Ghodssi Named UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher

Institute for Systems Research Director and Herbert Rabin Distinguished Chair in Engineering Reza Ghodssi has been selected as a 2014-2015 Distinguished Scholar-Teacher by the University of Maryland.

The Distinguished Scholar-Teacher program recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated outstanding scholarly achievement along with equally outstanding accomplishments as teachers. Nominees for the award are selected by their peers; the winners are chosen by a panel of former Distinguished Scholar-Teachers. Ghodssi is one of only a handful of faculty members so honored this year. The Scholar-Teachers bring a passion for learning to their colleagues and students, and serve as models of what a professor at a fine research university should be. Winners receive a cash award to support instructional and scholarly activities, and make a public presentation in the fall semester on a topic of scholarly interest.

Ghodssi joined the University of Maryland in 2000. He is Director of the MEMS Sensors and Actuators Lab (MSAL) in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Maryland (UMD). He is also affiliated with the Fischell Department of Bioengineering (BIOE), the Maryland NanoCenter, the University of Maryland Energy Research Center (UMERC), and the Materials Science and Engineering Department (MSE) at UMD.

Ghodssi's research interests are in the design and development of microfabrication technologies and their applications to micro/nano devices and systems for chemical and biological sensing, small-scale energy conversion and harvesting. At the University of Wisconsin, his Ph.D. thesis was focused on development of a high aspect ratio microfabrication process for an electrostatic driven MEMS device using x-ray lithography and LIGA technology. At MIT, he developed the building block MEMS fabrication technologies for a microturbine generator device, and also served as an Assistant Director on that project. At UMD, his research group has pioneered the development of next generation PowerMEMS devices supported on micro-ball bearing, MEMS-based gray-scale technologies and the use of novel III-V optical MEMS devices and systems for chemical and biological detection.

Ghodssi's research has been funded by Army Research Lab (ARL), Department of Energy (DoE), National Science Foundation (NSF), Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and R.W. Deutsch Foundation. Ghodssi has over 110 scholarly journal publications, is the co-editor of the "MEMS Materials and Processes Handbook" published in 2011, and is an associate editor for the Journal of Micorelectromechanical Systems (JMEMS) and Biomedical Microdevices (BMMD). Dr. Ghodssi has received the 2001 UMD George Corcoran Award, the 2002 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and the 2003 UMD Outstanding Systems Engineering Faculty Award. He was among 100 of the nation's outstanding engineers invited to attend the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium in 2007 and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) EU-U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium in 2010.