Dr. Barbara Shaw, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechancis, will attend the 2nd annual Naval Engineering Education Center (NEEC) meeting in Philadelphia on May 22-24. While attending the meeting, Dr. Shaw will present two posters. The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) is comprised of command staff, headquarters directorates, affiliated Program Executive Offices (PEOs), numerous field activities and a workforce of 53,000 civilian, military and contract support personnel. Together, NAVSEA engineer, build, buy and maintain ships, submarines and combat systems that meet the Fleet's current and future operational requirements. NAVSEA is the largest of the Navy's five system commands and accounts for nearly one quarter of the Navy's entire budget.

Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, the Charles Godfrey Binder professor of engineering science and mechanics, is the opening speaker at FANEM'12, an international conference on Fundamental and Applied NanoElectroMagnetics being held May 22-25, 2012, in Minsk, Belarus. The conference celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Research Institute for Nuclear Problems, Belarus State University. His lecture is entitled Surface Multiplasmonics. For the conference agenda, please visit their web site.

Susan Tousi, BS E SC ’91, was featured on the popular television reality show, Celebrity Apprentice. The film clip was when she was employed with Eastman Kodak company and featured the television participants advertising Kodak Ink-Jet printers to the public. To learn more and watch the Youtube video, please visit this website.

Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, the Charles Godfrey Binder Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, delivered a lecture entitled Sculptured Thin Films, at the Institute of Physics, University of Belgrade, Serbia, on May 16, 2012. He was hosted by Dr. Zoran Lj. Petrovic.

Asheesh Lanba, graduate student in Engineering Science and Mechanics (ESM), under the advising of Dr. Reginald Hamilton, Assistant Professor of ESM, will travel to the South Dakota State University on May 16 to attend a Conference on Engineering Materials: Evaluation, Flaw Detection & Processing. While in attendance, he’ll give a presentation entitled, Localized Skein Morphology during the Martensitic Transformation in trained Shape Memory Alloys.

The Conference on Engineering materials: Evaluation, Flaw Detection and Processing at the Materials Evaluation and Testing Laboratory (METLAB) at the South Dakota State University focuses on recent developments, discoveries, modeling, testing and evaluation of engineering materials, smart materials and processing. To learn more about the conference, please visit their web site.

Dr. Barbara Shaw, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will travel May 14 to Morgantown, West Virginia to attend the Appalachian Underground Corrosion Short Course. To learn more about the short course, please visit their web site.

Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, the Charles G. Binder Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, will deliver on May 9 a
seminar entitled "Sculptured Thin Films" at Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid, which is an organ
of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas of the Spanish Government. Dr. Lakhtakia's visit
is sponsored by Banco de Santander. For more information, please visit their web site.

Dr. Osama Awadelkarim, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, traveled to Portland, Oregon in early May as an invited speaker in the 2012 Workshop on Regional, State, and Local (RSL) Initiative in Nanotechnology. The workshop was sponsored by the U.S. Governments National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI).

Dr. Steve Fonash, Bayard D. Kunkle Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics and Director of the Nanotechnology Applications and Career Knowledge (NACK) National Center, has been mentioned in the April 2012 report to the President and Congress on the Fourth Assessment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative.

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is an advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers, appointed by the President to augment the science and technology advice available to him from inside the White House, from cabinet departments and other Federal agencies. PCAST is consulted about and often makes policy recommendations concerning the full range of issues where understandings from the domains of science, technology, and innovation bear potentially on policy choices before the President.

With the support of the NSF’s Advanced Technology Education (ATE) program, Penn State and Professor Steve Fonash have developed a nation-wide partnership of research universities and community colleges that is bringing meaningful core-skills nanotechnology workforce education to technical community colleges across the nation. The partnership, the NSF NACK network fosters (1) resource sharing among community colleges and research universities for nanotechnology workforce development, (2) the availability of course materials, for web or in-class use, covering a core-set of industry recommended nanotechnology skills and (3) broad student preparation for careers in the wide spectrum of industries utilizing micro- or nanotechnology. NACK has been created and offers continually updated, free-of-charge core-skills course lecture and lab materials, web accessible equipment capability, and faculty development curricula. To learn more about the Penn State NACK center, please visit their web site.

Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Charles Godfrey Binder Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics will travel in May to Serbia to present a keynote paper entitled “Surface Multiplasmonics for Optical Sensing and Solar-Energy Harvesting,” at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) conference on micro-electronics. To learn more about the conference please visit their web site.

Dr. Bernhard Tittmann, Schell Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will travel in early May to Vienna, Austria. During his stay, he will present an invited paper at the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) conference on International Instrumentation and Measurements Technology. To learn more about the meeting, please visit their web site.