Pratt People

BME Professor of the Practice Robert Malkin was recently elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. This is a testament to Malking's contributions to the field, including his ongoing leadership in running the Engineering World Health program and its signature Summer Institute for students. In 2008, Duke-EWH Summer Institute participants placed more than $1,000,000 worth of medical equipment back into service.

Martha Absher, assistant dean for outreach, will receive a Sammie Award from the Samuel DuBois Cook Society in February. The society was founded to honor the first African American faculty member hired and tenured and his contributions as a member of the Duke University Board of Trustees. She is being recognized for her sustained efforts to promote diversity and success in her many undergraduate research programs.

Stephen Johnson, the administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, came to Duke in Novemeber for a series of meetings and talks around the new Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology (CEINT). He held discussions with director Mark Wiesner, April Brown, Tom Katsouleas and colleagues from the Nicholas School of the Environment.

Jim Daigle will be the next Director of Information Technology at Pratt.  He has more than 12 years of experience working in the IT field.  Prior to joining Pratt two years ago, he worked at Fairchild Semiconductor, where he managed support and coordinated IT projects across their 25 worldwide locations

CEE graduate student Rawad Saleh won a student poster competition at the 27th Annual Conference of the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR). Saleh's poster described a novel method to study gas/particle interactions of organic substances in ambient aerosol. Rawad, whose graduate adviser is CEE assistant professor Andrey Khlystov, aims to improve our ability to predict the fate of such components in the atmosphere and their effects on global climate and human health.

ME undergraduates Kevin Autrey (Pratt '09) and Clark McGehee (Pratt '10) competed in the Ironman Florida 2008. This athletic duo swam an amazing 2.4 miles, biked 112 miles, and then finished it off with a 26.2 mile run -- all in 13 hours and 32 minutes.

Henry Petroski, Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and Professor of History, was inducted into the American Philosophical Society. The APS is the nation's oldest learned society, having been founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743. Its 975 current members come from all fields of scholarship, practice, and leadership. He also has been reappointed by President George W. Bush to the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. The Board advises Congress and the Department of Energy on scientific and technical issues related to the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada, nuclear waste repository.

Undergraduate student Martin Azizyan won the Association for Computing Machinery Student Research Competition at the Mobicom 2008 conference for his research on localizing mobile phones using ambient sound, light, color, and user movement. Mobicom is a top conference in the areas of wireless networking and mobile computing. Martin and his adviser, ECE faculty member Romit Roy Choudhury, both received a $500 cash prize.

BME Graduate student Faisal Reza won recognition at the 2008 Sigma Xi Annual Meeting and Student Research Conference in Washington, DC. His poster titled "Modeling and Engineering of Nanomolecular Interactions," won in the Engineering category of the Poster Competition.

Alumnus Hal Yoh, E'83, P'09, recently received the 2008 Civic Leadership Award from the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. He also serves as chair of the Board of Visitors Development Committee.