Clark School Accomplishments Spring 2002

Significant Faculty Awards, Prizes and Recognitions

Drs. Rajeev Barua, and Reza Ghodssi, Assistant Professors of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Institute for Systems Research (ISR); Dr. Min Wu, Assistant Professor of ECE and University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS); and Drs. Jennifer Becker and Hubert Montas, Assistant Professors of Biological Resources Engineering, received the prestigious Early CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Dr. Inder Chopra, Alfred Gessow Professor of Aerospace Engineering, received the AIAA Structures, Structural Dynamics and Materials Award for 2002 for his original contributions to rotary-wing aeromechanics, modeling of composite and bearingless main rotors, and development of smart rotor concepts.
The Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center was selected for the American Helicopter Society's Grover E. Bell Award this year. The Center was given this prestigious award for its pioneering fundamental contributions in smart structures technologies that had a successful transition into helicopter systems. The faculty members who have contributed to the Gessow Rotorcraft Center are: Drs. E. Atkins (AE), J. Baeder (AE), B. Balachandran (ME), A. Baz (ME), R. Celi (AE), A. Dasgupta (ME), A. Gessow (AE), I. Chopra (AE), P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR), J. Leishman (AE), D. Pines (AE), L.G. Salamanca-Riba (MNE), R. Sanner (AE), F. Schmitz (AE), J. Sirkis (ME), A. Vizzini (AE), N. Wereley (AE) and M. Wuttig (MNE).
Mr. Philip Tarnoff, Director of the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology, received the Theodore M. Mattson Award for his significant contributions to the transportation profession at the Annual Transportation Research Conference in D.C. This award is the highest award in the profession.
Dr. Jan Sengers, Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering, was elected Academician Emeritus of the International Academy of Refrigeration.
Dr. Satyandra K. Gupta, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and ISR received the Literati Club's Highly Commended Award for a paper he published in Assembly Automation in 2001. Dr. Gupta's co-authors are C. Paredis, R. Sinha, and P. Brown. The award is sponsored by Emerald, (MCB UP Ltd.), the British publisher of management and library and information services journals. http://www.enme.umd.edu/news/may02/literati.html.
Dr. Arthur Bergles, Research Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is the recipient of ASHRAE's Louise and Bill Holladay Distinguished Fellow Award. This award recognizes outstanding contributions to the well-being and growth of the Society by ASHRAE fellows, and continuing preeminence in engineering or research work.
Dr. Reinhard Radermacher was inducted into the Engineering Innovation Hall of Fame for his innovation in the design of refrigeration systems and technology, making refrigeration systems run more efficiently and more environmentally friendly. Innovation Hall of Fame Exhibit unveiling story at: http://www.enme.umd.edu/news/may02/radermacher.html.
Drs. James Milke, Frederick Mowrer, and José Torero, Associate Professors of Fire Protection Engineering, along with Steven Wolin, Noah Ryder, and Frederick Leprince, received the 2002 Harry C. Bigglestone Award for Excellence in Communication of Fire Protection Concepts.
Dr. Peter Kofinas, Associate Professor of Materials and Nuclear Engineering, received the 2001 Outstanding Invention Award in the Physical Sciences category from the Office of Technology Commercialization at the University of Maryland.
Dr. Anthony Ephremides, Professor of ECE and ISR, has been named to the university's Academy for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
Dr. William Levine, Professor of ECE, has been named vice president of the American Automatic Control Council (AACC) for 2002-2003.
Dr. Arthur Johnson, received the John M. White Award, for the best written paper in Respiratory Protection, American Industrial Hygiene Association.
Dr. Norman Wereley, Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering, and Materials Modification, Inc. received an Outstanding Achievement Award from NSF for "Magneto-Rheological Fluids for Sensor Actuator Systems".

Faculty Election to the Grade of Fellow

Dr. Jan Sengers, Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering, was elected Fellow of the World Innovation Foundation, an organization founded as The Institute of National Economic Enrichment and Development (INEED) in 1992 by Nobel Laureate Glenn T. Seaborg.

