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| Faculty News | |
The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements has elected Wisconsin Distinguished Professor of Engineering Physics Michael Corradini to a six-year term on the council. The council formulates and disseminates information, guidance and recommendations on radiation protection and measurements that represent the consensus of leading scientific thinking. It also facilitates and stimulates cooperation among organizations concerned with scientific and related aspects of radiation protection and measurements.
Irving Langmuir Professor of Engineering Physics Noah Hershkowitz will receive the 2004 James Clerk Maxwell Prize in Plasma Physics from the American Physical Society in November. The highest honor afforded by the APS Division of Plasma Physics, it cites Hershkowitz for fundamental contributions to the physics of low-temperature plasmas. The award, which Hershkowitz is sharing with OSRAM Sylvania corporate scientist Valery Godyak, honors Scottish physicist Maxwell, who conducted revolutionary research in electromagnetism and the kinetic theory of gases. Hershkowitz is the second UW-Madison faculty member to receive the award since its inception in 1975.
Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Susan Hagness has received the EMBS Early Career Achievement Award from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Hagness, who received the honor at the EMBS September meeting in San Francisco, was cited for outstanding contributions to the development and application of computational electromagnetic techniques and microwave diagnostic technologies for the detection of breast cancer. She joins Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor David Beebe as another UW-Madison faculty member to receive the award.
A yearlong study led by Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Ken Potter resulted in a new UW-Madison storm-water management policy. It calls for redirecting as much storm runoff as possible on the 930-acre campus into the ground rather than into Lake Mendota. Potter helped organize a group of faculty, staff and graduate students that spent much of last year scrutinizing storm-water management on campus. Now they are working on ways to improve it. Their work is supported by a grant from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to the university's Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
Chemical and Biological Engineering Assistant Professor Manos Mavrikakis' group recently published two papers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The first addresses the complete potential energy surface of methanol chemistry on platinum surfaces, which is at the heart of direct methanol fuel cells and hydrogen production from methanol. The second addresses the activation of dioxygen on transition metals and their alloys. The group elucidated the fundamental electronic structure of surface alloys responsible for the reaction rate enhancement that has been observed experimentally, but remained unexplained. Mavrikakis also recently presented an invited talk at the American Physical Society meeting, a keynote lecture at the Canadian Catalysis Society meeting, and a lecture at the Gordon Research Conference on Catalysis.
Industrial and Systems Engineering Associate Professor Darek Ceglarek has been named chair of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Manufacturing Engineering Division's (ASME-MED) technical committee on manufacturing systems for 2004 through 2007. The five-person technical committee represents the manufacturing systems area in ASME-MED, which coordinates and approves all ASME-MED-sponsored symposia and conferences in manufacturing systems, and prepares a "state-of-the-art" paper in manufacturing systems.
Grainger Professor of Power Electronics and Electrical Machines Tom Jahns will receive the 2005 Nikola Tesla Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The Tesla Award is given to those who have made outstanding contributions to the generation and utilization of electric power. Jahns will receive the award for "pioneering contributions to the design and application of AC permanent magnet machines."
Chemical and Biological Engineering Professor Mike Graham will receive the 2004 François Frenkiel Award from the Fluid Dynamics Division of the American Physical Society. The award honors the best paper by a young author in the previous year. Graham's honored paper is titled "Interfacial hoop stress and instability of viscoelastic free surface flows." The award will be presented at the organization's 57th annual meeting in Seattle this November, where Graham will give an invited lecture on his work.
Industrial and Systems Engineering and Engineering Physics Professor Vicki Bier is an editor of the report, "Accident Precursor Analysis and Management: Reducing Technological Risk Through Diligence." The report resulted from a National Academy of Engineering committee's work on the use of accident precursors in risk management. Bier co-chaired the committee in summer 2003. Read the report at books.nap.edu/catalog/11061.html.
Engineering Physics Assistant Professor Todd Allen was invited to teach at two international summer schools in 2004. In July, he gave three lectures on radiation effects in metals at the International Summer School on Radiation Effects in Solids held at the Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture in Erice, Sicily. In August, he presented a lecture on material needs for Generation IV nuclear energy systems at the Frederich Joliet-Otto Hahn Summer School held in Cadarache, France.
Engineering Physics Assistant Professor Rob Carpick and Materials Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Paul Evans and Associate Professor Donald Stone participated in the International Joint Workshop on Nanotechnology July 12 and 13 at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) in Pohang, South Korea. The workshop was the second in a series begun last February, when several POSTECH faculty members visited Wisconsin to participate in workshops in nanotechnology, biotechnology and nuclear energy technology. The workshops are organized under the auspices of a South Korean program called BK 21 ("Brain Korea 21"), through which the Division of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at POSTECH is funded to establish close ties with an American university. POSTECH invited UW-Madison, where several POSTECH faculty members obtained their PhDs, to be the collaborating university.
Engineering Physics and Mathematics Professor Fabian Waleffe is co-author of a Sept. 10 Science article, "Experimental Observation of Nonlinear Traveling Waves in Turbulent Pipe Flow." Reseachers have pondered turbulence in the flow of simple fluids such as water for more than 120 years of active research. Last year, two groups independently discovered traveling wave solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations for pipe flow. Both groups followed the physics-based computational method that Waleffe developed and used it to discover similar nonlinear waves in plane Couette and plane Poiseuille flows, the other two canonical shear flows. Then, late last year, an experimental group in the Netherlands found that the turbulent "puffs" observed since Reynolds' time are closely related to the traveling waves, as reported in the Science article. These observations confirm that the unstable traveling waves are key stepping stones toward further understanding of turbulence. Waleffe's research was also mentioned in the February 2004 issue of Physics Today.
Engineering Professional Development Professor Emeritus C. Allen Wortley has been named a fellow of the National Society of Professional Engineers. He received the designation in honor of "exemplary service to the profession, the community, and the society."
Engineering Professional Development Professor Emeritus Willis Long has won the Attwood Associate Award from the U.S. National Committee of CIGRE (International Council on Large Electric Systems). The award is presented to individuals who have made notable contributions to CIGRE over an extended period of time.
Content by perspective@engr.wisc.edu
Date last modified: Friday, 10-Jun-2005 15:29:43 CDT
Date created: 29-Nov-2004
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