Professor Bernhard Tittmann has been elected Fellow of ASM International “For contributions to materials characterization and remote sensing in high temperature materials processing.”

Akhlesh Lakhtakia, distinguished professor of engineering science and mechanics, delivered a colloquium entitled 'Negative refraction' at the Instituto de Física of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City on May 25, 2006. He also delivered a colloquium entitled 'Emerging trends in research on sculptured thin films,' at the Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales of the same university on May 26, 2006.

William Ames, ESM Information Technology Specialist, has been awarded a College of Engineering Peer Review of Exceptional Performance (PREP) Silver Level Award.

Bernhard R. Tittmann, Schell Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, has been recognized by the Acoustical Society of American in recognition of twenty-five years of continuous membership in which he increased and diffused the knowledge of acoustics and promoted its practical applications. Dr. Tittmann has been a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America since 2000.

P.M. Lenahan will present an invited talk titled Point Defects Involved in MOS Reliability Problems at the Workshop on Modeling of Reliability Issues of the International Workshop on Computational Electronics on May 25-27, 2006, in Vienna Austria. This meeting has been organized by the Christian Doppler Laboratory of the Technical University of Vienna. His talk will deal with the structure and electronic properties of trapping centers involved in fundamental physical limits to the stability of the most important devices in present day microelectronics, metal oxide silicon field effect transistors (MOSFETs).

Melik Demirel, Pearce Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics has been awarded a Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences Seed Grant for his proposal titled Nanoengineered Bioactive Sculptured Thin Films. Funding is being provided by both the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and the Materials Research Institute.

Samia A. Suliman, Assistant Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, will present two papers at The 6th International Workshop on Junction Technology, to be held May 15-16, 2006, in Shanghai, China.

Session: Heterojunction Device and Contact
Paper Title: Current-voltage characteristics and charge-carrier traps in n-type 4H-SiC Schottky structures (Invited); co-authored with K. Sarpatwari, L. J. Passmore, S. A. Suliman, and O. O. Awadelkarim

Session: Si-Based Novel Structures and Devices
Paper Title: Properties of Si/SiO2 interfaces in vertical trench MOSFETs

Robert Harbaugh, M.D., F.A.C.S., F.A.H.A., chair, Department of Neurosurgery, and Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Penn State University, was recently appointed as the Associate Director for Clinical Neuroscience of the Penn State Hershey Neuroscience Research Institute (PSHNRI). He will join Thomas Uhde, M.D., (Director) and Robert Milner, Ph.D. in helping to lead the Institute. PSHNRI was founded in 2004 to promote neuroscience research, research training and treatment of individuals with disorders of the nervous system. The Penn State Neuroscience Institute of Penn State University Park and the PSHNRI work togeter to advance the field of neuroscience and to continue serving the community. (The Crescent, March 8, 2006).

Bernhard R. Tittmann, Schell Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, has been named secretary of the ASM International Penn State Local Chapter effective June 1, 2006. The ASM International Penn State Chapter has been dedicated to the education and dissemination of information regarding the importance of materials in our society for over fifty years.