{"id":4355,"date":"2020-02-02T20:19:39","date_gmt":"2020-02-03T02:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/?page_id=4355"},"modified":"2026-03-23T13:30:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T18:30:36","slug":"keynote-speaker-22","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/events\/keynote-speaker-22\/","title":{"rendered":"Keynote Speaker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<div\n\tclass=\"paragraph-widget paragraph-widget--text-html\">\n\t<div class=\"text-content\">\n\t\t<p><strong>We are excited to announce Aron Ralston as our 2026 keynote speaker!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Thank you to everyone who attended! Please be sure to come back to see future updates!<\/p>\n<p><strong>About Aron:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">Aron graduated Carnegie Mellon University in 1997 where he <\/span><span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">double majored in mechanical engineering and French while <\/span><span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">minoring in piano. During his education, Ralston served as a <\/span><span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">resident assistant, studied abroad, and was active in intermural <\/span><span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">sports in addition to working as a rafting guide during summers.<\/span>\u200b<\/p>\n<p><span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">After graduation, Aron worked with Intel in Chandler Tacoma for <\/span><span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">five years while building mountain climbing and mountaineering <\/span><span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">skills. In 2002 he quit his job to climb Denali and moved to Aspen <\/span><span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">Colorado.<\/span>\u200b <span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">In April of 2003 while canyoneering alone through the <\/span><span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">Blue John<\/span> <span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">Canyon in Utah, a suspended boulder was dislodged fell to smash <\/span><span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">his left hand and settled, pinning his right hand. After being <\/span><span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">trapped for 127 hours Ralston amputated his arm, descended a 65-<\/span><span data-usefontface=\"false\" data-contrast=\"none\">foot cliff and made a 7-mile hike back to rescue. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/files\/2026\/01\/Ralston_Poster2-1-scaled.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"691\" data-attachment-id=\"7042\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/events\/keynote-speaker-22\/ralston_poster2-1\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/files\/2026\/01\/Ralston_Poster2-1-scaled.png\" data-orig-size=\"2560,1729\" data-comments-opened=\"0\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Ralston_Poster2 (1)\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/files\/2026\/01\/Ralston_Poster2-1-1024x691.png\" src=\"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/files\/2026\/01\/Ralston_Poster2-1-1024x691.png\" alt=\"Flyer for 127 hours: How i engineered my own survival in the Utah desert, presented by Aron Ralston.\" class=\"wp-image-7042\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/files\/2026\/01\/Ralston_Poster2-1-1024x691.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/files\/2026\/01\/Ralston_Poster2-1-300x203.png 300w, https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/files\/2026\/01\/Ralston_Poster2-1-768x519.png 768w, https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/files\/2026\/01\/Ralston_Poster2-1-1536x1037.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/files\/2026\/01\/Ralston_Poster2-1-2048x1383.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1885,"featured_media":0,"parent":7152,"menu_order":11,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-4355","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1885"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4355"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7179,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4355\/revisions\/7179"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineering.iastate.edu\/eweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}