What's New at ESM?

Lei Fang (ESM Ph.D. student) was named a finalist in the Society of Engineering Science 2008 student paper competition.

Fang's abstract, "An electrical technique to measure in-situ contact area during instrumented indentation and its application of characterizing materials that pile-up," was selected as one of the top 16 abstracts out of 160 submitted to the SES 2008 student paper competition.

In July 2008, the Powder Metal Industry held its 44th year of offering the Basic Powder Metallurgy Short Course in State College. Course participants came from many industry segments including parts fabricators, jewelry manufacturers, medical parts end users, friction component manufacturers, abrasive component fabricators and oil drilling fabricators. Penn State's Center for Innovative Sintered Products (CISP) hosted course participants in a tour of the Center's facilities that included a presentation of research activities.

Dr. Bernhard R. Tittmann is teaching EMch 597A - "Physical Principles in Biomedical Ultrasonics" fall semester 2008. This graduate level course addresses the physical principles of advanced ultrasonic imaging and quantitative data acquisition techniques in the field of biology and medicine.

For more information contact Dr. Tittmann at 5-7827 or by e-mail at brt4@psu.edu.

Congratulations to Ashutosh Tewari who has accepted a position with United Technology Research Center (East Hartford, Connecticut) as a Senior Research Scientist/Engineer with the Systems Dynamics and Optimization Division.

Dr. Bruce Gluckman, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics and neurosurgery, along with Nick Chernyy, graduate student in the department of engineering science and mechanics, will be attending the International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology conference in Vancouver, Canada from August 19 - 23, 2008. To learn more about the IEEE conference, please visit their website.

Dr. Lawrence Freidman, assistant professor in engineering science and mechanics, will be attending the SPIE Optics and Photonics conference in San Diego, California from August 11 - 15, 2008. To learn more about the SPIE meeting, please visit their website.

Hongyan Yuan, graduate student in engineering science and mechanics, under the advising of Dr. Sulin Zhang, attended a one-week summer school on Biomechanics at the California Institute of Technology from July 20 - 26, 2008 in Pasadena, California.

Sean Pursel, graduate student in engineering science and mechanics, under the advising of Dr. Mark Horn, will be presenting a paper titled “Growth Characterization of Magnesium and Magnesium Alloy Sculptured Thin Films,” at the SPIE Optics and Photonics Nanostructured Thin Films meeting on August 10 - 15, 2008 in San Diego, California. To read more about the meeting, please visit their website.

Jonathan Pitt, graduate student in engineering science and mechanics, under the advising of Professor Fancesco Costanzo, presented a paper on “Theory and Simulation of Brittle Damage Model in Thermelastodynamics.” The paper was presented at the 8th World Congress on Computational Mechanics on June 29 - July 5, 2008 in Venice, Italy.

To learn more about the conference, please visit their website.

Michael Motyka, graduate researcher in engineering science and mechanics, under the advising of Professor Akhlesh Lakhtakia, is to present a paper at the SPIE conference on nanostructured thin films on August 8 - 15, 2008, in San Diego, CA.

To learn more about the SPIE conference, please visit their website.