College of Science & Engineering Alumni Newsletter

Fall 1998
 

New Developments & New Faces

This year has seen a number of new developments affecting the quality of our academic programs. I would like to tell you about a few of them.

Last fall the faculty and department chairs completed a five-year hiring plan for new faculty. We expect to hire 46 new faculty members in the next five years, about 40% of the total faculty in the College. Because hiring new faculty is a 30-year $1 million decision, we have tried hard to project those fields which we think will be the most promising in the long term. We have also tried to project areas on collaboration between these new faculty and others in the College and beyond. We have now completed the first year of this plan and have managed to bring an outstanding group of new scientists and engineers to the College.  Here is the list of new faculty members.

John Caskey, Assistant Professor of Geosciences, received his Ph.D. from the University of Nevada, Reno, where he continued as a post-doctoral fellow in neotectonics.
Lily Chen, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Laboratory Science, earned her Ph.D. from SUNY, Buffalo and is completing a post-doctoral appointment at the University of Vermont in Molecular Parasitology.
Zhigang Chen, Assistant Professor of Physics, took his Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr and is completing a post-doctoral appointment at Princeton in Laser Optics.
Elahe Ensanni, Associate Professor of Engineering, returns to the faculty this fall from industry. She earned her Ph.D. at UC, Berkeley in Environmental Engineering.
Newell (Toby) Garfield, Assistant Professor of Geosciences and the Romberg Tiburon Center, received his Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island and has been on the faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey in physical oceanography.
Christopher Moffatt, Assistant Professor of Biology, earned his Ph.D. from John Hopkins and has been in a post-doctoral position at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in reproductive physiology.
Wenshen Pong, Assistant Professor of Engineering, took his Ph.D. at SUNY, Buffalo and has also completed a post-doctoral appointment at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in earthquake engineering.
Peter Rha, Associate Professor of Engineering, received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah and has been employed by Samsung Telecommunications America in wireless communications engineering.
Claire Sherman, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, took her Ph.D. at the University of Waterloo and has most recently been involved in a research project funded by the National Research Council analyzing radiation effects on atom bomb survivors in Hiroshima. Her field is biostatistics.

Our enrollments continue to be strong and the science and engineering student body is wonderfully diverse. In fact the demographics of the College reflect those of the University quite accurately. We have, through the efforts of many faculty but particularly Frank Bayliss and Dan Buttlaire, acquired significant funding for scholarships and stipends to help our students stay in school and complete their degrees. Two of the most prestigious are four new Beckman scholarships from the Beckman Foundation which provide more than $17,000 to each of four students in biology, chemistry and biochemistry. These awards were given to only 20 universities nationwide, including MIT, Caltech, UC Berkeley and Stanford, so we are in good company. The other awards are 6  $5,000 scholarships from the ARCS (Achievement Awards for College Scientists) Foundation. These awards continue a history of ARCs awards to our students in Biology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Physics and Astronomy.

As we move forward in many new fields with a remarkable group of students and faculty, we hope you will come by for a visit and see the progress.
 

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