Speaker: Dr. Diego Contreras of the University of Pennsylvania
When: Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Time: 10:00 AM
Where: S-5 Osmond Building
Host: Dr. Steven J. Schiff of the Center for Neural Engineering

Dr. Contreras is one of the world's leaders on the encoding of
information in the thalamus and visual system, somatosensory cortex,
as well as the physiology of epileptic seizures. He is a systems
physiologist who performs cutting edge optical imaging, computational
neuroscience, and difficult in vivo electrophysiology of single cells.

Please join Dr. Contreras for lunch afterwards if interested.

[Note: This seminar will be available as an open broadcast to the
Penn State Community at:
https://breeze.psu.edu/neuralengineeringseminar4/
You will need a sound card and speakers to view this properly.
We will have this broadcast in room H4151 at Hershey as well.]

Akhlesh Lakhtakia, the Charles Godfrey Binder professor of engineering
science and mechanics, delivered an invited lecture on "Sculptured
Thin Films" at Nanomec 06, a conference on materials science and materials
mechanics at the nanoscale, held at Politecnico di Bari, Italy, from
November 19 to 23, 2006. He also organized a special session on
nanofabrication, wherein

Lawrence H. Friedman, assistant professor
of engineering science and mechanics, delivered an invited talk
entitled "Origins of Order and Disorder in Self-Assembled Epitaxial
Quantum Dots".

Vincent A. Schiavoni received his B.S. degree in Engineering Mechanics from Penn State in 1975. From 1975-1987, he was employed at LTV Steel (Formerly J&L Steel), moving to Nucor Steel, Crawfordsville, IN, the world’s first thin slab flat rolled steel mill technology (1987 to 1994). Since 1994, Dr. Schiavoni served as President of Duraloy Technologies, Inc., in Scottsdale, PA. Duraloy is a high alloy foundry specializing in castings and fabrication for the steel, petrochemical, and heat treat industries worldwide.

Dr. Schiavoni has been married for 31 years to Sharon; with two children, Adam, 22, a senior at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh majoring in Media Animation, and Sarah, 17, a junior at Shady Side Academy. His interests are cycling, gardening, and their three cats: Cleo, Maddie, and Scribbles.

Dr. Steven A. Ringel is the Neal A. Smith Endowed Chair Professor in Electrical Engineering and Director of the Ohio State Institute for Materials Research at The Ohio State University. Professor Ringel leads an internationally-renowned research program that spans from electronic materials synthesis and properties to device applications for electronic, energy, and photonic technologies.

Matt Kelly (Ph.D., Engineering Science and Mechanics) will present a paper entitled "Quantitative Microstructural Analysis of Thermal Barrier Coatings Produced by Electron Beam Physical Vapor Deposition" at the 31st International Cocoa Beach Conference and Exposition on Advanced Ceramics and Composites. The conference is to be held January 21-26, 2007 at the Hilton Daytona Beach Resort and Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Mr. Kelly's doctoral research is being conducted under the direction of Drs. Judith A. Todd and Jogender Singh.

Professor Demetrios D. Raftopoulos earned his B.S. degree with honors (1959) in Civil Engineering from Widener University, Chester, PA; and accepted a position as Sr. Highway Engineering in the Delaware Highway Department, Dover, DE. In 1961, he became Instructor of Engineering at Widener University, receiving National Science Foundation awards to study at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ (1961), and at the University of New Mexico (1962). In 1963, he earned his M.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Delaware. A Ford Foundation Scholarship and “Forgettable Loan” (1964) enabled him to earn his Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics after two years at Penn State in December 1966.

Dr. Harvey S. Piper Jr. was born in Duncansville, PA, in 1934 and graduated from Altoona High School in 1952. After serving three years in the U.S. Army as a radio repairman, he entered The Pennsylvania State University in September 1956 and was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Science, with distinction, in Engineering Science, 1960. He became a Member of the Technical Staff of Bell Telephone Laboratories and performed systems engineering on the T1 carrier system, the first Time Division Multiplex system. While at Bell Labs, he received the degree of Master of Electrical Engineering from New York University in June 1962.

Dr. Samia Suliman attended the national conference on Advancing the Status of Diverse Women in Science, Tehnology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) in Jackson, Mississippi, on November 10-12, 2006. The conference brought together colleagues from around the world to discuss issues that are specific to women of color in the STEM disciplines including collaborative research, teaching and service opportunities, leadership, learning, best practices and other issues.

Dr. Walter D. Pilkey, a native of Richland, Washington, received his B.A. (Humanities), M.S. (Engineering Sciences), and Ph.D. (Engineering Science and Mechanics) from Washington State University, Purdue University, and Penn State University, respectively. While in college, he worked as a smokejumper in Missoula, Montana. During his tenure as a research scientist at the IIT Research Institute in Chicago, he spent almost two years of service in Afghanistan as a visiting faculty member at Kabul University. Since 1969, he has been associated with the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia, where he was the Chairman of the Applied Mechanics Division. He is the recipient of two Fulbright Awards, a Japanese Society of Sciences Award, a NAVSEA Chair, and a von Humboldt Award.

