Abdalla Nassar (M.S., E SC) has been awarded a National Science Foundation Grant to attend the 27th International Congress on the Applications of Lasers and Electro-Optics (ICALEO®) Conference, October 20-23, 2008, in Temecula, CA. The Congress is an opportunity for "researchers and end-users to review the state-of-the-art in laser materials processing" and also predict future laser materials processing needs. Mr. Nassar will present a poster titled "Generation and Sustainment of Argon Laser-Sustained Plasmas Under Various Flow Conditions".

To learn more about the Congress visit the ICALEO® website.

Congratulations to Nassar on both accomplishments.

Lei Fang (ESM Ph.D. student) was named a finalist in the Society of Engineering Science 2008 student paper competition.

Fang's abstract, "An electrical technique to measure in-situ contact area during instrumented indentation and its application of characterizing materials that pile-up," was selected as one of the top 16 abstracts out of 160 submitted to the SES 2008 student paper competition.

Congratulations to Ashutosh Tewari who has accepted a position with United Technology Research Center (East Hartford, Connecticut) as a Senior Research Scientist/Engineer with the Systems Dynamics and Optimization Division.