Charles E. Bakis, Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, has been selected as the winner of the American Society for Composites "Award in Composites for 2006". The award is given annually to a distinguished member of the composites community who has made a significant impact on the development of composite materials through applied research, practice, education, service, advocacy, or leadership.

The award presentation will be made at the banquet of the 21st Annual Technical Conference of the American Society for Composites in Dearborn, Michigan, on September 19, 2006.

William Ames, ESM Information Technologist Specialist, has been appointed as an affiliate member of the President's Commission on Racial/Ethnic Diversity. The commission was appointed in 1989 by Penn State President Bryce Jordan as a University-wide advisory body to the president of Penn State in matters relating to racial and ethnic diversity. The commission is dedicated to enhancing the University's climate for diversity at all its locations in the Commonwealth. CORED's activities focus on advancing A Framework to Foster Diversity at Penn State: 1998-2003, Penn State's diversity strategic plan. In May 2001, CORED received an enhanced mandate under this plan.The commission acts on issues raised by the Office of the President, the Office of the Vice Provost for Educational Equity, commission members, and members of the Penn State community.

A team of materials science and medical researchers from the Pennsylvania State University, US, has shown that chiral sculptured thin films (STFs) made of para-chloro-xylene (commercially known as parylene-C) are both biocompatible and bioactive. The scientists grew these nanostructured materials using a one-step combination of physical and chemical vapour deposition techniques, without using lithography or any masking technique.

Using scanning electron and confocal laser microscopies, Demirel et al. found that parylene STFs support fibroblast cell attachment and proliferation over 72-hour periods, far in excess of flat parylene films. These and other findings appear in Journal of Biomedical Materials Research: Part B - Applied Biomaterials (doi 10.1002/jbm.b.30656).

Fibrous integration is crucial to the stability of silicone elastomer arthroplasty of small joints of the hand and feet. These implants currently fail because of soft tissue imbalance and lack of implant integration. Of all the various biomaterials available for reconstruction of the finger joints, elastomeric implants are the "gold standard" within the surgical community. The use of parylene STFs to modify elastomeric prosthetic surfaces appears enticing in light of the Penn State findings. Augmenting fibrous integration of the elastomeric implants will invariably lead to a more durable arthroplasty and a better clinical outcome.

Contact
Melik Demirel and Akhlesh Lakhtakia
212 EES Building
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802,
US
Tel: +1 814 865 4523, +1 814 863 2270
E-mail: axl4@psu.edu
Web site: http://www.esm.psu.edu/~axl4/

Date announced: 30 Aug 2006
Source: nanotechweb.org: http://nanotechweb.org/yournews/13266

Richard F. Erdley received his B.S. degree in Engineering Science from Penn State in 1957. From 1957 to 1958, he was an engineer with Bendix Aviation Corporation in York, PA; responsible for design and development of the pulse coding and microwave sections of automatic pre-launch test equipment for the TALOS Missile. From 1959 to 1969, he was a staff engineer/program manager with HRB-Singer in State College responsible for the conception, design, development, fielding, and operation of numerous systems that included automatic real-time monitoring and reporting of aircraft and pilot parameters, sophisticated automatic light weight airborne reconnaissance receiving systems, and a world-wide reconnaissance and reporting program.

Eric B. Cummings is the founder of CoolEarth Solar, a company dedicated to making solar farming economically competitive; and the founder and CEO of LabSmith, Inc., a company that has sold logic and timing controllers and sequencers, high-voltage sequencers, motorized video microscopes, and other laboratory products internationally since 1997.

We are pleased to announce that Penn State's Engineering Science program is ranked 9th (along with Yale University) in the U.S. New and World Report's America's Best Colleges 2007.

Derald O. Cummings received his B.S. in Engineering Science (1963), M.S. (1965), and Ph.D. (1972) in Electrical Engineering; all from Penn State. During this time, he and Barbara Yaw Cummings had four children, all of whom have graduated from Penn State: Heather (ESC ’87), Eric (ESC ’89), Sarah (LA ’92), and Laura (SCI ’94). Heather, Eric, and Laura are married to Penn State graduates. Mr. and Mrs. Cummings have eight grandchildren (future Penn Staters!) who bring much joy.

John P. Condrasky received his B.S. in Engineering Mechanics in 1976. He accepted a position as Test Engineer with WABCO Transit Division immediately upon graduation, and he is currently Manager of Technical Support. Mr. Condrasky holds several patents for air brake control devices for passenger-carrying trains.

Mr. Condrasky is married to Marge Depsky Condrasky (1977, Alpha Gamma Delta). They have two children, one a graduating Senior in Biosystem Engineering and the other a Junior in Biological Sciences at Clemson University.

NOTE: Two of our Centennial Fellows are spotlighted each week.

