What's New at ESM?

Selina Roman-White, a 7th grade student at the Indian Valley Middle School in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, along with her teammates, competed in the Future Problem Solving Program International (FPSPI) held on the Michigan State University campus summer 2008. Selina's team placed 2nd out of 68 teams internationally in the written booklet portion of the program and 4th in the skit portion of the program.

During a break in the competion, the students participated in a momento exchange including ESM memorabilia and Penn State Paterno masks, shown here.

Dr. Cliff Lissenden, Associate Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, along with Dr. Joseph Rose, Paul Morrow Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, are presenting a poster “Structural Health Monitoring of Composite Laminates through Ultrasonic Guided Wave Beam Forming” at the NATO Advanced Vehicle Technology (AVT-157) Symposium on Ensured Military Platform Availability. The conference scheduled for October 13 - 16, 2008 is located in Montreal, Canada. To learn more about the meeting, please visit their website.

Tony Huang's article entitled "Light-Driven Plasmonic Switches Based on Au Nanodisk Arrays and Photoresponsive Liquid Crystals" was recently reviewed by ACS Nanotation as a Nano Picks Article Review. Earlier this year, the article received the coveted spot of cover article on Advanced Materials.

Congratulations to Jing Mu (ESMCH, August 2008; and Fei Yan ESMCH , May 2009) upon the arrival of infant daughter Sophie Yan. Sophie was born Wednesday, September 17th at 4:40 a.m. Jing tells us that Sophie is quickly growing beyond her birth statistics of 7 lbs., 11 oz; 20 inches long.

Please send your congratulations to Jing and Fei at jxm1006@psu.edu or fzy101@psu.edu.

Dr. Judith A. Todd, Engineering Science and Mechanics Department Head, is pleased to announce that fifty-one Engineering Science students achieved Dean's List status for fall semester 2006. Congratulations to the following students:

David Klodowski, Kathryn Barber, Miranda Hitchcock, Hitesh Basantani, Brennan DeCesar, Rukan Shao, Minna Ranjeva, Adam Ostrich, Abdalla Nassar, Keith Stern, Paul Sauter, Arwen Kandt, Nghia Nguyen, Benjamin Russo, Scott Kozlowski, Sean Stokes, Justin Hammond, Michael Anderson, Stephen Koytek, Kevin Howorth, Matt Lanagan, Windsor Bisbee, Zackary Stratton, Matthew Verlinich, Scott Jacobs, Shane Lani, Timothy Byrne, Brendan Purcell, Jillian Woolridge, Benjamin Koch, Aimee Tu, Tristan Helms, Christopher Winter, Brian Bontempo, Michael Ulizio, Kevin Graves, Marc McNeill, Jessica Bogniak, Stanton Sollenberger, Nicholas Bugos, and Ravendra Nohar.

The ESM Department is very pleased to have you honor our department with your outstanding academic achievement.

Dr. Robert McGrath, BS E SC ’72, MA E SC ’75, PhD from the University of Michigan, has decided to depart from Ohio State University and join the Battelle Memorial Institute as a member of their Global Laboratory operations leadership team. In his new role, he will assist with the management of the U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories and associated energy R&D programs.

At Ohio State University, Dr. McGrath served as Senior Vice President for Research at where he was responsible for the University’s strategic research planning and for operation of the University’s half-billion dollar research program. He also holds appointments as Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, as well as the Department of Physics.

ESM congratulates Dr. Robert McGrath for his accomplishments and wishes him well in his new endeavors.

Dr. Lawrence Friedman, Assistant Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, attends the Material Science and Technology (MS&T) conference 2008 from October 5 - 7, 2008 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During the conference, Lawrence will be serving as the Nanomechanics Committee Vice Chair and hearing student paper presentations. To learn more about the conference, please visit this website.

Ghanium Ullah, Post-doctoral Scholar in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will attend and present research results at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Society of Neuroscience on November 15-19, 2008 in Washington, D.C. Ghanium’s research highlights include the lack of understanding of cellular interaction during epileptic seizures is a primary reason for the ineffectiveness of the treatment methods in one-third of the patients. The Neural Engineering group at ESM has developed a detailed model for the neuronal networks to investigate the cellular interaction during seizures. The model exposes several mechanisms playing an important role in seizures generation and propagation and points towards possible therapeutic treatments. To read more about the conference, please visit this website.

Sridhar Sunderam, Research Associate at the Center for Neural Engineering, in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will attend the 2008 Annual International Meeting of the Society of Neuroscience in Washington, D.C. on November 15 - 19, 2008. While at the conference Sridhar is delivering a presentation entitled: Seizure Modulation with Low Frequency Polarizing Stimulation.” The talk will be expanding on his ability to utilize weak electric fields to entrain neural activity during epileptic seizures in a chronic rodent model of temporal lobe epilepsy. To learn more about the conference, please visit their website.

Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Charles Godfrey Binder Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, is to present a keynote-invited lecture at the annual Symposium of the American Vacuum Society on October 22 - 23 in Boston, Massachusetts. To learn more about the conference, please visit their website.