VOLUME 13, NO. 3     June 2001

Faculty Honors

Leonard D. Albano and Guillermo F. Salazar, associate professors of civil and environmental engineering, are among this year’s winners of Distinguished Leadership Awards from the Design-Build Institute of America. The awards recognize individuals, firms, agencies and institutions that have demonstrated leadership in the advancement of design-build and design-build best practices. Albano and Salazar were recognized for creating WPI’s Master Builder Program, which combines elements of design, construction and facility management. The professors team-teach CE 535, Integration of Design and Construction, which requires students to form teams that design a facility and prepare a cost- and schedule-based construction plan for the project.

McRae C. Banks, chairman of the Department of Management, was named a Coleman Foundation Associate for 2000-01. The foundation selects a limited number of entrepreneurship educators each year for these positions based on their efforts to encourage and foster entrepreneurism among their students.

Ladislav H. Berka, research professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has been appointed editor of a new forensic chemistry column that will appear regularly in the NEACT (New England Association of Chemistry Teachers) Journal. Joel J. Brattin, professor of English, is the editor of a new paperback edition of Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend. Brattin established the text and provided an introduction, explanatory annotations and notes for this first scholarly edition of the text, which was completed in 1865. President of the Dickens Society, Brattin has been elected to another term as a trustee and elected, as well, to serve on the society’s Executive Committee for 2001.

Maria Isabel F. Cruz, assistant professor of computer science, won the Best Paper Award at VL 2000, the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages in Seattle, in September. Co-authored with Peter Leveille ’00 (M.S.), Cruz’ paper was titled "Implementation of a Constraint-Based Visualization System."

Nicholas Dembsey, associate professor of fire protection engineering, received the Hats Off award from the Society of Fire Protection Engineers at the organization’s 50th anniversary national conference in Denver last year. Dembsey was recognized for his volunteer efforts that led to the development of the SFPE’s Engineering Guide on Skin Burn Hazards. Christopher Wieszorek ’98 (M.S. FPE) assisted with the production of the guide, which is designed to help fire protection engineers perform analyses and designs.

Chrysanthe Demetry, associate professor of mechanical engineering, has received the Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers from ASM International, the materials information society. She was cited for "exceptional pedagogy as applied to materials education and the ability to motivate students and engender interest in materials science." ASM International is a professional society with 40,000 members worldwide.

James C. Hermanson, associate professor of mechanical engineering, was elected a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The George I. Alden Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a recipient of the NSF’s CAREER program grant, Hermanson was cited for significant and original contributions to mechanical engineering knowledge and education through his research and teaching interests.

Sean S. Kohles, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, was named to the Kinesiology Program Advisory Board of Becker College’s Health and Sciences Division. Kinesiology is the study of human and animal motion. Kohles was a member of the search committee for the head of the program and helped design the layout of the Motion Analysis Laboratory in the new academic building on the college’s Worcester campus.

David A. Lucht, director of the Center for Firesafety Studies, received the Society of Fire Protection Engineers President’s Award at the SFPE’s 50th anniversary national conference in Denver. Lucht was honored for his longtime dedication to and support of fire protection engineering.

John A. Minasian ’72 (’80 M.S., ’98 Ph.D.), director of WPI’s School of Industrial Management, was appointed to the board of directors of Lambda Chi Alpha International, one the nation’s largest collegiate fraternities. Minasian is the faculty advisor to the WPI chapter of the fraternity, which has won numerous local, regional and national awards.

President Edward Alton Parrish has received the Millennium Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Meritorious Achievement Award in Accreditation Activities from the IEEE’s Educational Activities Board.

L. Ramdas Ram-Mohan, professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering, has been elected a fellow of the Optical Society of America. Ram-Mohan was cited for his development of the paradigm of wave function engineering and for making it possible, through software, to optimize quantum well laser design.

Robert G. Zalosh, professor of fire protection engineering, has been elected a fellow of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. The honor recognizes Zalosh’s achievement in the field of fire protection engineering, a discipline in which WPI has played a major role in defining and advancing for more than two decades.