Diane Bierly, Engineering Science and Mechanics editorial assistant, has received a certificate of appreciation from the Pressure Vessel Pipe Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for "services to the PVP Division, the ASME JPVT Journal and her outstanding contributions in the development of ASME-PVP confereence webtools from 1999 to 2005.

The recognition was made at the 2005 ASME Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference Honors and Award Luncheon in Denver, Colorado, July 20, 2005.

Dr. Tony Huang joins Engineering Science and Mechanics as Assistant Professor fall semester 2005. Dr. Huang was awarded a masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from Xi'an Jiao Tong University in China and a doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He joins Penn State after completing a Postdoctoral Research appointment with the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of UCLA.

He is the developer of a molecular muscle-based nanomechanical actuator using hybrid top-down/bottom-up techniques; he invented an electrochemical method that is able to specifially detect gene mutations; and, he developed a spectroscopic technique to monitor in situ molecular signatures in molecular electronic/mechanical devices.

Dr. Huang's research will focus on biomedical nanoelectromechanical systems (BioNEMS); Nanomaterials and Naosystems; Molecular Mechanics, and Microfluidics.

Robert E. Harbaugh, Chair of the Neurosurgery Department (Hershey) and Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics (University Park) will present three papers at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Biomedical Engineeering Society to be held September 28 - October 1, 2005, in Baltimore, MD.

The titles follow:
1. Comprehensive Modeling Approach for Saccular Aneurysms
2. Effect of Variable Wall Thickness on Stresses in Cerebral Aneurysms
3. Stress in Patient-Specific Cerebral Aneurysms: Nonlinear Analysis with an Anistropic Material Model

Melik Demirel, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics and Pearce Development Professor, presented a talk entitled "Coarse Grained Protein Modeling" at the International School for Advance Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy on June 23, 2005.

Melik Demirel, assistant professor and Pearce Development Professor is a co-sponsor of "Biological Inspired Nanomaterials: A cross-disciplinary ICAM (Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter) workshop scheduled for November 12-15, 2005, at the Penn Stater Conference Hotel.

ICAM is an open distributed experiment-driven multi-institutional partnership, whose scientific agenda is to identify major new research themes in complex adaptive matter, and to nucleate and conduct collaborative research and scientific training that draws from the chemical, physical and biological viewpoint on these themes. A web site for ICAM workshop actives has been formed.

Dr. Albert E. Segall, Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics will present a paper entitled “Thermoelastic Stresses in Thick-Walled Vessels under an Arbitrary Thermal Transient via the Inverse Route” at the 2005 ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference. He is also the Topic Organizer of the Thermal Stress Issues in Design and Analysis Technical Session and the Session Chair of the Thermal Stress Issues in Design and Analysis II Technical Session.

The conference will be held July 17-21, 2005, in Denver, Colorado.

Dr. Rand German, Director of the Center for Innovative Sintered Products at the Pennsylvania State University has accepted a new position as Director for the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems and Chaired Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Mississippi State University, effective 1 October 2005. Dr. German will be replacing Professor Donald Trotter, who retired as the CAVS director on 1 July. This is an outstanding opportunity for Professor German, allowing a marriage of his prior emphasis on materials processing with the CAVS strength in computational and systems engineering. Although he will assume the position at CAVS, he will continue to advise his graduate students at PSU through degree completion while finishing out his current research projects.

Dr. Barbara A. Shaw, Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics and Corrosion Short Course Director, has announced the lecture and laboratory topics for the 2005 Corrosion Short Course (see below). Co-sponsored by the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, the Penn State Corrosion Center, Gamry Instruments, and Molecular Imaging, this course features morning lectures on the fundamentals of corrosion and afternoon, hands-on laboratory sessions that highlight the most commonly used experiments to assess corrosion. Course instructors include Dr. Gerald Frankel, associate professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Ohio State University and director of the Fontana Corrosion Center; Dr. Rudolph Buchheit, professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Ohio State University; Dr. Howard Pickering, Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State University; and Dr. Barbara A. Shaw.

Dr. Judith A. Todd, P. B. Breneman Department Head Chair, Department of Engineering Science is the Technical Program Chair of the 2005 ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference, July 17-21, 2005, Denver, Colorado.

The Conference Technical Program contains over 500 technical papers organized into more than 160 technical and panel discussion sessions, two major symposia, three tutorials, one student paper competition, and two workshops. The NDE (non-destructive evaluation) and Software Demonstration forums are organized as part of the technical program. The ASME Pressure Vessels and Piping Division is co-sponsoring the conference with the ASME NDE and Pipeline Systems Divisions and the Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineers.