Professor Emeritus. Engineering Science and Mechanics, Andrew Pytel is a recipient of the 2008 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Fellow and will be honored at the 2008 ASEE Awards Banquet in Pittsburgh. The grade of Fellow is one of unusual professional distinction and is conferred on ASEE members with outstanding qualifications and experience. ESM congratulates Professor Emeritus, Andrew Pytel for this honor.

Prof. Melik Demirel has been appointed as Adjunct Professor of Surgery in the School of Medicne at the University of Pittsburgh. Prof. Demirel is currently collaborating with the faculty of McGowan Institute at the Medical School of University of Pittsburgh on polymeric nanomaterials. The McGowan Institute is the most ambitious regenerative program in the nation, coupling biology and engineering. To find out more, please click here.

Prof. Melik Demirel gave an invited talk entitled "Functional Polymeric Nanofibers and Nanotemplates" at the Akron University. Akron's Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering program is ranked as one of the best program in polymers in the United States.

Prof. Melik Demirel research proposal on "Nanostructured Raman Detection and Diagnosis of Respiratory Pathogens" has been selected as one of the 13th pilot projects for funding by The Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA). The CTSA Program is a NIH Roadmap Initiative with the goal of expediting the translation of basic research discoveries into tangible health benefits. For more information about the program, please visit their website.

Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Charles Godfrey Binder Professor, delivered a seminar, entitled "Polarization engineering through nanoengineered morphology," at the School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, on April 18, 2008.

Prof. Melik Demirel, Pearce Assistant Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will give a talk at the Bio Sensors & Diagnostics session of NSTI Nanotech 2008 Boston meeting, June 1-5. His talk is entitiled: “A SERS substrate for detection of E.Coli on Nanostructured Poly(p-xylylene).” The new biosensor provides a significant advantage over traditional sensors for detection infectious agents. To read more details are available at the NSTI website.

Murat Cetinkaya, a doctoral student in Prof. Melik Demirel’s group, gave an invited talk at the Nanomaterials session of American Chemical Society New Orleans meeting on April 6-10.. His talk was entitled: “Crystalline phase transitions of nanostructured poly-(p-xylylene) films”. Mr. Cetinkaya has defended his PhD thesis recently and would start a postdoctoral research position in Europe this summer. More details are available at the ACS web site.

Dr. Tony Huang, Assistant Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, gave an invited seminar on Thursday, March 20 at the department of Mechanical Engineering -Engineering Mechanics Graduate Seminar Series at Michigan Tech University. The title of his presentation was Fluidics-Interfacing Biology, Mechanics, and Photonics at Mico/Nano Scale. To read more about Tony’s seminar, please visit this website.

Jon Pitt, Doctoral candidate in Engineering Science and Mechanics, under the advising of Dr. Francesco Costanzo, has been selected as a recipient of the Science, Mathematics And Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship program. The program is designed to support undergraduate and graduate students pursuing degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. ESM Congratulates Jon on his educational achievements to receive such an award. To learn more about the SMART scholarship program, please visit their website.

Dr. Tony Huang, Assistant Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics presented six papers at the MRS spring meeting in San Francisco, California from March 24-28. Tony presented papers on Nanoporous Polymer-Based Multifunctional Materials for Biomedical Applications, Dynamic Patterning of Biomaterials in Microfluidic Channels by Surface Acoustic Waves, A Three-Dimensional Hydrodynamic Focusing Technique for Chemical/Biological Analyses, Incident Angel-Dependent Redshifts of Surface Nanostructure Arrays, Continuous Redshifts of Surface Plasmon Resonance in Ordered Au Nanodisk Arrays via Chemical Etching, and All-Optical Active Plasmonics Based on Ordered Au Nanodisk Array Embedded in Photoresponsive Liquid Crystals. To read about the MRS spring meeting, please visit their website.

Dr. Francesco Costanzo, Associate Professor, and Dr. Michael Lanagan, Associate Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics and Associate Director of the Materials Research Institute were appointed Key Readers on the board of Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A. In this role, both Francesco and Michael will have the responsibility of providing editors with a concise and unambiguous evaluation of the merits of a manuscript and with an equally unambiguous recommendation of the action to be taken. Their term began on January 1 and will run through December 31, 2010.

Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Charles Godfrey Binder Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, has been invited to give an invited lecture at the 7th Iberian Vacuum Meeting and the 5th European Conference on Hard Coatings from June 22-25, 2008, in Caparica, Portugal. Every day, new scientific and technical accomplishments are reported in fields as nanocatalysis, functional thin films or plasma applications. Therefore, scientists and engineers, whose research is vacuum dependent, have much to share and to discuss in a forum as this conference intends to be. Dr. Lakhtakia will be presenting on Elastodynamics of Inorganic and Polymeric Sculptured Thin Films. For more information regarding this meeting, please visit their website

Melik Demirel, assistant professor in engineering science and mechanics, is to give an invited talk at the Polymer session of American Chemical Society New Orleans meeting, April 6-10. His talk is entitiled: “Spatially organized parylene nanowires fabricated by oblique angle vapor deposition”. For more details on his presentation, visit the American Chemical Society meeting website.

The College of Engineering, Tuesday, hosted their 2008 College of Engineering Research Symposium. John Petrilli, master’s degree candidate in engineering science, under the advising of Dr. Barbara Shaw, won first place for his graduate paper. The Engineering Graduate Student Council presented John with a certificate of recognition for his work on an outstanding paper. This award is the highest honor awarded at the Symposium event.