Three members of the Engineering Science and Mechanics Community will receive 2007 Penn State Engineering Society (PSES) awards at an Engineering Awards Ceremony on Friday, March 30, at 1:30 p.m. in the Kunkle Activities Center.

Sam Y. Zamrik will receive a Distinguished Service Award;
Francesco Costanzo will receive a Premier Teaching Award' and
Susan Croyle will receive an Outstanding Staff Award.

The Banaras Hindu University, India shall confer the degree of Doctor of Science (Electronics Engineering) on Akhlesh Lakhtakia, the Charles Godfrey Binder professor of engineering science and mechanics, at a convocation ceremony to be held on March 18, 2007. Lakhtakia received the D.Sc. degree for his contributions over a 5-year period on elucidating the characteristics of electromagnetic fields in many types of complex materials. The D.Sc. degree is granted for a significant body of research to BHU alumni who already possess the Ph.D. degree. Lakhtakia shall be the first recipient of the D.Sc. degree from BHU in engineering. Engineering education commenced at that university in 1918. Lakhtakia obtained a Bachelor of Technology degree in electronics engineering from its Institute of Technology in 1979. After receiving a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Utah in 1983, he joined Penn State.

Dr. Melik Demirel, Assistant Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics and immediate past Pearce Development Professor will present a talk entitled "How do insertions affect Green Fluorescent Protein?" on Wednesday, February 7, 2007, as part of Arizona State University's Biological Physics Seminar for spring 2007. An abstract of the talk follows.

The green fluorescent protein (GFP) is an intrinsically fluorescent protein extracted from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria. The GFP chromophore formation and its mutants have been extensively studied. However, a precise understanding of fluorescence loss is still lacking. Particularly, our aim is to create GFP molecules carrying random amino acids insertions and understand the effect of these insertions (e.g.by change in excitation and emission) experimentally and computationally. A computer-based modeling and bench-top experiments are combined to understand the fluorescence of GFP. Random octapeptides are inserted into individual loops of the GFP. Amino acid sequences and fluorescence levels of clones from each loop are determined. The effect of peptide insertions into the loop regions of GFP are studied computationally using quantum mechanics and molecular dynamics calculations. Both computational and experimental results show that random peptide insertions change the excitation and emission intensity of GFP. We showed that the location of the peptide insertion affects the fluorescence levels of the GFP.

Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Binder Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, recently launched the International Society for Optical Engineering's (SPIE) Journal of Nanophotonics.

He will serve as editor in chief of the online-only journal. the publication focuses on the fabrication and application of nanostructures that facilitiate the generation, propagation,manipulation and detection of light. Its online delivery will enable rapid, worldwide di8ssemination of nanoresearch.

Source: College of Engineering

Joseph P. Cusumano, Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, will be presenting an invited lecture at the Mathematical Stability Analysis in Biomechanics and Robotics workshop to be held at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, February 14-18, 2007. The workshop is sponsored by the university's Center for Interdisciplinary Research, and will bring together 18 international researchers in robotics, mathematics, and movement science.

Professor Cusumano's talk is entitled "Trial-to-Trial Task Dynamical Systems", and was prepared in collaboration with Engineering Science and Mechanics doctoral student, Mr. Joby John.