June 2009

"Faculty"

• As of July 1, the Interdisciplinary Degree Engineering, Arts and Sciences (IDEAS) honors program will have two new co-directors, Bill Best, professor of practice in Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Bruce Thomas, professor of Art & Architecture. Best and Thomas will succeed Professors Terry Hart and Jeffrey Millet who have led the program since its inception in 2007.
• Patrick Farrell, professor of mechanical engineering and former provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will step into the role of provost and vice president for academic affairs at Lehigh on July 24. At UW-Madison, Farrell led the university's two-year reaccreditation self-study initiative and was instrumental in recruiting an outstanding and diverse faculty. Farrell received his bachelor's in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, his master's from the University of California-Berkeley, and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Current provost, Mohammad El-Aasser, moved into the newly created role of vice president for international affairs earlier this year and has been performing the roles of both offices during the search for a new provost.
• A new grant through the Department of Energy (DOE) for a new Energy Frontiers Research Center (EFRC) titled "Rational Design of Innovative Catalytic Technologies for Biomass Derivative Utilization" will involve more than twenty researchers from seven universities across the country. Mark Snyder '00, P.C. Rossin Assistant Professor of chemical engineering, and Bruce Koel, professor of chemistry and Interim Vice President and Associate Provost for Research and Graduate Studies, are the Lehigh principal investigators. The primary goal of the center is to attack the challenges associated with biomass conversion.

Students

• Forty-one students in the engineering college received their doctorates in the 2008-2009 academic school year. Congratulations to the following newly-minted Lehigh Engineering Ph.D.s:
  Chemical Engineering: Erdem Arslan, Jinmo Hong, Kyoung Hwan Kim, Kamalakanta Routray, Lisa Spagnola, Pradeep Tiwari
  Civil/Structural Engineering: Jun Dong, Xin Li
  Computer Engineering: Mark Erle, E. George Walters, Peng Yang
  Computer Science: Jason Derenick, Michael Moll, Lan Nie, Jean Nonnemaker
  Electrical Engineering: Ronald Arif, Yingda Chen, James Dailey, Maximilien Gadouleau, Danny Safi, Zhenlei Shen, Gan Wang
  Industrial Engineering: Berrin Aytaç, Banu Gemici, Wasu Glankwamdee, Udom Janjarassuk, Hyong-Mo Jeon, Ashutosh Mahajan, James Ostrowski, Ying Rong 
  Materials Science/Engineering: Kenneth Adams, Timothy Anderson, Animesh Kundu, Hongqing Zhang
  Mechnical Engineering/Engineering Mechanics:Hannah Dailey, Tunc Goruney, Kwangkook Jeon, Jack Reany, Murat Saribay, Xiaofeng Zou
  Polymer Science/Engineering: Yi-Ling Liang
• Jason Putt '09, captain of the 2009 Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) team and his teammates placed an impressive 33rd out of 120 registered teams at the Michigan International Speedway May 13-16. The team had many respectable places, but most impressively it finished 29th in the endurance event and 11th in fuel economy. This is the first SAE team to even finish the endurance event and only 37 of the competing teams were able to do so this year. The Formula SAE race asks students to design and create a small Formula-style race car. The race event has many facets of competition including overall design, fuel efficiency, braking ability, and marketability.
• The Mountain Hawk Racing team recently competed in the 2009 Baja SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) competition in Alabama. Despite a leaky tire that hindered the group for about an hour during the race, the team placed 20th out of 101 registered teams. Baja SAE asks college teams to design and build small off-road cars resembling mini dune buggies. The multiple dynamic events include hill climbs, chain pulls, maneuverability events, rock crawls, and suspension, traction, and endurance events.
• Qiaoqiang Gan, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering, won the 2008 Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad. The Chinese Consulate General will bestow the $5,000 check and certificate awarded by China's Ministry of Education on Gan in New York City. Gan, who is advised by Filbert Bartoli, the Chandler Weaver Chair of electrical and computer engineering, is being recognized for his work in controlling the movement of lightwaves. His research impacts biosensing, medical imaging, and all-optical telecommunication networks.
• Chee-Loon Tan, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering, will receive one of the top honors in the field of optical technologies, the D.J. Lovell Scholarship from the Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). SPIE will present Tan with the $11,000 scholarship—the largest and most prestigious given by the society—at its annual Optics and Photonics conference in San Diego in August. Tan, who studied wireless communications as an undergraduate, switched to lasers and semiconductors when he arrived at Lehigh in the fall of 2006. Boon Ooi, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, is his advisor.
• Brendan Van Ackeren '09, a May graduate in industrial engineering, was recently named to the 2009 National Football Foundation (NFF) and College Hall of Fame Hampshire Honor Society. Van Ackeren spent every year on the Dean's List and Patriot League Academic Honor Roll while participating in the Student-Athlete Mentor (SAM) program and Lehigh's C.O.A.C.H. (Community Outreach by Athletes who Care about Helping) program, being a Peer Educator, serving as secretary of the Student-Athlete Executive Committee, and starting all eleven games of the past football season as a safety and team captain.
• David Browne '09, a recent graduate with a bachelor's degree in materials science and engineering won first place in the undergraduate section of the materials processing and manufacturing category at the Annual Meeting of the Mineral, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS) in February. He is now set to pursue his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara in the fall with a study in electronic materials. Travel to the TMS conference in San Francisco was made possible through his April 2008 second place finish at the David and Lorraine Freed Undergraduate Research Symposium which awards students prize money for conference travel.