Student Accomplishments

A team of Clark School students competed in the SAE AeroDesign East Heavy Lift competition in Titusville, FL. Student teams design and build an airplane that is restricted to a given engine and must take off in 200 ft and land in 400 ft intact. The plane must carry as much weight as possible and have a payload volume of 300 cubic inch. This year's team consisted of: Brandon Fitchett, Brain Nestico, Mahamane Toure, Baek Huh, Kevin Wawroski, Will Woolford, and Dan King. Kevin Uleck was the graduate student advisor and the team pilot. Dr. Anthony Vizzini, Associate Professor of AE and director of composites research lab was the team's faculty advisor. The University of Maryland Heavy Lift Team earned 2nd place in the design competition and flew to 2nd place in the overall competition flying nearly 22 lbs. A total of 33 teams competed this year.
Competing for the first time in the ChemE Car competition at the Mid-Atlantic Regional AIChE Meeting in March, a team of Clark School chemical engineering students took second place overall.
Nicole Bleckwenn and Shannon Kramer from Chemical Engineering won Best Paper Awards at the Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, held in Reno, NV. Kramer's award was for the best oral presentation in her session: In vivo Downregulation of Host Function as a Tool for Enhancing Yield. Bleckwenn's award was for the best poster presentation in the division poster session: Investigation of the VOTE Vaccinia Virus System for Recombinant Protein Production. Dr. William Bentley, Professor of Chemical Engineering was the faculty advisor of both students.
Graduate Students in the Gessow Rotorcraft Center won six of 10 Vertiflight Fellowships from the American Helicopter Society. The winning students were: Ronald Couch, Tracy Duvall, Maria Ribera, Gaurav Gopalan, Marc Gervais and Beatrice Roget.
A cross-disciplinary team from the University of Maryland was chosen to be one of twenty to compete in the 2002 Solar Decathlon. This two-year planning, design, and building project culminates with a one-week contest on the National Mall in Washington, DC in the fall of 2002. Competitors will be required to provide all the energy for an entire household, including a home-based business and the transportation needs of the household and business. During the week of the event, only the solar energy available within the perimeter of each house may be used to generate the power needed to compete in the Solar Decathlon contests. The faculty advisors for this project are Drs. Jungho Kim and Omar Ramahi from Mechanical Engineering.
Jonathan Neumann, an ECE graduate student working at the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP), was awarded a scholarship from the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA). Neumann is working under the direction of Dr. Patrick O'Shea, Associate Professor of ECE and Director of IREAP.
Rohit Grover, an ECE Ph.D. student, won a 2001 Graduate Student Fellowship from the Lasers and Electro-Optics Society (LEOS) of IEEE.
Tom Carley, ECE Graduate student, received a 2002-2003 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. The fellowship award is sponsored by the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Science and Technology and the Office of Naval Research and administered by the American Society for Engineering Education.
Tia Gao, graduating senior from ECE, has won a 2002 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
Alan Batac, Latosha Marshall, Meghan Nickerson, and Theresa Smith, under the guidance of Dr. Paul Shreuders of Biological Resources Engineering Department, won the BMES undergraduate design and research award competition for their work on the GlucaGun Auto-Injection Device.
Lily S. Wong, an undergraduate Biological Resources Engineering student, received a Gates Millennium Scholarship.
Gaurav Shah, a student in Mechanical Engineering, received one of 50 Jack Kent Cooke Scholarships. These 50 men and women, ages 19 to 50, represent the "first class" of Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Scholars, will receive up to $50,000 a year for up to six years to pursue graduate studies in their chosen field at an accredited university http://www.enme.umd.edu/news/may02/shah.html.
Sheila C. Luke, a graduate student in Materials and Nuclear Engineering, received the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship.

