Fall '07/Winter '08: Recognition: Faculty

(ltor) Dean, Alan Cramb, Dr. Mike Sharp, from U.S. Army Corps of Eng., Hassan Radwan, Dr. Inthuorn Sasanakul, Professor Tarek Abdoun, Professor Ricardo Dobry, Marcello Gonzalez, Dr. Javier Ubilla, Professor and Acting Chair Thomas Zimmie and Provost, Robert Palazzo.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its Interagency Performance Evaluation Taskforce (IPET) have given awards of high distinction to members of Rensselaer’s Geotechnical Centrifuge Center for their Katrina-related research. Associate Director Tarek Abdoun, Operations Manager Inthuorn Sasanakul, and Research Engineer Javier Ubilla received the Commander’s Medal for Public Service—the highest award given by the Army to civilians who provide outstanding service. Professor Thomas Zimmie received a Certificate of Appreciation for Patriotic Civilian Service; certificates of appreciation or recognition were also presented to Center Director Ricardo Dobry, IT Manager Hassan Radwan, and Ph.D. student Marcelo Gonzalez.
Composed of 150 experts from government, industry, and academia, IPET was formed to provide scientific and engineering answers to questions about the performance of the New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Protection System (HPS) during Hurricane Katrina.

Yoav Peles, assistant professor of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering, has received the 2007 DARPA/MTO Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Microsystems Technology Office. The award program is designed to seek out ideas from non-tenured faculty in order to identify the next generation of researchers in microsystem technology.
Peles has also won the 2005 Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research. His research focuses on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), particularly heat transfer within the systems.

Leila Parsa, assistant professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering, has been selected to receive the 2007 IEEE-Industrial Applications Society Outstanding Young Member Award. The award recognizes outstanding achievement and contribution to the profession through involvement in IAS activities by a member less than 35 years of age.
Parsa focuses her research on a range of interests, from renewable energy systems and electric vehicles to the design and control of variable speed drives.

Tarek Abdoun, associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is the 2008 recipient of the prestigious Shamsher Prakash Research Award for Excellence in the Practice of Geotechnical Engineering. The award is given to young engineers, scientists, and researchers from all over the world who have made significant independent contributions and shown promise of excellence in geotechnical engineering. Abdoun serves as associate director of Rensselaer’s NEES-NSF Geotechnical Centrifuge Research Center.
Earlier this year, Abdoun won the Rensselaer Early Career Award, which each year honors a young Rensselaer researcher for productivity in both teaching and research.

The New York Chapter of the Association of Energy Engineers has honored Nag Patibandla as its Energy Development Professional of the Year. The award honors outstanding accomplishments in the training and development of energy engineers, managers, and other professionals, and for work that has raised the bar in the field.
Patibandla, research professor and director of Rensselaer’s Center for Future Energy Systems, focuses his research on such topics as energy efficiency, emerging energy technologies, distributed generation, energy policy, and advanced materials.

Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer, has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was cited for “her exceptional support of national education efforts, for her outstanding contributions to the field of physics, and for her exemplary national leadership.”

Dean Alan Cramb recently delivered the 2007 Howe Memorial Lecture to the Association for Iron & Steel Technology (AIST). Every two years, AIST selects a distinguished speaker to deliver the lecture “in recognition of individual outstanding contributions to the science and practice of iron and steel metallurgy or metalography.” Cramb’s presentation was entitled “From Liquid to Solid: Key Issues in the Future of Steel Casting.”

Thomas Zimmie, professor and acting head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been selected as this year’s recipient of the David M. Darrin Counseling Award. David M. Darrin ’40 established the award to recognize a faculty member who has made an unusual contribution in counseling undergraduate students, generously sharing time and talents with them, and demonstrating special concern for their welfare in and out of the classroom.

Wai Kin “Victor” Chan, assistant professor of decision sciences and engineering systems, is among the 83 rising stars invited to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s 13th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium. Designated by the NAE as the “nation’s brightest young engineers,” Chan and other honorees will pool their insight and talent to examine real-world challenges facing all engineers.