Akhlesh Lakhtakia, distinguished professor of engineering science and mechanics, chaired a three-day conference entitled Nanomodeling II, at the Annual Meeting of SPIE-The International Society for Optical Engineering, held at San Diego, CA, August 13-17, 2006. He co-authored three presentations, with Professor Sergey A. Maksimenko (Belarus State University), Dr. Tom G. Mackay (University of Edinburgh), and Dr. Joseph B. Geddes III (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). He also delivered a Key Lecture entitled "Bragging electrically" at Complex Photonic Media, a conference held concurrently.

Michael Pedrick, engineering science and mechanics doctoral student, the award for Best Student Paper in Structural Acoustics and Vibrations at the 151st meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Providence, Rhode Island, June 5-9, 2006.

The paper, "Ultrasonic Non-Destructive Evaluation in Thin-Walled Concrete for Flaw Detection,” by Michael Pedrick, Bernhard Tittmann, Shivprakash Iyer, and Sunil Sinha, explores the use of discrete wavelet transforms with an ultrasonic pulse-echo system to classify defects in thin-walled concrete specimens such as sewer pipes.

Mr. Pedrick's research involves the investigation of novel applications for Ultrasonic Love Wave Devices based on polymer thin film sensing elements. In particular, he is working on the principles and evaluation of a charged particle detector based on Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) films deposited on quartz substrates. Mr. Pedrick's work is under the direction of Professor Bernhard Tittmann.

Akhlesh Lakhtakia, University Distinguished Professor, has been appointed as the Editor-in-Chief of the SPIE Journal of Nanophotonics*, an electronic journal focusing on the fabrication and application of nanostructures that facilitate the generation, propagation, manipulation, and detection of light from the infrared to the ultraviolet regimes. Topics lying within the scope of the journal include: nanoparticles and nanoparticulate composite materials; quantum dots and other low-dimensional nanostructures; nanotubes, nanowires, and nanofibers; nanowaveguides and nanoantennas; sculptured thin films and nanostructured photonic crystals; quantum optics and spintronics; nanoscale optical electronics; surface plasmons and nanoplasmonics; ultrashort pulse propagation; light-harvesting materials and devices; nanophotonic detectors; nano-optical electromechanical systems; near-field optics, optical manipulation techniques, spectroscopies, and scattering techniques; nanolithography, molecular self-assembly, and other nanofabrication techniques; nanobiophotonics; and nanophotonic concepts and systems that facilitate continued integration of various optical and/or electronic functions. The scope extends to theory, modeling and simulation, experimentation, instrumentation, and application.

Daniel J. Clement earned his B.S. in Engineering Mechanics from Penn State in 1966, his Juris Doctor Degree in 1969 from George Washington University, and was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1971; following admission to the bars of Virginia and the District of Columbia in 1970. He is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and the Union County Bar Association. Mr. Clement was a member of the Kury and Kury law firm in Sunbury, PA, from 1971 to 1974, and he was a partner in the firm of Clement and Knight from 1974-1998. He currently practices in Lewisburg, PA, emphasizing real estate and business law.

Lori Burskey graduated with a B.S. in Engineering Science in 1995 and started as a Quality Engineer with International Paper's Veratec division in Lewisburg, PA. Throughout the next five years, she supervised the Quality Testing Laboratory, served as Process Engineer for three different nonwoven fabric technologies within the plant, and received Six Sigma Black Belt certifications. In all of these roles, she completed safety, quality, productivity, and cost-saving improvement projects.

Tony Jun Huang, James Henderson Assistant Professor at the ESM Department, along with Prof. James Connor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center, will be awarded the Grace Woodward Grant for Collaborative Research in Engineering and Medicine for their proposal titled “Nanoporous Polymer Structure-based Biosensor Array for the Detection of RNA-Protein Interactions”.

Tony Jun Huang, James Henderson Assistant Professor at the ESM Department, along with Prof. Chung-Chiun Liu at Case Western Reserve University, Prof. Fraser Stoddart at UCLA, and Prof. William Goddard at Caltech, will receive $1.3 million over the next four years for their joint proposal "NanoElectroMechanical Systems (NEMS) using Light-Driven Molecular Shuttles as Active Nanostructures".

Charles W. Bierly Jr. earned his B.S. with Distinction in Engineering Mechanics in September 1963 from Penn State, completing his degree in 3 full years, and received his M.S. in Engineering Mechanics from Ohio State in 1966. He was a member of Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Tau, Phi Eta Sigma, and he won a 1961 Freshman Mathematics Award.

Ellen M. Arruda, Ph.D., is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She received her B.S. with honors in Engineering Science and M.S. in Engineering Mechanics from the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics at The Pennsylvania State University, and her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.