December 2008

"Faculty"

• Himanshu Jain, professor of Materials Science & Engineering, is working with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to increase the participation of minorities in science and engineering. Jain, a principal investigator of the NSF’s International Materials Institute for New Functionality in Glass (IMI-NFG) at Lehigh, and co-principal investigator Carlo G. Pantano of Penn State University taught a 17-lecture course on glass science and engineering to students at Tuskegee University in Alabama. The course, given in late September through October has helped to foster a new relationship between Tuskegee, Lehigh and Penn State.
• P.C. Rossin Professor Arup SenGupta of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Chemical Engineering is the recent recipient of the Dhirubhai Amabani Award. The Institution of Chemical Engineers in Birmingham, England, presented the award to SenGupta, his colleagues, his students at Lehigh, and the Bengal Engineering and Science University (BESU) for their work in providing arsenic-free drinking water to people living in eastern India. The Amabani Award is given annually to a project that improves the lives of people making less than $2 a day by applying chemical engineering principles to the problem. The Lehigh team, led by SenGupta, along with the team from BESU have installed more than 200 arsenic-removal units over the past 12 years in addition to developing a way to contain the arsenic removed from the groundwater.
• The efforts of Wei-xian Zhang, assistant professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, and his colleague Luming Ma of Tongji University were covered by international magazine The Economist for their novel use of scrap iron for removal of many hazardous impurities from wastewater. Zhang and Ma have recently successfully demonstrated their application in Shanghai, China.
• Professor Rick Blum of Electrical & Computer Engineering is working to make sensor networks and radar arrays more energy-efficient. One of the concepts he is researching is the development of a "smart" sensor. These devices will be able to decipher and separate vital information from the data they collect, transmitting only the information that is important. Blum is taking this idea a step further by suggesting a network in which the sensor with the most important information is allowed to send its data first. For his research, Blum has recently received major grants from four federal agencies: the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the Office of Naval Research, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
• President Alice Gast has been named one of the top 100 modern chemical engineers for her role in leadership in the profession. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers posted the list in honor of the 100th anniversary of its founding. President Gast was the vice president of research and associate provost at MIT before becoming the 13^th president of Lehigh. Her research interests are in colloid and surface phenomena.

"Students"

• Edward Stilson,'11, and Luke Yoder, '11 have created a new club at Lehigh dedicated to building a land yacht that will break the current land speed record for a vehicle powered solely by wind. Members of the Land Yacht Speed Record club hope to travel to Nevada in March to witness their first land yacht racing competition. The students hope to compete with their vessel by 2011 in the race to break the current record of 116.6 mph. The team is advised by professor Joachim Grenestedt of Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics and is currently seeking new members.
• A host of Lehigh Engineering students, faculty, and staff from the departments of Chemical, Civil & Environmental, and Material Science & Engineering presented their work at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Chris Keturakis '09, a senior chemical engineering major, placed 2^nd in the student poster session with his project entitled, "High Temperature Water-Gas Shift over Supported CrO3/Fe2O3 Catalysts," examining the generation of hydrogen fuel from water-carbon monoxide mixtures. He started the research this past summer with G. Whitney Snyder Professor of Chemical Engineering, Israel Wachs, and has continued with it throughout the 2008 fall semester.
• Seven graduate students from the Electrical Engineering department visited science classes at Springhouse Middle School in Allentown to give the students lessons about optics. Each of the two sixth-grade classes received two lessons: one about lenses and images, and one about the principles of light transmission and speed. While the middle school students had the chance to ask and answer questions about light and lenses, the Lehigh grad students had the equally-valuable opportunity to relate their work to children as role models in the pursuit of science and engineering.
• Three graduate students received awards from the Inaugural Symposium of Lehigh’s student chapter of the Laser and Electro-Optics Society (LEOS). Joseph Junio '09, a Ph.D. candidate won for best presentation followed by Michelle Scimeca '10 and Piercen Oliver '10 who tied for first runner-up. Though LEOS was founded in the 1960s, it is a recent development at Lehigh having only been formed last August. The chapter already has 14 members.

"Alumni"

• Glenn Ellis '83, Lehigh graduate and current associate professor of engineering at Smith College, has been awarded a Professor of the Year Award from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). This is the only national award for excellence in undergraduate teaching and mentoring. One of Ellis' main goals is to try and interest younger children in the field of engineering and sciences. In fact, he teaches a course at Smith titled "Teaching Science and Engineering" to students in the education and child study program. Ellis joined the faculty at Smith in 2001 at the start of its Picker Engineering Program.
• Dr. Abdul Wahab Mohammad '89, Deputy Dean of Undergraduate, Alumni, and Community Relations and professor of membrane and separations technology at the National University of Malaysia is the recipient of a Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water. Mohammad, who co-won the prize in the area of Alternative Water Resources, graduated from Lehigh with a degree in Chemical Engineering in 1989. The award is given to researchers who strive to find solutions to global water resource problems. Scientists from all over the world are eligible. Mohammad’s current research is in the area of modeling for nanofiltration membranes.

"Programs"

• For the Fall 2008 Spencer C. Schantz Distinguished Lecture Series, the department of Industrial and Systems Engineering is hosting Dr. Cynthia Barnhart, MIT’s Associate Dean and Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Dr. Barnhart’s public lecture on Friday December 5, at 2:30 p.m. in Sinclair Auditorium will focus on "Airline Optimization", analyzing delays, airline scheduling, weather influences, and passenger loading policies. A technical talk for faculty and students interested in "Optimization Approaches to Airline Industry Challenges: Aircraft Schedule Planning, and Operations" will be held on Thursday, December 4, at 2:30 p.m. in 453 Mohler Lab.
• South Bethlehem's Keystone Innovation Zone (KIZ) received a national award in late October for collaboration among Lehigh University, the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation (LVEDC) , and the City of Bethlehem. The KIZ program places graduate and undergraduate students in internship positions in the areas of Life Sciences, Optoelectronics, Information Technology, and Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology to educate them about regional technological career and entrepreneurial opportunities. In part because of the national respect for South Bethlehem’s KIZ program, Fortune Small Business magazine has recognized the city as a national destination for entrepreneurs and business development.

     

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