Major New Grants

Faculty from the Clark School of Engineering were successful in securing a number of major and highly competitive block grants from the DoD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) and Multidisciplinary Research Initiative (MRI) Programs:
- Drs. Stuart Milner, Senior Research Scientist (ISR), Christopher Davis (ECE), K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR) and Mark Shayman (ECE) have been awarded a $4.3M Air Force MURI for Scalable Multilayer Control of Joint Battlespace Networks.
- Dr. Patrick O'Shea, Associate Professor of ECE and Director of the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, has received a $6.25M grant for his research in high-power short pulse free-electron lasers. The University of Maryland is the lead in this grant, collaborating with the Naval Postgraduate School and the Science Applications International Corporation. The five-year grant is part of the High Energy Laser (HEL) MRI.
- Dr. Greg Jackson from Mechanical Engineering with Dr. Bryan Eichhorn in Chemistry are Maryland's investigators in a MURI on Fundamental Chemistry and Physics of Direct-Electrochemical Oxidation in Solid-Oxide Fuel Cells. The other collaborating institutions are the Colorado School of Mines and CalTech.
- Dr. William Fourney, Professor and Chair of Aerospace Engineering and Jaime Cardenas-Garcia, Visiting Professor of Mechanical Engineering, are Maryland's investigators in a MURI on Multifunctional Materials. The lead institution on this award is Georgia Tech.
- Dr. Rama Chellappa, Professor of ECE and UMIACS, is Maryland's Principal Investigator for a new Army Research Laboratory MURI on the Science of Land Target Spectral Signatures. The five-year, $5M project will advance the understanding of the physics of hyperspectral signatures and discriminants for object detection and recognition. The lead institution for this MURI is the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Maryland, the University of Hawaii, Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of Florida and Clark Atlanta University are the other participants.
The National Science Foundation has awarded two new major Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Sites: one in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the area of Telecommunications with a $1,000,000 budget over five years (PI and Co-PI Drs. Steve Marcus and Ray Liu) and one in the Department of Chemical Engineering in the area of Molecular and Cellular Bioengineering with a budget of $500,000 (PI and co-PI Drs. Timothy Barbari and William Bentley). Both cases involve a significant number of faculty from the participating departments. The establishment of these two programs significantly adds to the already strong undergraduate research programs in the Clark School of Engineering.
A novel program designed to encourage the retention of undergraduate women students in the sciences and engineering was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Clark School of Engineering for $1,000,000 over three years. Co-PIs are Dr. Linda Schmidt, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and ISR, and Dr. Janet Schmidt, Director of Student Research; the program is administered by Ms. Paige Smith, Director of the Women in Engineering Program. The program, called RISE: Research Internships in Science and Engineering, has a research component for current women students as well as a 'fast start' two week orientation program for incoming freshmen women.
Dr. Carol Espy-Wilson, Associate Professor of ECE and ISR, is participating in a $1,500,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders for research on Acoustics of Vocal Tract Shapes of Liquids. The research is being done jointly with Suzanne Boyce at the University of Cincinnati and Mark Tiede, who has a joint appointment at Haskins Laboratory in Connecticut and in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT.

Alumni Accomplishments

ECE Alumnus and Secretary of the Navy Gordon R. England received the President's Distinguished Alumnus Award at the University of Maryland's Alumni Association Awards Gala on April 6. England, who earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the university in 1961, was honored for "achieving national recognition for excellence in his profession and field."
Dr. Robert E. Fischell, (Honorary Ph.D. 1996 and M.S. 1953 Physics; Member Engineering Board of Visitors) was awarded the 2001 Major F. Riddick, Jr. Entrepreneurship Award for his support and encouragement of student entrepreneurs.
Dr. Richard Stamper, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, is one of the nation's outstanding new teachers, according to the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). Stamper has been selected as the recipient of a national ASEE award presented annually to faculty who have shown a strong commitment to mechanics education. Dr. Stamper received his doctorate from the University of Maryland in 1997 and joined the Rose-Hulman faculty in 1998 after teaching at Auburn University.
Dr. Matthew James (Ph.D. '88, Applied Math) who was a student of Dr. John Baras at ISR, has been named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He was cited for contributions to the theory of robust control design for nonlinear systems. He is currently Reader and Acting Head of Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

