The occasion of the 70th birthday of John O’Connell, Harry Douglas Forsyth Professor of Chemical Engineering, was honored with a Festschrift issue in the Centennial Year Publication of the American Chemical Society’s “Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research” (Vol. 47, No. 15). Thirty-one papers from 14 different countries on a wide range of chemical engineering subjects were included. In addition, there will be three 70th-Birthday Celebration sessions at the Centennial Year Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in Philadelphia in November, with 19 invited presentations by Professor O’Connell’s colleagues and friends.

Professors Robert J. Davis and Matthew Neurock are investigators on the Chemical Catalyst Design Team of Iowa State University’s National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center for Biorenewable Chemicals.

Giorgio Carta, professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Inchan Kwon and Michael Shirts are new faculty members in the Chemical Engineering department.

Cornelius O. Horgan, Wills Johnson Professor of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, presented an invited plenary lecture titled “Mechanics of Strain-Stiffening Elastomers and Biomaterials” at the Third Canadian Conference on Nonlinear Solid Mechanics (CanCNSM 2008), held at the University of Toronto in June. Professor Horgan also served on the International Scientific Organizing Committee for the conference and was the co-organizer and chair of a symposium titled “Advances in Constitutive Modeling of Nonlinear Solids.”

Professor Marek-Jerzy Pindera, with Professor G.H. Paulina of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, organized a special issue of the leading “Journal of Applied Mechanics” honoring National Academy of Engineering member Professor Fazil Erdogan in recognition of his seminal contributions to the mixed b-v problems in heterogeneopus and functionally graded media. Professor Pindera organized the Liviu Librescu Memorial Sessions with Professor Pier Marzocca of Clarkson University, scheduled for a Virginia Tech Mechanics Conference in May.

Assistant Professor Kim Hazelwood received an NSF Faculty Early CAREER Development Award for her research project titled “An Evolutionary Approach to Hardware/Software Collaborative Design.” She was also awarded a Woodrow Wilson Faculty Fellowship.

Assistant Professor Jason D. Lawrence received an NSF Faculty Early CAREER Development Award for his research project titled “The Inverse Shade Tree Framework for Material Acquisition, Analysis, and Design.”

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) elected AT&T Professor of Computer Science and University Professor William A. Wulf as chair of its board of trustees. He has served on the ABI board of trustees for 11 years. Professor Wulf is the former president of the National Academy of Engineering.

Professor John C. Bean received the 2009 IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award “For providing opportunities to both undergraduate and pre-college students for discovery through both laboratory projects and virtual experiments on the Web.”

Assistant Professor Ben H. Calhoun was selected as a Teaching and Technology Initiative Fellow for 2008–09. His project titled “Software Infrastructure for Collaborative Engineering Design” will help establish real-world design experiences and institutional memory for student projects.

Lucien Carr III Professor Joe Campbell was elected a Fellow of the International Engineering Consortium. He also received the IEEE John Tyndall Award for his seminal contributions to the understanding, design and telecommunications systems implementation of avalanche photodiodes.

A paper written by Assistant Professor Nathan Swami, with Fernanda Alanis Camacho (’11), was published as the feature cover-page paper in the December 7, 2008, issue of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s “Journal of Materials Chemistry.”

Associate Professor Sean R. Agnew received the first Magnesium Research award by the GKSS Laboratory in Geestacht, Germany.

Professor Raul A. Baragiola delivered the Lindhard Lecture at the 2008 International Conference on Atomic Collisions in Solids, and he received a lifetime achievement award for his work on ion-solid interactions.

Professor John J. Dorning was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. This is among the highest professional distinctions awarded to engineers. It honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice or education, and to the pioneering of new and developing fields, making major advancements in traditional fields, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.

