Gautam Biswas, associate professor, EECS, has been appointed associate editor of two IEEE Transactions: IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering; IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics.

Benoit M. Dawant, associate professor, EECS, received an award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) for writing the most frequently cited paper published in the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging journal in 1993. This journal was ranked first in terms of impact within the biomedical engineering field by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) 1999 Journal Citation Report.

Charlotte F. Fischer, professor emerita, EECS, was honored with the dedication of the August issue of Molecular Physics, special edition, in honor of her 70th birthday.

J. Michael Fitzpatrick, professor, EECS, co-edited Handbook of Medical Imaging, Vol. 2: Medical Image Processing and Analysis, SPIE Press, July 2000.

Daniel M. Fleetwood, professor, EECS, has been selected as one of the Highly Cited Researchers by the Institute for Scientific Information, which lists the 250 most highly cited researchers in world in given scientific fields.

Kenneth Frampton, assistant professor, ME, has been appointed to chair of the Active Noise Control Technical Committee of the Noise Control and Acoustics Division of ASME.

Kenneth F. Galloway, dean and professor, EECS, led a delegation of engineering deans from universities across the state of Tennessee in visiting congressional offices in Washington, D.C. These briefings for members of Congress and their staffs focused on the impact of undergraduate and graduate engineering programs and funding for key federal research agencies.

William Hofmeister, research associate professor, ChE, received a Meritorious Achievement award from Sandia National Laboratory for his work with an industry/government team to develop a Laser Engineered Net Shape (LENS) process. He also gave an invited lecture "Thermal Imaging and Control of Laser Powder Deposition Processing" during an October seminar on Rapid Manufacturing: Laser and Powder-Based Technologies, sponsored by the Metal Powder Industry Federation, in Providence, R.I. Selected for the Metal Powder Industries Federation Program Committee for the 2001 Conference on Powdered and Particulate Materials, Hofmeister has also been reappointed to a three-year term on the Action in Education Team of the American Society for Metals.

Paul H. King, associate professor, BME, has been appointed to the Advisory Committee for the National Safety Council's Institute for Safety Through Design. The Committee typically consists of 12-15 members from business, industry, labor, academe and other fields who have demonstrated a particular "dedication to the vision and mission of the institute."

Sankaran Mahadevan, associate professor, CEE, received the 2000 NASA Next Generation Design Tools Award for his contributions to probabilistic analysis and design methods; he was reappointed chairman of the Committee on Dynamics and Controls of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE); he has been invited to serve as special editor of the ASCE Journal of Aerospace Engineering for the October 2001 issue; he and his graduate students presented five papers to the ASCE Probabilstic Mechanics Conference 2000 in Notre Dame, Ind., for which he was an organizing committee member; he presented "Fatigue Test Planning Using Reliability and Confidence Simulation" at the ISSAT Conference in August in Orlando; he presented "Probabilistic Design Optimization of a Multidisciplinary System" at the AIAA Conference on Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization in Long Beach, Calif. in September and he presented "Long Term Reliability of Structural Systems" during the NSF durability Workshop at Berkeley, Calif. In November, he presented "Reliability of Aging Structures" at the ASME Winter Annual Meeting in Orlando; and he gave an invited seminar on "Bayesian Techniques for System Reliability Assurance" at the Sandia National laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M.

Frank L. Parker, distinguished professor, CEE, delivered the keynote address to the International Atomic Energy Agency Scientific Forum held in September in Vienna, on "Radioactive Waste Management: Turning Options into Solutions."

Robert W. Pitz, professor and chair, ME, was recently elected Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering. The Fellow grade is the highest elected grade of membership within ASME, recognizing exceptional engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession.

Ales Prokop, research professor, ChE, was awarded a Special Appreciation Award by the United Engineering Foundation of New York (UEF) for his involvement as co-chair of the October UEF conference, "Bioartificial Organs III: Tissue Sourcing, Immunoisolation and Clinical Trials." He also delivered an invited lecture to the conference on "Bioartificial Organs in the 21st Century: Nanobiological Devices." Prokop is the founder of the conference series.

Stephen R. Schach, associate professor, EECS, published two textbooks: Classical and Object-Oriented Software Engineering with UML and C+++, Academic Service, Schoonhoven, The Netherlands, 2000; Software Engineering with Java, China Machine Press, Beijing/McGraw-Hill, 1999.

Ronald D. Schrimpf, professor, EECS, was an invited professor at the University of Montpellier, France, during summer 2000.

