February 25, 2013 | Eli Freund - School of Engineering

Faculty Notes

Read about recent honors and activities of our engineering faculty, who are respected leaders in research, instruction, mentoring and professional societies.

Bryan Huey (2)In January, Associate Professor Bryan Huey (Materials Science & Engineering) co-organized the Electronic Materials and Applications conference, an annual meeting sponsored by the American Ceramic Society.  Attendance rose by more than 50% over last year’s conference, thanks to a re-invigorated program that included symposia on data storage, dielectrics, sensors and actuators, photovoltaics, thermoelectrics, superconductors, energy harvesting, nanoscale devices, and other subjects. Fellow Materials Science & Engineering faculty members Pamir Alpay, Rampi Ramprasad, Puxian Gao, Serge Nakhmanson, and George Rossetti participated, as well as Advisory Board member Joe Mantese (UTRC), and several students.  Dr. Rossetti will co-organize the conference next year with Dr. Huey, confirming UConn’s very active leadership in the discipline.

Dr. Huey was also elected secretary for the Basic Science Division of the American Ceramic Society, a position that will rise to division chair in 2015-16. The division is committed to the development of ceramic sciences underlying present and future ceramic applications. With more than 1,000 members, BSD represents 20% of the overall academic and industrial membership within the society.

Associate Professor Allison MacKay (Civil & Environmental Engineering) was elected the vice chair of the 2014 Gordon Research Conference in Environmental Sciences: Water.  The Gordon Conferences provide researchers a venue where they may share new findings on the frontiers of science. Dr. MacKay notes that the Environmental Sciences: Water conference brings together many of the top researchers focused on chemical contaminants in aquatic systems. In her capacity as vice chair, Dr. MacKay will develop the agenda for the 2014 meeting, which will take place June 22-27, 2014 in Holderness, NH.

Provost Mun Y. Choi announced that Professor Harris Marcus will retire from his 18-year tenure as Director of the Institute of Materials Science (IMS).  Dr. Marcus will remain on the faculty in the Materials Science & Engineering Department.  Dr. Marcus joined UConn from the University of Texas at Austin in 1995 and has led IMS with distinction.  Provost Choi credits Dr. Marcus with dramatically increasing the infrastructure for research within IMS through the acquisition of major instrumentation for both soft and hard materials, and with rigorously recruiting excellent faculty members and graduate students to the University.  “These efforts have led to significantly greater partnership with industry and federal/state agencies for extramural support for research and development,” notes Provost Choi.  An internal search will be launched to identify his successor.