Faculty News

Vicki Bier, associate professor of industrial engineering and engineering physics, received the 2000 Outstanding Service Award Dec. 4 from the Society for Risk Analysis at its annual meeting in Arlington, Virginia. The award honors Bier's contributions to the society. In addition to other roles, she has served on several of its nomination and awards committees and now is in her second three-year term as engineering editor of its journal, Risk Analysis.

The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) has selected Assistant Professor Wendy Crone, to receive the Ferdinand P. Beer and E. Russell Johnston Jr. Outstanding New Mechanics Educator Award for her contributions to mechanics education. In addition to her classroom and research activities, Crone is involved with UW-Madison's Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Residential Program, and participates in many departmental and college outreach activities.

The Department of Energy recently awarded Wendy Crone nearly $1 million over three years to study nanostructured shape-memory alloys. The work could lead to advances in such areas as miniaturized devices and microfluidics. With co-principal investigators Walt Drugan (EP), Art Ellis (chemistry) and John Perepezko (materials science and engineering), Crone hopes to devise methods to synthesize the materials and characterize and understand their behavior.

Associate Professor Doug Henderson, has been appointed interim assistant dean for diversity affairs in the College of Engineering. In this new role he will be responsible for recruitment and retention programs of women and underrepresented students.

Professors Amit Lal, (ECE), Doug Henderson, (EP) and Jake Blanchard, (EP) have been awarded a major DARPA, grant (up to $1.6 million over 3 years) for their work on developing nuclear microbatteries for MEMS applications.

Kerchung Shaing is a new senior scientist in the department. He comes to the college from the Institute for Fusion Studies at the University of Texas at Austin through a three-year, $546,500 Department of Energy grant. He is an internationally recognized fusion plasma theorist who will collaborate with scientists in a number of UW-Madison fusion programs — the Pegasus (EP), HSX (ECE) and MST (Physics) experimental programs, the Fusion Technology Institute, and the Center for Plasma Theory and Computation.

Professor Jerry Kulcinski, will serve as associate dean for research in the College of Engineering. He will remain as director of the Fusion Technology Institute and continue to teach and do research.

Wisconsin Distinguished Professor of Engineering Physics Rod Lakes' research on creating materials with negative stiffness recently appeared in a story on the Physical Review Focus website. Lakes' research made its way to the site, which strives to explain science to a general audience, from the March 26 issue of the American Physical Society's Physical Review Letters. He reports that, in theory, scientists can dramatically increase a material's overall positive stiffness or vibration damping by peppering it with small bubbles of negative stiffness. In complementary experimental work, he has proven the concept. The advance may be used to make more rigid airplane wings, quieter cars and perhaps even temporary substitute tendons. You can view the complete story at focus.aps.org/v7/st13.html.

Professor and Associate Dean Mike Corradini received a Marquette University College of Engineering 2001 Professional Achievement Award. Mike received a BS degree from Marquette in 1975.

UW-Madison has selected Assistant Professor Rob Carpick as one of two campus nominees for a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship. He will compete with nominees from 49 universities for the fellowship, which recognizes young faculty in the natural sciences and engineering. The fellowship will provide $112,500 annually for research support to the selected faculty members for five years. Carpick's research interests include experimental nanomechanics and nanotribology; applying and developing advanced scanning-force microscopy tools; and nanoscale characterization of materials.

Sandia National Lab recently presented Bob Peterson, a senior scientist in the Fusion Technology Institute, an award for participating on its Pulsed Power Driven Inertial Fusion Energy Team, which developed a rep-rated z-pinch inertial fusion energy power plant concept. The plant would generate electricity via a system in which a motor delivers millions of amps to hundreds of tungsten wires arranged in a cylinder. The wires generate powerful X-rays that heat the plant's deuterium-tritium fuel, causing a thermonuclear reaction. Some of Peterson's work on the project has included studying how to make the process occur every two to three seconds, and how to harness the resulting electricity. According to Sandia, this plant may become the best approach for fusion energy for the nation.