BU community remembers Cerrina

Members of the Boston University community gathered at Marsh Chapel on Friday to remember College of Engineering Francesco “Franco” Cerrina’s life.

Cerrina, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department chairman, was found dead in a fifth floor Photonics Center laboratory in July. Police have ruled out homicide as a cause of death.

Cerrina’s friends, family members, students and colleagues filled Marsh for the memorial service, which began at 11 a.m.

Marsh’s dean, Rev. Robert Allan Hill, began the ceremony with a brief introduction, welcoming attendees and encouraging them to remember and celebrate the 62-year-old Cerrina’s life.

Hill then introduced ENG Dean Kenneth Lutchen, who was the first of four speakers.

Lutchen said the ceremony “gave all of us a chance to recognize the impact and the importance of any life.”

“[Cerrina] was truly ready for any challenge,” he said.

Photonics Center Director Thomas Bifano, who spoke after Lutchen, described Cerrina as calm and cheerful.

“He’s the only guy I ever knew who could pull off the outfit of jeans and a sports coat,” Bifano said.

Professor David Casta±?n, the interim ENG’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department chairman, said Franco and BU were great matches for each other.

Cerrina came to BU in 2008 after being a part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty for 24 years, where he also served as director of the Center of Nanotechnology and received the Semiconductor Research Corp.’s Aristotle Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1998.

“His passion for research is highly contagious,” Casta±?n added.

Casta±?n talked about Cerrina’s fun-loving nature, citing Cerrina’s relentless efforts to get a pingpong table in the Photonics Center but settled on a dartboard because a pingpong table took up too much room.

Cerrina was instrumental in creating bridges between the departments, Casta±?n said.

In his time at BU, Cerrina recruited five young professors to work for his program, and helped establish a new laboratory in the Photonics Center, Casta±?n said.

Cerrina demonstrated his love for Boston and the university when he refused countless rides late winter evenings, just so he could walk down Commonwealth Avenue to experience BU, he said.

Saima Akhtar, Cerrina’s daughter, was the last to address the group.

She told a story about her father helping her prepare for a physics test as he attempted to teach her differential calculus in just one night.

Akhtar said her father put the same passion into parenting as he did into his job.

She ended by thanking the BU community for its “completely exceptional response.”

Prior to his teaching career, Cerrina, a native of Italy, received his Ph.D at the University of Rome. He was also a fellow of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers, the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America.

Cerrina held 16 patents and had more than 250 reviewed publications. He was known for being a leading scholar in optics, lithography and nanotechnology.

He also co-founded five companies &- NimbleGen Systems, Genetic Assemblies Inc., Condon Devices Inc., Biolitho Inc. and Gen9 Inc. &- and worked on nanolithography and patterning.

He also developed SHADOW, an X-ray optical ray-tracing program for the development of synchrotron-based X-ray beamlines, according to his academia website profile.

The ceremony allowed Cerrina’s friends, family and associates “to grieve, to remember and to say goodbye,” Lutchen said.

A reception in the Photonics Center followed the memorial service.