Dr. Marehalli G. Prasad, a professor and Director of the Noise and Vibration Control Laboratory in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Stevens Institute of Technology, has been elected a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The Fellow grade of membership recognizes exceptional engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession. Newly elected Fellows are recognized annually in the November issue of Mechanical Engineering Magazine.

At the time of advancement from member grade, a Fellow shall be a corporate member of the Society, have been responsible for significant engineering achievements, and shall have not less than 10 years of active practice and 10 years of continuous corporate membership in ASME.
Dr. Prasad has made significant contributions in teaching and research to the field of acoustics and vibration. His pioneering research on acoustical source characterization of sources in ducts using direct and indirect methods has important applications to muffler design. At Stevens, he built the Noise and Vibration Control Laboratory including anechoic and reverberation chambers. He has published 100 papers. Two papers have received awards. He has made several invited presentations at national and international meetings. Under NSF International Travel Grants, he has presented papers in conferences in France, China, and India. He has worked as a Noise Control Expert for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. He has chaired ASME Technical Committee on Duct Acoustics. 

Dr. Prasad’s research contributions have been published in several refereed international journals and have been included in several acoustics books by other authors. He has presented several invited lectures including at Nelson Industries, Wisconsin; Nova-Husky Research Corporation, Calgary; Carrier Corporation, Syracuse; and at a research symposium of International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.

Currently, Dr. Prasad is the faculty advisor for ASME Student Section and also a co-advisor for Student Section of Engineers without Borders (EWB) at Stevens. Dr. Prasad is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of India, and a Board Certified Member of Institute of Noise Control Engineering.  

“We are very proud of Dr. Prasad’s accomplishments to-date, wish him good health and look forward to his continued contributions to the progress of our department, school and Institute in the years to come,” said Costas Chassapis, Professor and Director of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stevens.

“I am very pleased to have been elected a Fellow of ASME as it indicates the recognition of my contributions to area of acoustics and vibrations as part of mechanical engineering. In addition, I am happy with this recognition as Stevens has a special role in the history of ASME” said Professor Prasad.

For more information please contact:

Dr. Marehalli Prasad
Professor
Edwin A. Stevens Hall
Room 305
Phone: 201.216.5571
Fax: 201.216.8315

mprasad@stevens.edu

The National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security recently appointed Stevens Institute of Technology among the first institutions to be recognized as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance (IA) Research. Dr. Susanne Wetzel and Dr. Sven Dietrich (both in the Department of Computer Science) coordinated and compiled the Stevens application. Their efforts were supported by Dr. K.P. Subbalakshmi (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering).

In September 2007, the National Centers of Academic Excellence in IA Research Program was launched to address the need for robust IA technology, policy, and practices to effectively prevent and respond to a national catastrophic cyberspace event. This program recognizes schools that foster an IA research focus in their curriculum and labs. The vision for this program is to establish a process that will drill deeper into much needed solutions for securing the global information grid, and provide NSA, DHS, and other federal agencies with insight into academic IA programs that can support advanced research and development capabilities for securing cyberspace.

The President's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace refers to cyberspace as the nervous system of our Nation's critical infrastructures, and indicates that the healthy functioning of cyberspace is essential to our economy and our national security. Securing cyberspace presents a difficult strategic challenge, and information assurance education is a critical component in successfully meeting that challenge.

For more information please contact:

Susanne Wetzel
Assistant Professor
Babbio
Room 634
Phone: 201.216.5610
Fax: 201.216.8249

swetzel@cs.stevens.edu

At the recent ASEE Zone 1 Conference hosted at the US Military Academy at West Point, the paper, "Promoting Systems Thinking in Engineering and Pre-Engineering Students," by R. Jain, K.Sheppard, E. McGrath and B. Gallois, was awarded 1st Place in the conference's Best Paper Competition.  ASEE Zone 1 includes the three sections covering all of the north eastern portion of the USA & Canada.

For more information please contact:

Dr. Keith Sheppard
Associate Dean of Engineering, Schaefer School of Engineering and Science
Edwin A. Stevens Hall
Room 216
Phone: 201.216.5260
Fax: 201.216.8372

ksheppar@stevens.edu

On April 24th, 2008, at the Society of Pharmaceutical Engineering's (ISPE) NJ Regional Poster Competition both (post)graduate student Dr. Simarna Kaur and an undergraduate design team won awards for their posters.

Dr. Simarna Kaur, presented a poster titled "Regulation of Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator (CFTR) and Delta-F508 mutant by Rab GTPases", and came in 1st place in the Graduate student's division.

In the Undergraduate division, the BME senior design team of Mike Trapani, Steve Gadol, Adrienne Quiray, and William Kowalski, presented a poster titled "Back-UP", and came in 2nd place.

Both of these groups will receive an all-expense paid trip to the ISPE Annual Meeting in Florida in October 2008, where they will compete with teams from each state. Last year, Kate Freed was the overall winner in the undergraduate category for her poster titled "Impedance Mammography".

Congratulations to all the winners and good luck for the national competition in October.

For more information please contact:

Dr. Richard Berkof
Distinguished Industry Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Engineering Program
Edwin A. Stevens Hall
Room 306
Phone: 201.216.5538
Fax: 201.216.8315

rberkof@stevens.edu

Professor Ronald Besser of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science co-chaired the 10th International Conference on Microreaction Technology (IMRET-10), held April 6-10, 2008 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.  The symposium featured more than 130 presentations on such topics pharmaceutical synthesis, enzymatic processes, energy generation and fuel processing, and mass and heat transport issues. The symposium was truly international in flavor as speakers came from more than a dozen different countries to present results. Special events included a panel discussion on commercialization of microreaction technology and a microprocess engineering poster session. Total attendance at the IMRET sessions was estimated at 250.

The series of International Conferences on Microreaction Technology (IMRET) started in 1997 with IMRET 1 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Since then ten IMRET conferences have been organized alternately in North America by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and in Europe by the German organization DECHEMA. IMRET 10 was organized under the umbrella of the Process Development Division at AIChE and dedicated to applied and commercial investigations of microprocess technology.

In 2008, the AIChE Spring National Meeting coincided with the 235th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). AIChE and ACS developed special joint programming for this occasion and attendees at both meetings were able to attend sessions of both.

For more information please contact:

Dr. Ronald Besser
Professor
Room 408
Phone: 201.216.5257
Fax: 240.255.4028

rbesser@stevens.edu