Professor James A. Howe published a third, revised edition of the textbook “Transmission Electron Microscopy and Diffractometry of Materials” (Springer-Verlag, Berlin/Heidelberg) with co-author Brent T. Fultz. Professor Howe also served as Universitäts-Professor für Experimental Materials Science — Nanostructured Materials, at Universität Wien, held in Austria in 2007.

Professor Robert E. Johnson became a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Professor Robert G. Kelly served as a consultant for the Pentagon Memorial, which was unveiled in October 2008.

Professor John R. Scully was elected a Fellow of the American Society for Metals.

Associate Professor Hilary Bart-Smith received a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative Program award for her research on creation of an autonomous underwater vehicle that would mimic the graceful motions of a manta ray.

Associate Professor Richard W. Kent was elected a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and received the SAE Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award.

Professor Eric H. Maslen gave the opening keynote presentation, titled “Smart Machine Advances in Rotating Machinery,” at the Ninth International Conference on Vibrations in Rotating Machinery, sponsored by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Professor Pamela M. Norris was selected as one of only 20 finalists in the National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship Program. She also delivered the keynote address, titled “Scattering Processes Affecting Thermal Boundary Conductance at Solid-Solid Interfaces in Nanomaterial Systems,” at the Micro/Nanoscale Heat Transfer Conference in Tainan, Taiwan, in January 2008.

Associate Professor John K. “Jack” Brown received funding from the University to offer a University Seminar on Energy and Society during the Spring 2009 semester.

“Technology in World History,” a seven-book series edited by W. Bernard “Bernie” Carlson and published by Oxford University Press, received the Sally Hacker Prize from the international Society for the History of Technology. The award recognizes the best book on the history of technology directed to a broad audience.

MIT Press published Professor Deborah Johnson’s book “Technology and Society, Engineering Our Sociotechnical Future,” which she co-edited with James M. Wetmore.

Assistant Professor Reid Bailey was selected as a University Teaching Fellow. A J-term course in Argentina that he will lead was selected by the International Studies Office to run in January 2009. The course will take place during the semester break and will focus on cultural differences in engineering and business through the application of systems engineering methodology, modeling, and analysis to real-world cases in Mendoza, Argentina.

Associate Professor Ellen Bass, with Ann Bisantz of the University at Buffalo, organized the Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making (CEDM) Technical Group's track at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society in September. The 13 technical sessions included discussion panels and lecture sessions on topics such as the design of successful teams; automation design for trust and reliance; extensions and applications of cognitive work analysis; cognitive aspects of CEDM; supporting complex decision making, information display and cognitive artifacts; and visual search and identification in complex systems. CEDM also contributed nine posters and two demonstrations highlighting multiple views of intelligence data and the collection of process data to support Air Force instructors.

Associate Professor Stephanie Guerlain presented her research “Cognitive Engineering: It’s Not What You Think” at the 2008 Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, hosted by the National Academy of Engineering in Albuquerque, N.M.

The Engineering School has formed a strategic alliance with SAIC, a leading employer of SEAS graduates and a Fortune 500 scientific, engineering and technology applications company. The alliance includes a master research agreement, scholars research stipends, scholarships and sponsorship of a cyber-security lecture series hosted by the Engineering School.

The National Association of Corrosion Engineers has awarded the 2009 NACE Distinguished Organization Award to the Center for Electrochemical Science and Engineering (CESE). This is only the second time that a distinguished organization award has been given to a university in the 60-year history of NACE. The CESE is a multi-disciplinary research effort that includes activities in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering, as well as interactions with the Charles L. Brown Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Physics in the College. Co-directors of the center are Professors Robert G. Kelly (MSE) and John R. Scully (MSE). Others include Associate Professor James M. Fitzgerald (MSE), Professor and Chair Richard P. Gangloff (MSE), Professor John L. Hudson (ChE), Assistant Professor Steven McIntosh, and Associate Professor Giovanni Zangari (MSE).

The Department of Chemical Engineering celebrated its Centennial in September with a symposium, tours and a dinner reception.