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Tami Paluca, the Academic Advisor for Undergraduate Studies and Director of Alumni Affairs in the Chemical Engineering Department, is the recipient of a UMass Amherst Residential First-Year Experience Student Choice Award. The award was announced by Danielle Barone, First-Year Experience Specialist in the Residential Learning Communities for the UMass Amherst campus. Paluca was nominated by first-year students for her positive contributions to their experience at UMass Amherst. First-year students were given the opportunity to nominate a professor or instructor who had a profound influence on them during their first semester. Paluca will accept her award at the Academic Engagement Awards Banquet, held at the Marriott Center (top of the Campus Center) on April 21 at 6:30 pm.

Alumna Named Woman to Watch by Mass High Tech

Alumna Leslie Jelalian, VP of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance at BAE Systems, has been named by Mass High Tech as one of its 20 “Women to Watch” in 2013. Jelalian is a 1988 graduate of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Now in its 10^th year, the annual Women to Watch program recognizes women in tech and life sciences who are judged to be leaders in their field and shaping the future of their industries for years to come. According to Mass High Tech, “Leslie Jelalian has become part of BAE’s DNA. The vice president of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance at one of the largest defense companies in the nation has been with the company since college. In fact, it is where she landed her first job.” Read Mass High Tech article on Jelalian: jelalian.html

UMass Team’s Black Box for Humans Featured on Yahoo! News

An enterprising team of student innovators from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department was the object of an admiring feature story on Yahoo! News (black-box-html). Though the UMass team did not win any prizes for its Personal Black Box as one of 30 finalists in the 2013 Cornell Cup competition during the first weekend in May, Yahoo! News judged that “The Amherst black box for humans was perhaps the most intriguing idea on display.” The team—comprised of Brett Kaplan, Jack Vorwald, Mike Burns, and Ryan Holmes, with assistance from advisors Professor David Irwin and Professor Tilman Wolf—presented its black box prototype at the annual competition hosted by Cornell University that challenges engineering students to create new technologies of their choosing using embedded Intel chips.

Dr. Marshall Jones Speaks to Peck School Students

Principal Engineer Marshall Jones of General Electric Global Research spoke to about 32 students from William R. Peck School, a K-through-8 school in Holyoke, as part of the Engineering Students Reaching Out (ESRO) program. ESRO is sponsored by the Diversity Programs Office (DPO) and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and designed to encourage interest in the field of engineering among school children. Dr. Jones spoke about his career and research and told the middle school students how he struggled in school at their age and was held back for a year. He stressed that it was the support and encouragement of his teachers that led to his ultimate success. “He is deeply committed to mentoring young people,” explains Paula Rees, the director of the DPO, “particularly those from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds.” See interview with Dr. Jones: Dr Marshall Jones : Blog : GE Global ...

23 Engineering Students Present in Research Conference

The College of Engineering was well-represented on April 26 during the 19^th Annual Statewide Undergraduate Research Conference at the UMass Amherst Campus Center. Some 23 students from chemical, civil, and mechanical engineering were among more than 830 students from campuses across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts giving poster and oral presentations from a wide range of academic disciplines throughout the day. The faculty sponsor for almost half of those engineering projects was Jessica Schiffman of the Chemical Engineering Department who sponsored nine chemical engineering student presentations. Each year undergraduate students of diverse backgrounds from across the Massachusetts Public System of Higher Education gather to present the results of their original work in oral and poster presentations before their peers, faculty, and the public.

Perrell Receives Distinguished Achievement Award at Commencement

Alumnus Charles F. Perrell, investor and principal in Perrell Ventures, will receive a Distinguished Achievement Award, recognizing high accomplishment in a given field or profession and notable contributions to society, when 5,500 graduating seniors gather at McGuirk Alumni Stadium on May 10 at 5:00 p.m. for Undergraduate Commencement. Now retired, Perrell has been a prominent engineer, businessman, venture capitalist, philanthropist, and recipient of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Distinguished Alumni Award. After stepping down as a fulltime technology executive, Perrell remains energetically active as an angel investor and vineyard operator.

College Mourns Steve Constantine

All of us at the College of Engineering were stunned and saddened earlier this week by the unexpected death of our friend and colleague Dr. Stephen Constantine. Dr. Constantine held appointments as a Senior Lecturer in the College of Engineering and the School of Computer Science. In the College of Engineering Steve taught the required junior year "Writing in Engineering" course. Upon hearing the sad news, former students commented that "He was one of the most sincere and caring professors I have had over the past few years" and "It is very sad to hear this news as I know many of my classmates had loved him." An obituary appeared in the Gazette: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/gazettenet/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=164708281#fbLoggedOut

ChE Revolutionizes Its Student Hub

For many years the communal student work center in the basement of the Chemical Engineering (ChE) Department was so cramped, dark, and primitive that it was nicknamed “The Cave”; a name and conditions that evoked the famous remark of Thomas Hobbes that life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” Not anymore! In the past year the ChE Department has moved its student work area into a light and commodious space on the first floor of Goessmann Lab and transformed it into a high-tech, student-friendly, cheerful hub known as the CRIB. That’s short for ChE Research & Innovation Base. The transformation is thanks to a group of dedicated donors, the leadership of ChE Department Head Professor T.J. Lakis Mountziaris, and a visionary group of ChE faculty overseers, who planned, designed, decorated, equipped, and modernized the whole area.

Four Engineering Students Are Among 15 Undergrads Being Honored at Commencement

Four College of Engineering students will be honored during Undergraduate Commencement on Friday, May 10, beginning at 5:00 p.m. in McGuirk Alumni Stadium, when the University of Massachusetts Amherst will honor the exemplary achievement, initiative, and leadership of its most talented and accomplished graduating seniors. Civil engineering major Zachary Robert Bemis and civil and environmental engineering major Timothy Light are among the 11 graduating seniors that have been named 21st Century Leaders and will be honored for far-ranging achievement, initiative, and social awareness. Meanwhile, civil engineering major Philip Edward MacClellan and chemical engineering major Nicolas James Frederick Skarzynski are two of the four Jack Welch Scholars, recognized for their leadership and executive ability.

Follow-up Study Finds Older Drivers Retain Safe-driver Training

A press release issued by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society spotlights a study by Research Professor Matthew Romoser of the Arbella Human Performance Laboratory in our Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department. His new study shows that healthy older drivers, 70 to 89 years of age, retained safe-driver training two years after taking a driver behavior-modification course at the laboratory in 2009. The 2009 training emphasized safe road-scanning conduct at intersections by retraining older drivers to take secondary looks at the cross traffic coming from both directions. As the release notes, “Two years after their training, older drivers in the trained group still took secondary looks on average 73 percent of the time, more than one and a half times as often as pre-training levels.” Read release: https://www.hfes.org/web/DetailNews.aspx?Id=303.

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