Faculty Notes -- Engineering News: Vanderbilt University School of Engineering

Vanderbilt University School of Engineering News

Faculty Notes

Jerry Collins, research associate professor, BME, has been invited to chair a session on "Theoretical Issues of Modeling" at the 7th Mathematical Models in Experimental Nutrition Conference to be held July 30-August 1, 2000, in State College, Pennsylvania.

Thomas A. Cruse, H. Fort Flowers professor, emeritus, ME, has been appointed to the Pentagon's USAF Scientific Advisory Board. The renewable two-year appointment as a consultant to the government will take Cruse to a number of Air Force facilities and laboratories where he will advise on strategies and solutions. Cruse also presented keynote lectures at the Congress on Computational Mechanics held in Boulder, Colorado, and the Symposium on Advances in Boundary Element Methods held in Krakow, Poland.

J. L. Davidson, professor, EE, MS, MOT, served as general chair and editor for the proceedings of "Diamonds VI," an international symposium on diamond materials, sponsored by the Electrochemical Society in October in Honolulu. Davidson served in this same capacity for the "Diamonds V" conference held in 1997 in Paris, France. He has been invited to join the founding editorial board of the newly formed scientific publication Journal of Wide Band Gap Materials, published by Technomics Publishing Company.

J. Michael Fitzpatrick, professor, CS, gave two invited talks this past summer, one entitled "Validation of Registration Algorithms: A Case Study" at a scientific meeting on Medical Image Understanding and Analysis '99 at Oxford University, UK, on July 19. The other talk, "Solved and Unsolved Problems in Point-Based, Rigid Registration," was delivered at the International Workshop on Biomedical Image Registration in Bled, Slovenia, on August 31.

Ephrahim Garcia, associate professor, ME, in April gave a plenary lecture entitled "Future Adaptive Structures" at the AIAA Structures, Structural Dynamics, and Materials Conference. Garcia, on leave from Vanderbilt, is at DARPA's Defense Sciences Office, where he is developing two new programs for the agency. The Compact Hybrid Actuators program involves developing small, efficient actuators based on emerging smart materials technology. The second, the Soldier Enhancement program, is aimed at building wearable robotic systems and developing actuated exoskeletons that will augment human speed, strength, and endurance. He has been named an editorial board member to Smart Structures and Materials.

William Hofmeister, research associate professor, ChE, a member of the Journal of Metals (JOM) advisory committee for the Metals, Minerals, and Materials Society, was editorial advisor for the July issue of JOM-e, an electronic, web only publication. The e-journal is available to the public at http://www.tms.org/ pubs/journals/JOM/jom.html.

Barry D. Lichter, professor emeritus, ME, MS, MOT, has been reappointed as a member of the board of review for Metallurgical and Materials Transactions. He is spending fall semester as a guest scientist and lecturer on the faculty of applied science at the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.

Eugene LeBoeuf, assistant professor, CEE, presented an invited lecture on July 14 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The title of his presentation was "Glass Transition of Soil and Sediment Organic Matter and Their Influence on Sequestration Behavior of Organic Compounds." He presented another invited lecture at the University of Illinois on September 30 entitled "A Multiple Spectroscopic Investigation of the Electron Exchange Capacity of Humic Substances."

Lloyd Massengill, associate professor, EE, CE, gave an invited technical lecture at the fifth European Conference on Radiation and its Effects on Components and Systems (RADECS 99), held in Fontevraud, France, September 13-17. The title of his talk was "Opportunities for Single Event Modeling in Commercial Technologies."

Ronald Schrimpf, professor, EE, served as general chairman of the 36th annual IEEE Int. Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference held July 12-16 in Norfolk, Virginia. The conference attracted approximately 500 technical attendees from around the world. It is the premier international conference dealing with radiation effects in electronic materials, devices, circuits, and systems.

Richard Shiavi, professor, BME, EE, and Benoit Dawant, associate professor, EE, CE, are associate editors for IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

Associate Dean Bob Stammer, associate professor, CEE, led a Middle Tennessee transportation engineering delegation to Las Vegas in early August for the 69th annual meeting of the International Institute of Transportation Engineers. Stammer will co-chair the ITE 2000 annual meeting to be held at Opryland Hotel.

Taylor Wang, Centennial Professor, MS, was an invited speaker at the 7th World Congress of the International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association held August 22-25 in Sydney, Australia. His topic was the "Fundamentals of Encapsulation and Immunoisolation."