Alumni

• Stephen Benkovic '60 has joined the ranks of Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Marie and Pierre Curie, and Jane Goodall with his receipt of the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science. Benkovic, who graduated from Lehigh with a B.S. in chemistry and a B.A. in English, is the Evan Pugh professor and Eberly Family Chair in chemistry at Penn State University where he studies enzymes, particularly DNA. The Franklin Medal is one of the oldest and most prestigious science awards in the world.

Programs

• The Center for Value Chain Research (CVCR) held its annual spring symposium, "Creating Supply Chain Value in Challenging Times: Lessons from Industry Leaders," on May 21, 2009. The CVCR integrates analytical and quantitative engineering approaches with business research to help industries and companies make their business operations more efficient. The event was co-sponsored by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP).
• The Chronicle of Higher Education covered Lehigh's new 10-month master's program in Energy Systems Engineering, which launches in July 2009. The program will allow students to delve into traditional and alternative energy sources, as well as business, management, accounting, and finance issues critical in this field. Working with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the program will also require each student to participate in an industry-sponsored research project in conjunction with members of the trade association.
• The 2009 Tyco/Lehigh Manufacturing Expo gave a total of 137 students from Lehigh and Broughal Middle School the opportunity to race miniature cars that they had spent the semester designing and building. The 81 Lehigh mechanical engineering juniors and 56 Broughal eighth graders formed 28 teams to build cars using the plastic injection-molding machines in the mechanical engineering department. The competition is sponsored by Tyco Electronics Corp. in Berwyn, PA and works to develop a better appreciation of manufacturing and working with clients in the Lehigh students while exposing the middle schoolers to a fun world of engineering.
• Lehigh hosted the 12th Annual Tiger-Hen-Hawk Rheology Symposium on May 9, 2009. Graduate students from Princeton University, University of Delaware, and Lehigh University were invited to give a 20-25 minute oral presentation of their research on rheology or rheology-dependent applications to their peers and professors. In addition, students could submit posters for a competition. This year's winners were presented by Dennis Kalman of Delaware and Suresh Manohar of Lehigh. The event, organized by chemical engineering professors James Gilchrist and Anthony McHugh, also featured Professor Jeffrey Morris from Levich Institute, City College of New York, who delivered a speech on "Fluid mechanics of suspensions: A consideration of pressure and inertia."

     

P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science
Lehigh University • Packard Laboratory, 19 Memorial Drive West, Bethlehem, PA 18015 • (610) 758-4025