Dr. B. Shanker (MS E SC ‘92, PhD ESM ‘94), Professor of Electrical Engineering, Michigan State University, has been elevated to the rank of Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, effective January 1, 2010. Professor Shanker was the first doctoral student of Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Charles Godfrey Binder Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics.

Dr. Melik Demirel, Associate Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will give two invited talks on November 30 and December 1. The first presentation will be on biosensor development at the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center and Hepatitis Foundation. The second talk will highlight soft nanostructured films for biomedical applications at Drexel Bioengineering School.

Cliff Lissenden
Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, PSU

Wednesday, December 2, 2009
3:35pm - 4:25pm
114 Earth-Engineering Sciences Buildling

ESM Staff members have participated in the 2009 Holiday Mail for Heroes. The Red Cross sponsored program sends a touch of home to United States service members, their families, and veterans across the country and abroad.

Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Charles Godfrey Binder Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, was recently highlighted on Penn State Live with his work entitled “Sculptured materials allow multiple channel plasmonic sensors.”

Sensors, communications devices and imaging equipment that use a prism and a special form of light – a surface plasmon-polariton – may incorporate multiple channels of redundant applications if manufacturers use sculptured thin films. Surface plasmon resonance devices currently have a wide range of applications. They are commercially used as sensors for humidity, temperature, chemical concentrations and chemical composition. SPR devices can be used in a form of surface microscopy, as wave guides and tunable filters. Creating two or more channels in each device would multiply SPR utility in all areas of application.

To read more, please visit this website.
**Source: Penn State Live

Shane Lani, undergraduate student in engineering science and mechanics, will present works entitled “Direct measurement of aeroacoustic source spectrum due to a jet/wall interaction,” at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society (Division of Fluid Dynamics). The meeting is held in Minneapolis on November 22-24. To learn more about the conference, please visit their web site.

Dr Cliff Lissenden, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics presented research results at the NASA Aviation Safety conference. The meeting was held in Washington, DC on November 18. To learn more about the Safety conference, please visit their website.

Dr. Sridhar Sunderam, Research Associate in the Center for Neural Engineering (CNE), has accepted a tenure-track position with the University of Kentucky’s Center for Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Sunderam’s work in CNE involved advanced experimental and computational research in neural engineering with particular relevance to epilepsy. We wish Srihar our heartiest congratulations and best wishes for a successful career at the University of Kentucky.

Christopher Collins
Department of Radiology, Penn State Hershey

Wednesday, November 18, 2009
3:35pm - 4:25pm
114 Earth-Engineering Sciences Building

Dr. Dinesh Agrawal, Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, and Director of Microwave Processing and Engineering Center was inducted as a Fellow of American Ceramic Society at the Annual Meeting of Materials Science & Technology 09 held at Pittsburgh on October 26, 2009.

Dr. S. Ashok, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechancis, presented a paper at the American Vacuum Society meeting in San Francisco, California. The conference was held on November 9 – 13. To read more about the society, please visit their website.

Dr. Tony Huang, James Henderson Assistant Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, is attending the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) 2009 conference in Orlando, Florida on November 13 – 19. While at the conference he will serve as the organizing chair for the 2009 ASME Society-wide Micro/Nano Technology Forum. To learn more about the IMECE conference, please visit their website.

Dr. Melik Demirel, Associate Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, has been invited to present a lecture on nanostructured polymers at the 56th technical program, American Vacuum Society on November 10th, 2009 in San Jose, California.

To learn more about the conference, please visit their website.