August 20, 1999

Nuclear Engineering Post-Doc Receives Award

Douglas E. Peplow, (NE PhD '99), a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Kuruvilla Verghese, will be awarded the Mark Mills Award by the American Nuclear Society (ANS). The Mark Mills Award is presented "to the graduate student author who submits the best original technical paper contributing to the advancement of science and engineering related to the atomic nucleus," according to the ANS. Dr. Peplow's paper is entitled, "Differential Sampling Applied to Mammography Image Simulation". It is co-authored by Prof. Verghese, the dissertation advisor. The award is to be presented to Dr. Peplow at the Winter Meeting of the ANS in November where he has been asked to present a summary of his research. He will join Oak Ridge National Laboratory in September as a staff scientist.

Over the last two years, two PhD graduates from the Nuclear Engineering Department have won the Mark Mills Award.

July 29, 1999

Gilligan Elected to the Engineering Research Council Board

Dr. John G. Gilligan of Cary, professor of nuclear engineering and associate dean for engineering research and graduate programs at NC State University, has been elected to serve on the board of directors of the Engineering Research Council (ERC) of the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). Board members are appointed to three-year terms.

A nonprofit organization, ASEE is dedicated to improving engineering education and research. The ERC was developed within ASEE to support and enhance engineering and applied science.

A member of ASEE, Gilligan joined the College of Engineering faculty in 1983. He is chair of the NC State University Minerals Research Laboratory advisory board and serves on the North Carolina Mining Commission. Prior to 1983, he served as an assistant professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Illinois and as a research associate at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

A recipient of the Alcoa Foundation Engineering Research Achievement Award, Gilligan is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, American Nuclear Society and American Physical Society. He received his bachelor's degree in engineering science from Purdue University in 1971 and his master's and doctoral degrees in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan in 1973 and 1977.

July 23, 1999

Students Build Robots in Mechatronics Summer Workshop

High school students will design, build and test robots at NC State this summer as part of the Mechatronics Systems Workshop for Young Scholars. The newest summer program to be offered in the College of Engineering is designed to introduce students to mechatronics Ö a combination of information technology and mechanical, electrical and computer engineering.

The media is invited to attend the capstone robot demonstrations on Friday, July 30, at 10 a.m. on the Brickyard on the NC State University campus. The event will be very visual, with high school students demonstrating the capabilities of their robot designs.

The Mechatronics Workshop is a week-long program for rising high school juniors and seniors. The workshop begins July 25. Participants will attend classes and laboratories to familiarize them with engineering concepts. The robot project is designed to give students hands-on experience with solving typical challenges faced by engineering students. The workshop was developed to familiarize students with the field of mechatronics. The students will be allowed to take home the robots they create.

The College of Engineering recently announced a new mechatronics degree program with the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The most recent addition to the College of Engineering's distance education program, the mechatronics degree will allow students in western North Carolina to earn a bachelor of science in engineering from NC State without moving to Raleigh.

A pioneer in distance education technology, NC State's College of Engineering was the first in the state to offer an on-line, real-time interactive classroom using Internet conferencing technology for distance education.

July 21, 1999

Gould New Director of AERL

Dr. Richard D. Gould, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and associate director of the Applied Energy Research Lab (AERL), has been appointed the new director of AERL. Gould succeeds Dr. James C. Mulligan.

July 12, 1999

DeSimone Receives Kenan Professorship

Dr. DeSimone

Dr. Joseph M. DeSimone has been appointed the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Chemical Engineering at NC State University. Effective July 1, the appointment was approved by the UNC-CH Board of Trustees and the NC State University Board of Trustees.

The professorship is the first Kenan Professorship at NC State. The appointment will allow DeSimone to use funding provided by a $500,000 endowment housed in the North Carolina Engineering Foundation Inc.

DeSimone codirects the Kenan Center for the Utilization of Carbon Dioxide in Manufacturing with Dr. Ruben Carbonell, Heochst Celanese Professor of Chemical Engineering and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at NC State. The center is a corporate-sponsored research group based jointly at NC State and UNC-CH.

A leader in supercritical carbon dioxide research, DeSimone launched MiCELL Technologies in 1996 to commercialize the use of carbon dioxide as an alternative solvent. As a result of his research and development efforts, the first carbon dioxide-based dry cleaning business was opened in Wilmington earlier this year.

DeSimone received his doctoral degree in chemistry from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1990. He earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Ursinus College in 1986.

July 12, 1999

Baliga Earns Prestigious Engineering Honor

- From NC State Universtiy News Services

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July 1, 1999

Silverberg Named Director of the Mars Mission Research Center

Lawrence (Larry) M. Silverberg, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, was appointed director of the Mars Mission Research Center on July 1, 1999, after approval from the NC State University Board of Trustees. Silverberg replaces Gerald D. Walberg, professor emeritus of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

June 24, 1999

New Name for Flight Test Facility Honors Perkins Pioneers

NC State University has renamed its flight test facility Perkins Field in honor of Dr. John N. Perkins, retired aerospace engineering professor, and his late uncle, Captain Albert N. Perkins, a U.S. Naval commander and aviator. The facility is located near Butner, N.C. The new name was effective May 16.

