Dr. Yaakov Bar-Shalom, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and the Marianne E. Klewin Endowed Professor in Engineering, is the top-ranked academic in the Aeronautical and Space Engineering field as judged by a complex formula that measures number of scholarly journal publications and number of citations/journal paper, according to academic.research.microsoft.com, one of several academic ranking organizations.  Of Dr. Bar-Shalom’s estimated 364 scholarly papers, 42 have 42 or more citations, which leads to an overall h index of 42.  Alumnus Dr. Thiagalingam Kirubarajan (M.S., Ph.D, Electrical Engineering, ’95, ’98), a professor at McMaster University (Ontario, Canada) is ranked number five based on the same criteria.

Chemical Engineering doctoral student Hom Sharma has received a coveted three-year Environmental Protection Agency STAR Fellowship, which provides him $25,000 annually in addition to covering tuition/fees and other expenses. The EPA STAR (Science to Achieve Results) program funds graduate environmental study and has awarded approximately 1,500 fellowships nationwide since its inception in 1995. Hom, who is advised by Dr. Ramamurthy Ramprasad, is the first UConn engineering graduate student to receive the award. The STAR Fellowship will support Hom’s computational and experimental investigation into new methods for reducing toxic vehicular exhaust emissions, including carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, volatile organic compounds and other emissions associated with adverse health effects and climate change. His work will help to overcome challenges inherent in the development of catalyst screening tools and aid in the identification of improved sulfur resistant diesel oxidation catalysts materials. Furthermore, engines and after-treatment system manufacturers (who are required to meet increasingly stringent standards) will benefit from his research findings.