Eleven engineering professors to be named to endowed chairs at annual Founder's Day.

Eleven faculty members in the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science will be named to endowed chairs when Lehigh celebrates its annual Founder's Day on Friday, Oct. 17, beginning at 4 p.m. in Packer Memorial Church.

That number, which is the largest number of engineering professors ever endowed on a single occasion, also exceeds the total number of university professors inducted into endowed professorships in a typical year at Lehigh.

Following is a list of the professors to be endowed and a brief description of their expertise:

Rick Blum, professor of electrical and computer engineering, will become the new Robert W. Wieseman Chair in Electrical Engineering. The chair recognizes outstanding individual merit and accomplishment by a faculty member in electrical engineering.

Blum, who joined the faculty in 1991, directs Lehigh's Signal Processing and Communication Research Lab and is listed in the 2002 edition of Who's Who in Engineering Education. In his research, he is particularly interested in using multiple antennas and sensors in signal processing and communications, in using antenna arrays in wireless communications and image fusion, in distributed signal detection and filtering, and in data fusion.

In 2002, Blum served as one of five guest editors of a special issue of IEEE Transactions that was devoted to signal processing for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communications systems.

Robert Wieseman received a B.S. in electrical engineering from Lehigh in 1916 and established his endowment in 1967. He died in 1976.

Manoj K. Chaudhury, professor of chemical engineering, will be named Franklin J. Howes Jr. Distinguished Professor. The Howes Professorship recognizes outstanding individual merit and accomplishment by a faculty member.

Chaudhury, who joined the faculty in 1994, directs Lehigh's Polymer Interfaces Center. In his research, he studies new methods of modifying the surfaces of organic and inorganic materials to enhance their performance in adhesion, friction, wetting and biocompatibility, without affecting their bulk material properties. Chaudhury has published five articles in Science magazine, the nation's premier journal for scientists and engineers.

Franklin Howes attended Lehigh from 1934 to 1937, majoring in industrial engineering, but left the university before graduating because of poor eyesight. He became a farmer, raising veal cattle and grain on a 127-acre farm in Plumstead Township, Bucks County, until his death in 1986.

Joseph Hartman, associate professor of industrial and systems engineering, will be named Soteria and George N. Kledaras '87 Endowed Chair, a professorship that recognizes outstanding individual merit and accomplishment by a faculty member.

Hartman, who joined the faculty in 1996, studies the modeling, solution and analysis of practical industrial problems. He applies operations research techniques (integer programming, network flows, and dynamic programming) to problems facing the transportation industry, including the optimal utilization and replacement of capital assets. His current projects include large-scale multiple asset replacement, inventory-routing, fleet sizing, and inventory assignment problems.

Hartman is on sabbatical for the 2003-04 academic year at the School of Management at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

George Kledaras, earned his B.S. in electrical engineering from Lehigh in 1987 and an M.S. in Mathematics from the Courant Institute at NYU. He founded Javelin Technologies, Inc, which is the leader in Financial Information Exchange technology and sold it last year. He has since founded two new companies aimed at simplifying the process of portfolio reporting and making it easier for institutions to trade electronically. His wife, Soteria, is the founder and principal of Brandstorm, Inc., a creative and corporate branding company. They reside in New York City. The Kledaras' are the youngest donors to endow a chair at Lehigh.

Kristen Jellison, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, will be named P.C. Rossin Assistant Professor. The chair recognizes outstanding individual merit and accomplishment by a faculty member.

Jellison, who joined the faculty this past summer, studies the prevention of waterborne disease through improved water treatment technology and a better understanding of microbial pathogen ecology. She is particularly interested in cryptosporidium, a tiny, very resistant protozoa that causes flu-like symptoms and even death to humans and is especially threatening to people with compromised immune systems. Jellison seeks to characterize the behaviors of pathogens in their environments and find ways of preventing them from entering water supplies.

Jellison holds a Ph.D. from M.I.T., where she received graduate research fellowships from NSF and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Peter Rossin, who died in August, earned a B.S. in metallurgical engineering from Lehigh in 1948. He was founder and president of Dynamet Inc., which became one of the world's leading producers of titanium- and nickel-based alloy products for the aerospace, chemical, medical and petroleum industries. In 1998, he and his wife, Ada, made a $25-million commitment to the engineering college.

Thomas Koch, professor of electrical and computer engineering, will be formally installed as Daniel E. '39 and Patricia M. Smith Endowed Chair of the Director of the Center of Optical Technologies, a position he assumed in February when he joined the faculty.

A fellow of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Optical Society of America, Koch served as vice president for technology platforms at Agere Systems before joining Lehigh. Previously, with the research organization of Bell Labs, he led the research team that developed the first generation of semiconductor photonic-integrated circuits (PICs) and also worked on Bell Labs' first high-performance DFB lasers with record-setting transmission rates and basic advances in tunable lasers.

Koch also served as vice president of research and development at SDL Inc., where he managed a broad portfolio of semiconductor laser research.

The Smith Chair was endowed by Daniel E. Smith Jr., who earned a B.S. in industrial engineering from Lehigh in 1971, in honor of his parents, Daniel E. Smith, a member of Lehigh's Class of 1939 and Patricia M. Smith. Smith's parents were members of Lehigh's Tower Society and President Associates of the Asa Packer Society.

Daniel Smith Jr. served as an officer in the U.S. Navy and earned an MBA from Harvard, and is now president and CEO of Sycamore Networks Inc. and a member of Lehigh's board of trustees.

