Akhlesh Lakhtakia delivered an invited lecture entitled "Polarization engineering through nanoengineered morphology" at Photonics West, a conference and trade-show organized by SPIE at San Jose, CA, Jan 22-26, 2007.

Akhlesh Lakhtakia, The Charles G. Binder Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, discusses the public's understanding of the nano world with Penn State Live. For the full story visit Penn State Live.

A Center of Excellence in Structural Health Monitoring has been created with initial funding from the Ben Franklin Technology Partners. The Center will be administered through the Engineering Science and Mechanics Department, with Cliff Lissenden serving as the Director. The breadth of the Center spans the College of Engineering and beyond with participants in ESM, AERSP, ME, CE, EE, ARL, and Food Science. The Center will provide a forum for the participants to interact with companies doing business in structural health monitoring. The objectives of the Center are:

1. Spur the research and development of new technologies that will improve public safety;

2. Transfer technology to Pennsylvania companies to give them a competitive advantage;

3. Make Pennsylvania a hotspot for structural health monitoring, creating a new high tech job market that will provide jobs for residents and draw people to Pennsylvania;

4. Train students to provide an outstanding workforce pool.

The first meeting will be held this spring in State College. For more information contact Cliff Lissenden at the following e-mail address: lissenden@psu.edu