 1815 in France.