RCEAS faculty, students and staff cited for research and teaching

Faculty, staff and students in the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science have won a variety of awards in the past two months:

The university's Tradition of Excellence Team Award was given to the staff of the Center for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. Recipients include David Ackland, research scientist; Andrea Harmer, director of web-based instruction; Deanne Hoenscheid, financial administrator; Gene Lucadamo, industrial liaison officer; Floyd Miller, research scientist and manager of the microelectronics laboratory; Virginia Newhard, coordinator; Sue Stetler, secretary; and Masashi Watanabe, research scientist.

Several members of the center traveled with CAMN director Martin Harmer to New York City in early May to attend the World Business Forum at Radio City Music Hall, where they saw former President Bill Clinton and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Edwin Force Sr., electronic technician in the department of electrical and computer engineering department, received an individual Tradition of Excellence Award as well as a Teaching Excellence Award for teaching mainly within a department. Force, who will retire in August, joined the university in 1974. As ECE technician, he sets up labs and helps students in the department's senior laboratory project. Force's son, Edwin Force Jr., is engineering technician in the department of industrial and systems engineering. His other son teaches high-school math, and his daughter owns a daycare center.

Harvey Stenger, professor of chemical engineering and former RCEAS dean, received the Service Teaching Excellence Award for teaching a service course to non-majors. In 2003, Stenger received the Hillman Award for Excellence in Graduate Advising. He is also a former recipient of the Alfred Noble Robinson Award, the RCEAS Outstanding Teaching Award, the Stabler Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Deming Lewis Award from the tenth-year class. Stenger's research, which involves reacting heterogeneous systems, includes work in natural products processing, semiconductor materials manufacturing, emission control processes, and synthetic fuels research.

The Service Teaching Excellence and Teaching Excellence Awards are both given by representatives of the student chapters of the professional societies in the RCEAS.

Donald Rockwell, the Paul B. Reinhold Professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics, won the RCEAS Ingenuity Award for Senior Faculty. Rockwell, the director of Lehigh's Fluids Research Laboratory, uses lasers and computationally intensive image-processing techniques to study the complex flows of air and water past tall buildings, oil-drilling platforms in the ocean, turbomachinery blading and aircraft. He is particularly interested in unsteady separated flows and their application to flow-induced vibration, noise generation, convective heat trasfer and mixing phenomena. Rockwell, who collaborates with researchers around the world, has received numerous awards, including the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, one of the top research awards given by the German government to international scientists and engineers.

Derick Brown, the P.C. Rossin Assistant Professor of civil and environmental engineering, won the RCEAS Ingenuity Award for Junior Faculty. Brown studies how specific surfaces affect the metabolic activity and survival of bacteria. Brown is investigating the link between two disparate theories - the physiochemical charge-regulation process and the chemiosmotic theory - that seek to explain why many surfaces enhance the metabolism of bacteria. Brown has a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation.

Danielle Higgins '04, a chemical engineering major, won the RCEAS Ingenuity Award for Undergraduate Students.

Matthew Galati, a Ph.D. candidate in information and systems engineering, won the RCEAS Ingenuity Award for Graduate Students.

Martin P. Harmer, the Alcoa Foundation Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and director of Lehigh's Center for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, received the Hillman Faculty Award for advancing the interests of Lehigh and for excellence in research and teaching. Harmer, who is world-renowned for his work in the microstructure and properties of electronic ceramic materials, is a fellow of the American Ceramic Society. His many other awards include the Sc. D. from Leeds University (England) in recognition of lifetime contributions to science and the Richard M. Fulrath Award for bridging knowledge between the Japanese and American cultures from ACS.

Svetlana Tatic-Lucic, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, received Lehigh's Alfred Noble Robinson Award for outstanding performance in the service of the university and unusual promise of professional achievement. Tatic-Lucic, who joined the faculty in 2002, seeks in her research to apply MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) and NEMS (nanoelectromechanical systems) devices to medicine and biology. She is particularly interested in integrating MEMS devices and living cells. A faculty member in Lehigh's Bioengineering and Life Sciences, Tatic-Lucic and several colleagues have a bioengineering program development grant from the National Science Foundation. Tatic-Lucic teaches several introductory courses in bioengineering, and runs the program's freshman seminar course.

Israel Wachs, the G. Whitney Snyder Professor of chemical engineering, received Lehigh's Hillman Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Advising. Wachs, a pioneer in the use of laser Raman spectroscopy to study the complex structures of atomically dispersed surface oxides, has won many other top awards, including the Industrial Innovation Award from the American Chemical Society and the Clean Air Excellence Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He holds two dozen patents and has received awards for excellence in catalysis research from both the Michigan Catalysis Society and the Catalysis Society of Metropolitan New York.