Jonathan Dordick, the Howard P. Isermann Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, received the 2006 Gaden Award from the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering and its publisher, Wiley-Blackwell. Dordick won the award, which is designated for “a high-impact paper reflecting exceptional innovation, creativity, and originality,” for his article “Controlled hierarchical assembly of switchable DNA-multiprotein complexes.” He co-authored the article with postdoctoral research associate Grazyna Sroga and published it in the journal’s June 2006 issue.
Dordick, who serves as director of the new Center for BioFORM, also received the prestigious Marvin J. Johnson Award in Microbial and Biochemical Technology from the American Chemical Society. The award “recognizes many of Professor Dordick’s achievements leading to functional bioengineered materials, enzyme-based nanocomposites, and bioactive agents that impact human health and bioprocesses.”

The American Chemical Society has ranked “Nonlinear control of chemical processes: a review”—an article by B. Wayne Bequette, professor of chemical and biological engineering—as number 23 of the 100 most-cited articles to appear in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research since 1975.

Matthew A. Oehlschlaeger, assistant professor of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering, has been awarded a grant from the United States Air Force Young Investigators Research Program (AFOSR). Oehlschlaeger will use the grant for an experimental study of the oxidation, ignition, and soot formation characteristics of jet fuel.

T. Paul Chow, professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering, has been elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE).

Natacha DePaola, professor and department head in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, was elected a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Michael Shur, the Patricia W. and C. Sheldon Roberts ’48 Professor of Solid State Electronics, has been promoted to fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). Shur is internationally recognized for his development of new materials and processes that enhance semiconductor and circuit performance.
Shur is also the recipient of the IEEE 2007 Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award for a paper he co-wrote titled “Solid-State Lighting: Towards Superior Illumination.”

John Brunski, professor of biomedical engineering, received the 2006 Jerome M. and Dororthy Schweitzer Research Award from the Greater New York Academy of Prosthodontics. Brunski is also a recent winner of the Anders Tjellstrom Award.

Murat Arcak, associate professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering, recently received the 2007 SIAG/CST Prize from the Activity Group on Control and Systems Theory, a group of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. The award went to Arcak for his fundamental contributions to the study of large networked systems.

Don Steiner, a research professor of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering, was given the Greenhouse Exemplary Course Program Award for the e-learning course “Nuclear Phenomena for Engineering Applications.” The award was given by the educational software firm Blackboard, Inc.

A non-reflective coating produced by E. Fred Schubert and his Future Chips research group was one of the most innovative products of 2007. So say the editors of R&D Magazine and MICRO/NANO Newsletter, who selected the coating as part of their Inaugural MICRO/NANO 25 Competition.

Linda Schadler, professor of materials science and engineering, has been named a fellow in ASM International.

Ricardo Dobry, Institute Professor of Engineering, was honored with the 2007 Spencer Buchanan Award.

Georges Belfort, the Russell Sage Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, has won the E. V. Murphee Award in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry.

Steven Cramer, the William Weightman Walker Professor of Polymer Engineering, was the recipient of the Alan S. Michaels Award in Recovery of Biological Products.

Bruce Nauman, professor of chemical and biological engineering, will be honored in a special issue of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.

Susan Sharfstein, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, received the 2007 Class of 1951 Outstanding Teaching Award.

Professor Assad Oberai won the Special Achievement Award for Young Investigators from the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME for “recognition of fundamental developments in solving inverse problems and problems with multiple spatial and temporal scales”.

Timothy Wei, professor and department head of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering was presented with a Dedicated Service Award by the American Academy of Mechanics.

Jacob Fish, the Rosalind and John J. Redfern professor of engineering has been named a fellow of The American Academy of Mechanics.

Achille Messac, professor of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering was elected Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Institute Professor of Science & Technology, Daniel Berg has been named Engineering Management Educator of the Year by the IEEE Engineering Management Society. The award was established to recognize “outstanding education or education administration contributions to the field of engineering management or a closely related discipline”.