Other

Four distinguished senior faculty members joined the Clark School:
- Dr. Mikhail Anisimov joined the Chemical Engineering Department as Professor of Chemical Engineering, holding an affiliate appointment with the Institute for Physical Science and Technology. Dr. Anisimov is a world-class researcher in the area of chemical thermodynamics, with emphasis on critical phenomena in small molecule systems. The applications of Dr. Anisimov's work to complex fluids, mixture of self-assembled molecules, polymers and biological molecules will likely play an important role in some of the basic building blocks of nanostructure materials. As such, the recruitment of Dr. Anisimov is a significant step in building a strong nanotechnology program in the University of Maryland.
- Dr. Avram Bar-Cohen joined the Mechanical Engineering Department as Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Department Chair. Prior to joining the University of Maryland, Dr. Bar-Cohen was a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Center for Development of Technological Leadership, University of Minnesota, and held the H. W. Sweat Chair in Technological Leadership. Dr. Bar-Cohen's general area of expertise is heat transfer. He is internationally recognized in the area of cooling of electronic systems by emersion in dielectric liquids.
- Dr. Jeong Kim, former senior corporate executive for Lucent Technologies and founder of Yurie Systems, Inc., has joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Materials and Nuclear Engineering as Professor of the Practice. Dr. Kim brings with him a wealth of knowledge and experience in optical and wireless telecommunications.
- Dr. Katepalli Sreenivasan joined the University as Professor and Director of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology. Dr. Sreenivasan has also been appointed as a Distinguished University Professor and as a Glenn L. Martin Professor of Engineering. In addition, he has been appointed Professor in the Departments of Physics and Mechanical Engineering. He comes to the University from Yale University, where he was Harold W. Cheel Professor and Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, as well as Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, and a member of the Center for Computational Ecology. Dr. Sreenivasan is one of the world's premier researchers in fluid dynamics and turbulence. He has a long list of prestigious awards and prizes, including election to membership in the National Academy of Engineering.
The Clark School continues its aggressive faculty recruitment. The following faculty members have accepted our offers and will join the University during the 2002-03 academic year:
- Dr. John Fisher, Ph.D. in Bioengineering (specialization area: tissue engineering) from Rice University, will join the Chemical Engineering Department as Assistant Professor.
- Dr. Maria Klapa, Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering (specialization area: metabolic engineering) from MIT, will join the Chemical Engineering Department as Assistant Professor.
- Dr. Riccardo Medina, Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (specialization area: analysis and reliability of structures) from Stanford University, will join the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department as Assistant Professor.
Clark School Ph.D. graduates assume prestigious positions:
- Sami Tantawi, 1992 Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, will join Stanford University, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) as Associate Professor. Dr. Tantawi's Ph.D. Advisor was Dr. Victor Granatstein of ECE/IREAP.
- Matthew P. DeLisa, 2000 Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, has received offers for a tenure track assistant professor position at the following institutions: University of Michigan, Cornell University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Delaware, among several others. His Ph.D. Advisor was Dr. William Bentley of Chemical Engineering/ERC/UMBI.
- Hua O. Wang, 1993 Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, has accepted an offer to join Boston University's Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as Associate Professor with Tenure. He will be assuming his duties in Fall 2002. Dr. Wang did his doctoral work in the ECE Department and the ISR under Dr. Abed's supervision. He is currently Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University, and is also Program Director for Systems and Control at the Army Research Office in Durham, NC.
- Jie Chen, 1998 Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, has accepted an offer from Brown University as Assistant Professor. His Ph.D. Advisor was Dr. Ray Liu of ECE/ISR.
- Wade Trappe, 2002 Ph.D. in Applied Math and affiliated with ISR, has accepted an offer from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Rutgers University. His Ph.D. Advisor was Dr. Ray Liu of ECE/ISR.
- Hamid Jafarkhani, 1997 Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of California, Irvine. His Ph.D. Advisor was Dr. Nariman Farvardin of ECE/ISR.
- Ranjan Srivastava, 1999 Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, will be starting at the University of Connecticut later this summer as an Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering. His Ph.D. Advisor was Dr. William Bentley of Chemical Engineering/ERC/UMBI.
- Thomas Vossen, 2002 Ph.D. in Business Administration and affiliated with ISR, has accepted an offer to join the University of Colorado at Boulder as an Assistant Professor this Fall. His appointment will be within the Systems Division in the Leeds School of Business. His co-advisors are Dr. Michael Ball (Business and ISR) and Dr. Dana Nau (CS and ISR).
- Nikolaos Kanlis, 2002 Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and affiliated with ISR, has accepted an offer from Texas A&M, Kingsville, as Assistant Professor. His Ph.D. Advisor was Shihab Shamma of ECE/ISR.
Entrepreneurial Programs continue to flourish:
- The Hinman CEOs Program conducted a second year of operation with a much expanded scope of activities.
- The highly successful second annual Business Plan Competition was conducted with a Technology Advancement Program (TAP) company, Anthrotronix, Inc. winning the top prize in the Small Business category.
- Fundamentals of Technology Startup Ventures, the first such graduate course to be offered in the Clark School was fully subscribed with students eager to learn how to start technology businesses.
- The "Successful Faculty Companies Series" was initiated in which faculty who have started and grown companies discuss lessons learned.
- Protein-One, Inc. and BioSet, Inc., two high-potential bioscience companies were accepted into the (TAP program and Echo-Dynamics graduated.
The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) recognized the Clark School's E@M Magazine with a national award for Periodical Publishing Improvement. In its annual Circle of Excellence Awards program, CASE asks its 3,000-plus member institutions to submit their best alumni relations, communications and development projects and publications for peer review. The winners are recognized as models of excellence that inspire and motivate other advancement professionals to new levels of excellence.