Julie E. Sharp, associate professor of the practice, ChE, published "E-mail as a Teaching Tool: More Perks than Problems" in the Proceedings of the American Society of Engineering Education 2000 Annual Conference in June in St. Louis. She also presented "E-teaching Simply with E-mail" at the Frontiers in Education 2000 31st Annual Conference in October in Kansas City, Miss.

Richard G. Shiavi, professor, BME, D. Mitchell Wilkes, associate professor, EECS, and Ph.D. candidate Asli Ozdas presented "Analysis of Fundamental Frequency for Near-term Suicidal Risk Assessment" to the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

R. E. Speece, Centennial Professor, CEE, received the 2000 "Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award" from Vanderbilt's Tau Beta Pi, the Engineering Student Honorary Society.

Robert E. Stammer Jr., associate professor, CEE, chaired the August international meeting of the Institute of Transportation Engineers in Nashville. Also, he and former Ph.D. student David R. McDonald Jr., published "Tollway Sign and Pavement Markings-Recommended Design Guidelines" in Transportation Quarterly, Volume 54, Number 3, Summer 2000.

James E. Wittig, associate professor, EECS, was awarded a $35,000 IBM Faculty Partnership Award, 2000, for work on magnetic thin films for hard drives.

New Faculty

J. Fritz Barnes, assistant professor, EECS, joined VUSE from the University of California at Davis, where he was research assistant. His research interests include experimental systems, emphasizing the areas of distributed computing, middleware, Internet and Web applications, networking protocols and electronic commerce. He earned an undergraduate degree from Oakland University and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Davis.

Robert E. Bodenheimer, assistant professor, EECS, came to VUSE from Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was postdoctoral fellow. His research interests include improving the quality and robustness of animations with emphasis on the animation of human figures. Bodenheimer earned his undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Tennessee and obtained his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology.

W. Timothy Holman, research associate professor, EECS, joins VUSE from the University of Arizona, where he was assistant professor. His research interests include analog circuit layout, simulation and verification; radiation-tolerant analog circuit design; integrated microsensors and high-performance operational amplifier and voltage reference design. Holman earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee and his master's and doctoral degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Michael I. Miga, assistant professor, BME, was research associate scientist at Dartmouth College prior to joining VUSE in December. His research interests include technology-guided therapy and mathematical modeling of biological systems. He obtained his undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Rhode Island and his Ph.D. from Dartmouth College.

Florence Sanchez, research assistant professor, CEE, joins VUSE from the National Institute of Applied Sciences in Lyon, France, where she was assistant professor. Her research focuses on experimental measurement and mathematical modeling of contaminant mass transfer in porous media. Sanchez obtained her undergraduate degree, her diploma of advanced studies (DEA) and her Ph.D. from the National Institute of Applied Sciences, Lyon.

Karthik K. Srinivasan, assistant professor, CEE, joined VUSE from the University of Texas at Austin. Srinivasan is interested in intelligent transportation systems and infrastructure network analysis and simulation. He earned his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, his master's degree from the University of California at Davis and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Mark A. Stremler, assistant professor, ME, came to VUSE from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was a research associate. His research interests include theoretical fluid mechanics, dynamics and applied mathematics, including microscale fluid dynamics, fluid mixing, vortex dynamics, dynamical systems, coherent structures in turbulent flow and applications of topology to fluid dynamics. He earned his undergraduate degree from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and his master's and doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Tivadar Szemethy Jr., research instructor, EECS, joins VUSE from Synergon Information Systems in Hungary, where he was senior consultant. His research interests include computer networks, systems programming, embedded systems, systems and networks supervision and management. Szemethy earned his master's from Technical University of Budapest.

Peter Volgyesi, research instructor, EECS, joined VUSE from Synergon Information Systems in Hungary. His research interests include network management, information security, algorithms and construction of operating systems and object-oriented environments. Volgyesi earned his master's degree from Technical University of Budapest.

In Memoriam

D. Franklin Farrar, professor emeritus, ME, died August 15 after a long illness. In his 33 years of tenure at Vanderbilt, he taught a variety of courses in internal combustion engines, aerodynamics, thermodynamics, manufacturing processes and design and other subjects. He served as director of the Cooperative Education Program, created in 1975, focusing his research primarily on aviation. He studied the biophysics of bird flight, funded by an NSF grant, and he did extensive work on glider design and construction. A private airplane pilot, he also served as a consultant in the area of appliance and machine design and accident analysis.