Awards
Penn State Intercom......January 25, 2001
Three faculty members
receive NSF awards
Two faculty members of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and one faculty member from the Eberly College of Science have earned awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Philip Bevilacqua, assistant professor of chemistry, has received a Faculty Early Career Development Award. The award, which the agency describes as its highest honor for new faculty, provides five years of funding to stimulate the early development of academic careers in science and engineering and to support the critical roles played by faculty members in integrating research and education.
Venkatraman Gopalan, assistant professor of materials science and engineering with the Materials Research Laboratory, and Zi-Kui Liu, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, have each earned four years of funding for focused research and teaching projects through the NSF Faculty Career Development Award program.
Bevilacqua's award will help to support an area of his research in which he plans to identify selected RNAs by cloning and sequencing, and to study their structure and function.
Along with the research itself, Bevilacqua's plans include two outreach efforts. One involves the continuing development of a graduate course on the chemistry of nucleic acids. Collaborators with that effort include the Life Sciences Consortium and Michael Fried, associate professor of biological chemistry.
Gopalan is performing real-time studies of domain dynamics in ferroelectrics for photonic applications. He and his research group will investigate the structure and dynamics of individual domain walls in ferroelectrics using a range of probing techniques. The group seeks to break new ground in understanding the nucleation, growth and merger dynamics of domains on nanometer length scales and microsecond time scales.
Liu is concentrating on "Integrated Teaching and Research Activities on Computational Thermodynamics and Systems Materials Design of Magnesium Alloys." The research goal research is to combine thermodynamic calculations with phase transformation calculations to design energy efficient and environmentally friendly magnesium alloys with tailored properties for the automotive industry. Unlike the approach used for classical alloys, Liu's approach first designs the alloys using computer models.
Fayette cites admissions
staff's excellence
The Penn State Fayette Admissions Team was recently awarded the 2000 Campus Administrative Excellence Award.
Carolyn Johnson, Terri Sabatelli and Lou Ridgley were recognized for their work and success in increasing student enrollment and improving the overall admissions process for students.
Johnson serves as a traditional student admissions counselor working with high school and homeschooled students; Sabatelli works with traditional-aged students; and Ridgley operates the Adult Learner Center involving non-traditional student admissions. The center provides "one-stop-shopping" for adults as they move into college.
Professor receives
Sloan Center Fellowship
The New York-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has named Anne L. Beatty, associate professor of accounting and PricewaterhouseCoopers Faculty Fellow in The Smeal College of Business Administration, as a recipient of a Sloan Industry Center Fellowship.
The Sloan Industry Centers Fellowships enable academic scholars to study at Sloan Industry Centers located at leading universities in the United States, each devoted to a particular industry. Beatty will study at the Wharton Financial Institutions Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Her primary area of research focuses on the importance of accounting information for financial institutions.
Rich Yahner voted the
Bellis Award winner
Rich Yahner, associate dean of The Graduate School and professor of wildlife conservation, was voted by students and faculty as the 2000 recipient of the Edward D. Bellis Award in Ecology. This award goes to a faculty member who makes outstanding contributions to the training of graduate students in the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Ecology.