A member of the NC State faculty since 1965, Perkins was instrumental in developing the flight test facility. It is used for testing remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) used in aerospace research and teaching. The facility occupies a 2.77-acre area located in the pasture of NC State University's Butner Beef Cattle Field Laboratory and has a 454-foot by 50-foot asphalt runway.

The founding director of the NC Space Grant Consortium and the Flight Test Group, Perkins served the university in a variety of capacities prior to his retirement in May, including associate department head of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and associate director of the Mars Mission Research Center. He is best known for his teaching and research related to RPVs. He began teaching the aerospace senior design course in 1977 and pioneered the course structure requiring student teams to design, construct and test RPVs Ö a model that other universities have copied in their senior design courses.

Captain Perkins was commander of naval aviation units in the Pacific during World War II and a pioneer in naval aviation. His most notable technical aviation contribution was the development of the carrier-arrested landing system, which employs the use of tail hooks and cables to land high performance aircraft on naval aircraft carriers. Arrested landing systems were an important factor during World War II and are now a standard part of naval aircraft operations. Captain Perkins also piloted the first aircraft to test the landing system.

June 22, 1999

First NCAMP Scholars Receive Engineering Degrees

The College of Engineering awarded degrees to the first three graduating North Carolina Alliance for Minority Participation (NCAMP) Scholars this May. Taunya Renee Bailey of Raleigh received a BS in biological engineering; Michael Leigh Laurenceau of Fayetteville received a BS in computer science, and Kontay Vashon Sexton of Greensboro received a BS in mechanical engineering.

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, NCAMP is an alliance of eight partner universities, North Carolina A&T State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, NC State University, Fayetteville State University, Winston-Salem State University and North Carolina Central University. The first NCAMP scholarships were awarded in 1996 using $45,000 from an annual NC State NCAMP program allocation of $116,000. The program supports 15 scholarships in the College. Each scholarship is valued at $3,000 per year, renewable until the recipient satisfies the requirements for the BS degree.

The NCAMP scholarships along with other initiatives supported by the Minority Engineering Program office are part of an ongoing effort by the College of Engineering to improve the quality of entering students and the average GPA and graduation rate of minority students in the College.

June 17, 1999

Kekas Receives Clemson's Highest Alumni Honor

Dennis H. Kekas, director of the Department of Computer Science Multimedia Laboratory, received the Distinguished Service Award from Clemson University. The award is the highest honor given to Clemson alumni. Kekas graduated from Clemson in 1959 and worked for 36 years with IBM.

June 16, 1999

NC State to Hold 4th Annual Instructional Technologies Expo

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June 14, 1999

Computer Science Professor Receives NSF CAREER Award

North Carolina State University researcher, Dr. Injong Rhee of Raleigh, assistant professor of computer science, is the recipient of a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award is the highest honor given by the NSF to young university faculty in science and engineering.

As part of the award, NSF will provide $269,000 in funding over the next four years. Rhee will use the award to support his research in wireless network environments for digital communication.

Rhee's research examines a new class of error recovery techniques aimed improving video transmission in wireless communications. The project, Recovery from Error Spread using Continuous Updates (RESCU), focuses on eliminating error propagation once packet losses occur rather than on preventing an error from occurring in the first place. Due to the nature of wireless communication, the latter is not effective. The main advantage of RESCU is that it can effectively mask out recovery delays by combining video coding techniques and networking solutions.

Prior to joining the NC State faculty in August 1997, Rhee held postdoctoral appointments at Emory University and at Warwick University in the United Kingdom. He received his doctoral degree in computer science in 1994 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1989 from Kyung Pook National University in Korea.

June 10, 1999

Civil Engineering Students' Project Helps Reduce Rainwater Runoff

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June 8, 1999

New Department Head Announced for Industrial Engineering

Dr. James R. Wilson of Cary, professor of industrial engineering at North Carolina State University, has been named head of the Department of Industrial Engineering.

His appointment was announced recently by Dr. Nino A. Masnari, dean of the College of Engineering. The appointment is effective July 1.

Wilson, who joined the NC State faculty in 1991, succeeds Dr. Stephen Roberts, who served as department head since 1990.

A member of the NC State Academy of Outstanding Teachers, Wilson has served as director of graduate programs in the department since 1995. His research focuses on probabilistic and statistical issues in the design and analysis of large-scale simulation experiments and analysis of production systems.

Prior to joining the NC State faculty, Wilson served on the faculty of The University of Texas from 1974 to 1984 and Purdue University from 1985 to 1991. He received his bachelor's degree from Rice University in 1970. He received his master's degree in 1977 and his Ph.D. in 1979 from Purdue University.

June 1, 1999

Chemical Engineering Student Receives Udall Scholarship

Kaleb J. Redden of Mooresville, a junior in chemical engineering at NC State University, has received a 1999 Morris K. Udall Scholarship. Seventy-five scholarships were awarded to sophomores and juniors from a field of more than 360 students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities across the country. Redden is the only recipient from North Carolina.

Established by Congress in 1992 to honor Congressman Morris K. Udall, the scholarships are awarded to outstanding students with excellent academic records who demonstrate a commitment to fields related to the environment and to Native American and Alaska Native students in fields related to health care and tribal policy.

The one-year scholarships will cover the cost of tuition, fees, books and room and board up to a maximum of $5,000 a year.