Submitted Photo Mark Lehner, an Egyptologist and native of Minot, has excavated in Egypt for more than 40 years.

Minot native and world-renowned Egyptologist Mark Lehner will be featured speaker at Minot State University’s “Discoveries Set in Stone,” a three-day archaeology conference May 1-3.

The conference is presented by the MSU Geology Club A.U.G.I.T.E. (Association of Undergraduate Geologists in Industry, Technology, and Education) as part of the Midcontinent Speaker Series. All sessions are free and open to the public.

The conference kicks off on Wednesday, May 1, with Minot State professor Amanda Watts’s talk, “War Zone Archaeology in Afghanistan: Saving Buddhas from the Taliban,” in Hartnett Hall’s newly renovated Recital Hall, room 106, at 6 p.m. On Thursday, May 2, Roberta Marzianni will give a lecture, “New Frontiers in Heritage recording: Bath Abbey and Fairey Barracuda — from photogrammetry to Virtual Reality,” starting at 6 p.m. in Hartnett 106.

Lehner will give the final presentation of the conference, with his lecture titled “Prairie to the Pyramids: Lost City of the Giza Pyramids,” scheduled for Friday, May 3, at 6:30 p.m. in Minot State’s Ann Nicole Nelson Hall. His talk will be preceded by a meet and greet in the lobby of Ann Nicole Nelson Hall in Old Main from 5-6 p.m.

Lehner is the president and co-founder of Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA) and the director of the Giza Plateau Mapping Project. He has excavated in Egypt for more than 40 years, mapping the Great Sphinx and Giza Plateau and discovering the Lost City of the Giza Pyramids. Lehner and AERA’s work has been featured in numerous publications and documentaries. Lehner and the groundbreaking work his team at AERA is doing will be featured in a National Geographic film, “Lost Treasures of Egypt,” that is scheduled to air from May 2 until July 2.