Dr. Tony Huang, Associate Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will give an invited talk at the OSA, The Optical Society conference on Acoustic Tweezers: Patterning, Focusing, and Separating Cells and Microparticles using Standing Surface Acoustic Waves (SSAW). The meeting will be held in Monterey California from April 4 – 11. To learn more about the conference, please visit their web site.

Dr. Joseph Rose, Paul Marrow Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, received the Graduate Faculty Teaching Award. This award is awarded to a graduate faculty whose teaching and mentoring are deemed outstanding. Dr. Rose will be recognized March 2011 at a special awards ceremony at the Nittany Lion Inn. Congratulations Dr. Rose!

Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Charles Godfrey Binder professor of engineering science and mechanics,
co-chaired a conference entitled Bioinspiration, Biomimetics, and Bioreplication during the
SPIE Smart Structures Symposium convened at San Diego, CA, between March 7 and 10, 2011.

At this conference, Drew P. Pulsifer, Ph.D. student, presented a paper entitled
"Engineered biomimicry: polymeric replication of surface features found on insects". His co-authors were Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Raúl J. Martín-Palma (Autonomous University of Madrid) and Carlo G. Pantano (Penn State).

Dr. Lakhtakia also co-authored the paper entitled "Prismatic bioinspired compound lenses for solar cells". This paper was presented by Francesco Chiadini (University of Salerno), and was also co-authored by
Vincenzo Fiumara (University of Basilicata) and Antonio Scaglione (University of Salerno).

Dr. Osama Awadelkarim, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, visited and gave a lecture at Taibah University on March 5-17. While at the University, he initiated a research project in metamaterials. To learn more about Taibah University, please visit their web site.

Dr. Cliff Lissenden, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, traveled to San Diego, California in early March to present his research on Structural Health Monitoring at the 2011 SPIE Conference. To learn more about SPIE, please visit their web site.