Dr. Rand German, Director of the Center for Innovative Sintered Products at the Pennsylvania State University has accepted a new position as Director for the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems and Chaired Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Mississippi State University, effective 1 October 2005. Dr. German will be replacing Professor Donald Trotter, who retired as the CAVS director on 1 July. This is an outstanding opportunity for Professor German, allowing a marriage of his prior emphasis on materials processing with the CAVS strength in computational and systems engineering. Although he will assume the position at CAVS, he will continue to advise his graduate students at PSU through degree completion while finishing out his current research projects.

CAVS and CISP has a history of collaboration that began last year on a NSF-ERC effort. Professor Mark Horstemeyer from MSU, along with faculty from Northwestern and Georgia Tech submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for multiple-scale virtual manufacturing. Over the next few months, a collaborative agreement to formalize cooperation between PSU and MSU is planned.

Rand has established CISP and the ESM Department as a global leader in the powdered materials and sintering fields, in addition to his many contributions to our cutting-edge research and educational programs. While he will be truly missed at Penn State, we anticipate a new era of cooperation with Mississippi State University. The Engineering Science and Mechanics Department and the College of Engineering is strongly supportive of the continuation of CISP as a Center of Excellence for the powder metallurgy industry. A transition leadership team comprising Rand German, Sharon Elder, Ivi Smid, and Judy Todd (ESM Department Head) has been appointed to develop a transition plan. Dr. Ivi Smid has been appointed as Interim Director when Rand leaves Penn State.

Dr. Smid has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry and an M.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Vienna. He also has studied and developed novel hard metals at Metallwerk Plansee, Tyrol/Austria and at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées in Rennes, France. His post-doctoral work included investigation and qualification of materials and braze-joined composites at Juelich, Germany, and research at Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM. He also conducted research for 18 months at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute in Naka-machi. His areas of interest are: Powder Metallurgy; Particulate Composites; Coating of Particles; Refractory & Hard Metals; Carbon Nanotube Reinforced MMC's; Structural & Thermal Modeling.

Dr. Smid started his employment at the Austrian Research Center Seibersdorf in 1990 as project leader at the Department of Materials Technology, working on high melting and refractory alloys, materials for fusion, modeling, and thermal shock testing. He has coordinated international research efforts in electronic packaging and material selection. For two years, Smid has been a member of the Plasma Facing Component Group in the NET Team, preparing and monitoring R&D industry contracts within the European Fusion Program.

Dr. Smid joined Penn State in January 2002, as Associate Professor in the Engineering Science & Mechanics Department. He has published more than 150 papers and technical reports in the areas of high performance materials and composites, hard metals, components and processing, and numerical modeling, plus many program evaluations for government agencies. He is a member of: The American Society of Mechanical Engineers; The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society; The Professional Society for Powder Metallurgy; and the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Materialkunde (Germany). Sharon Elder, Executive Director cisp@psu.edu.