RPI Campus.News October 11, 2004: Accolades

Curtis Breneman, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, organized the fourth annual Symposium on Emerging Technologies in Computational Chemistry at the American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting in Philadelphia on Aug. 22-26. According to ACS, the objective of the symposium is to stimulate, reward, and publicize methodological advances in computational chemistry. The talks were evaluated by a panel of experts based on the impact the research will have on the future of computational chemistry and allied sciences.

Ken Gertz, assistant vice president of research, has been elected to the advisory board of the Grants Resource Center of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

Ben Potsaid, a doctoral student in mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering supervised by Professor John Wen '85, won the best student paper award at the 2004 Conference on Control Applications held recently in Taipei, Taiwan . The title of the paper is "High-Performance Motion Tracking Control."

Richard Smith, professor of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering, has started his new role as associate dean for academic and student affairs for the School of Engineering. Smith has been a member of the faculty since 1977 and was a Fulbright-Hayes Senior Research Scholar visiting the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania. In 2004, he completed a three-year term as program director for thermal transport and thermal processing in the Chemical and Transport Systems Division of the U.S. National Science Foundation.

James Tien '66, the Yamada Corporation Professor and chair of decision sciences and engineering systems, was recently profiled in IEEE's September 2004 issue of The Institute (PDF) as one of three final candidates for 2005 IEEE president-elect.