Henry Korth, professor and department chair of computer science and engineering, will be installed as P.C. Rossin Senior Professor. This chair recognizes outstanding individual merit and accomplishment by a faculty member.

Korth, a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, is an expert in database systems, information systems and distributed systems. He is the author of three books, one of which, Database Systems Concepts, is now in its fourth edition; over 100 journal articles, conference publications and other technical papers; and eight book chapters. He also holds eight patents.

Before joining Lehigh's faculty in 2002, Korth was director of database principles research and of technology assessment at Lucent Technology's Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., where he led teams of Ph.D. researchers in investigating XML data management, web-based data, main-memory database systems, real-time systems, parallel systems and other topics.

Anthony J. McHugh, professor and department chair of chemical engineering, will be installed as P.C. Rossin Senior Professor. This chair recognizes outstanding individual merit and accomplishment by a faculty member.

McHugh, who joined the faculty in 2002, has gained an international reputation for his research into polymer materials and engineering, including polymer colloids, polymer processing rheology, and polymer solutions with applications in membrane formation and controlled drug-delivery systems.

His current projects include modeling flow-induced crystallization in fiber spinning and film formation, flow-induced ordering and transitions in solutions, processing-rheology interactions in dendritic and hyperbranched polymers and blends, and the dynamics of phase inversion, particularly as it relates to injectable, controlled-release drug delivery. In 1988, he received the Senior U.S. Scientist Award from Germany's Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

James Ricles, professor of civil and environmental engineering, will be installed as the Bruce G. Johnston Professor. This chair recognizes outstanding individual merit and accomplishment by a faculty member.

Ricles, who joined the faculty in 1992, studies the manner in which buildings and other structures respond to earthquakes and ways in which these structures can be strengthened. He is the principal investigator in a Lehigh research project which has received a $2.6-million grant from the George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). The grant is part of a 15-year initiative by NSF, through which Lehigh and 14 other universities in the "NEES Network" will conduct research to develop cost-effective ways of mitigating earthquake destruction.

Bruce Johnston earned an M.S. in civil engineering from Lehigh in 1934 and became a world-renowned expert in steel structures and director of Lehigh's Fritz Engineering Laboratory. A professor of civil engineering at Lehigh, Johnston was also one of the founding members of the Structural Stability Research Council, which was formerly headquartered at Lehigh. He died in 1989.

Ricles will share the Johnston Professorship with Le-Wu Lu, professor and former department chair of civil and environmental engineering, until Lu's retirement next year.

Richard Sause, professor of civil and environmental engineering, will be installed as Joseph T. Stuart Professor. This chair recognizes outstanding individual merit and accomplishment by a faculty member.

Sause, who joined the faculty in 1989, is director of Lehigh's Engineering Research Center for Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems. With the largest fatigue-testing research facilities in North America, ATLSS brings together scientists and engineers from around the world and from a variety of disciplines to study the design, fabrication, construction, inspection, and protection of buildings, bridges, ships and other large structures. Sause is particularly interested in high-performance structural materials, innovative structural systems, earthquake engineering and structural dynamics, and computer-integrated structural engineering.

Joseph Stuart, a railroad contractor in Philadelphia, had many Lehigh friends and attended many functions of the Philadelphia Lehigh Club. His sister, Ella Gordon Stuart, established the Stuart Professorship in his memory. Miss Stuart died in 1938, leaving everything but her personal effects to Lehigh, thus increasing the fund.

Arup SenGupta, professor and department chair of civil and environmental engineering, and also professor of chemical engineering, will be installed as P.C. Rossin Senior Professor. This chair recognizes outstanding individual merit and accomplishment by a faculty member.

SenGupta, who joined the faculty in 1985, has made many contributions to the fields of environmental engineering, environmental separations of heavy metals, remediation of contaminated groundwater, purification of drinking water, and wastewater treatment. He has taught and served as a consultant in a dozen countries, including India, Bangladesh, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Germany and Ecuador. He holds one U.S. patent for an invention that selectively removes phosphate from water and another for a process that removes aluminum sulfate from sludge and enables it to be reused as a coagulant in a water-treatment plant.

SenGupta and his students have developed an inexpensive and easy-to-operate well-head system that uses a hybrid sorbent to remove arsenic from groundwater. The system has been installed with success in 100 villages in East India. An estimated 80 million people in South Asia suffer from drinking water contaminated with excessive levels of arsenic.

Israel Wachs, professor of chemical engineering, will be installed as G. Whitney Snyder Professor. This chair recognizes outstanding individual merit and accomplishment by a faculty member.

Wachs, who joined the faculty in 1987, is a pioneer in the use of Raman spectroscopy in nanotechnology, the characterization of catalysts, and the creation of new products. He has developed several new techniques for examining the amorphous phases of the surfaces of mixed metal oxides.

Wachs holds two dozen U.S. patents, including one for a new catalytic process that could help North America's paper mills save up to $300 million a year while eliminating most emissions of pollutants contained in acid rain and greenhouse gases. The process converts methanol, a toxin, into formaldehyde, which is used to make plywood and other products. It eliminates most emissions of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. The process was tested by Georgia-Pacific Corp. in a pilot plant for two years.

Whitney Snyder, originally a member of Lehigh's Class of 1944, earned a B.A. from Lehigh in 1947 after serving with the U.S. Army in World War II. He became the owner of the Shenango Furnace Co., a business founded in 1906 by his grandfather, which manufactured centrifugal castings of bronze and alloys, pig iron, coke and ingot molds. Active in Lehigh alumni affairs for many years, Snyder received the Lehigh Alumni Association Alumni Award in 1989. He died in 1999.