Dr. Robert P. Parker received his M.S. in General Engineering and Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Penn State University in 1968 and 1973, respectively. After graduation, he worked for Uniroyal Research, Harley Davidson, and Wyle Laboratories, where they used ANSYS for seismic qualification of equipment for nuclear power plants. The Three Mile Island disaster put an end to construction of new nuclear facilities.

Guneet Sethi, (doctoral candidate in Engineering Science and Mechanics) will present a paper titled "Processing of High-k Oxide Thin Films for High Energy Density Capacitors" in the 'Materials for Power Electronics' session of the 53rd International Symposium of the American Vacuum Society (AVS), to be held November 12 through November 17, 2006 in San Francisco, CA, USA.

Mr. Sethi's doctoral advisor is Professor Michael Lanagan.

Dinesh Agrawal, professor of engineering science and mechanical science, materials science and engineering, and director of Microwave Processing and Engineering Center, gave a keynote lecture at the Fifth International Symposium on Electromagnetic Processing of Materials, organized by The Iron and Steel Institute of Japan, held at Sendai, Japan. His talk was titled "Electromagnetic Field Processing of Materials at Microwave Frequency (2.45 GHz)." He also gave a plenary talk on "Application of Microwave Energy for Materials Processing: Global Trends and Commercialization" at the Sixth Symposium on Microwave Science and Applications to Related Fields in Ogaki-City, Gifu Prefecture, Japan.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006 - 10-11 AM, S-5 Osmond Building

Speaker: Jian-young Wu, Professor, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University in Washington, DC

Dr. Wu is one of the world's leaders in optical imaging of the nervous system. His work is of broad interest to the Science and Engineering community at Penn State.

NOTE: This seminar will be available as an open broadcast to the Penn State community at:

https://breeze.psu.edu/neuralengineeringseminar3/

You will need a sound card and speakers to view this properly. We are working to improve the audio. This broadcast will be available in room H4151 at Hershey.

Please join Dr. Wu for lunch afterwards, if interested.

Future Neural Engineering Seminar Speakers:

Diego Contreras, Univesity of Pennsylvania, November 29, 2006
Tarik Haydar, Children's National Medical Center/George Washington University, December 13

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: DR. JIAN XU
by Matthew Frank (Engineering Science senior)

Two of the driving forces that brought Dr. Jian Xu to the Penn State Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics were spectacular nanofabrication facilities and the freedom to conduct multidisciplinary research. Almost three years since his arrival in August, 2003 his lab is a reflection of those attractions. Dr. Xu is now working with semiconductor nanocrystal quantum dots to pioneer a new material-set, applicable to the next generation of optoelectronic devices and integrated circuits. Quantum dots are special semiconductor nanocrystals whose electrons occupy well defined discrete quantum states. This characteristic allows Dr. Xu to alter their energy structures.

Xu’s research focuses on modifying the structure of quantum dots to specifically tailor their emission and absorption properties to the needs of a wide array of applications which may include energy conversion, optical communications and biochemical sensing.

Rodney J. Miller graduated with a Bachelors of Science degree in Engineering Mechanics in 1975, and joined U.S. Steel Corporation in Pittsburgh where he worked as a Maintenance Foreman, Design Engineer, and Project Engineer until 1982. He earned an M.B.A. at the University of Pittsburgh in 1979.

Dr. Pravin K Mehta holds a B.Sc. (Hon) degree in Mathematics from the University of Bombay (1957), a graduate diploma D.M.I.T. in Aeronautical Engineering from the Madras Institute of Technology (1960), and M.S. (1962) and Ph.D. (1966) degrees in Engineering Mechanics from the Pennsylvania State University. Following his Ph.D., he spent one year at Penn State as an Assistant Professor in Engineering Mechanics before joining the Perkin-Elmer Corporation in June 1967. When Perkin-Elmer divested its Electro-Optical business in 1989, he continued with tenure at the successor companies GM Hughes Electronics (1989-1998) and Raytheon Systems Company (1999-2000). Dr. Mehta retired on December 29, 2000, from Raytheon as a Senior Fellow of the Company.

The continuous quality initiatives (CQI), of the Engineering Science and Mechanics information technology staff, have been hi-lighted in the November 2006 Issue of Quality Endeavors, a newsletter of Penn State's Office of Planning and Institutional Assessment. The ESM CQI initiative is now in its second year and incorporates survey data related to faculty and staff satisfcation with information technology services to plan for future acquisitions and improvements.