The Chicago Community Trust's 8th annual Newman Lecture and Dinner will feature Maxine Brown as the event's keynote speaker, Tuesday, October 13, 2009. Brown will be honored among the fifteen Chicago visionaries highlighted in the 2009 Chicago Matters: Beyond Burnham series, who are shaping Chicago to be a major force in the global economy.

Brown, associate director of EVL and the Software Technologies Research Center, University of Illinois at Chicago is a noted computer scientist actively involved in the development of networked, high-performance scientific visualization and collaboration technologies. As the co-founder and one of the ongoing developers of StarLight, the world's largest research and education networking hub, Brown works on the infrastructure needed to interconnect and interoperate advanced international networks. It enables global communities of scientists to work together over distance and share data to tackle complex problems and accelerate the scientific discovery process.

The event will be held at the Terzo Piano, 3rd level of the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, by invitation only.