Three MechSE professors named ASME Fellows

Three Illinois professors of mechanical science and engineering--Narayana Aluru, Geir Dullerud, and Anthony Jacobi--have been named ASME Fellows—the organization’s highest membership grade— in recognition of their contributions to engineering and education.

Narayana Aluru is a Richard W. Kritzer Professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering (MechSE). His research has significantly advanced the understanding of physics at the micro and nanoscale—particularly with respect to microelectromechanical (MEMS) and nanoelectromechanical (NEMS) systems and nanofluidics. He has published over 125 journal articles on multiphysics and multiscale computational analysis of micro and nano devices. His research group has pioneered the development of advanced computational methods and novel theories for non-continuum effects in mechanical, electrostatic, and fluidic problems at small scales. While some of his studies have elucidated molecular mechanisms governing experimental observations, his computational discoveries have revealed novel physical phenomena at small scales. His journal articles have received more than 2,500 citations. 

Aluru’s research spans several engineering disciplines and he currently holds affiliations with the departments of Bioengineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computational Science & Engineering, and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. In addition to ASME, he is a member of AAAS, IEEE, SIAM, United States Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM), and serves on the boards of several professional journals. He has been honored for his scholarship with awards from ASME, USACM, NSF, and in 2010 was named a University Scholar by the University of Illinois.
 

Geir Dullerud is a Willett Faculty Scholar in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering. He has made fundamental research contributions in the development of theory and algorithms for systematic control system design and analysis that apply to a wide range of application domains within the mechanical engineering discipline. His achievements have been in the area of feedback control theory with major research results on: sampled-data systems where his work provides exact analysis techniques for addressing uncertainty in systems containing both physical processes and digital hardware; operator theoretic approaches to nonstationary deterministic system design; state space design methods for distributed systems; and hybrid switched system design.

Dullerud serves as a reviewer for numerous journals in the field of controls as well as for NSF, AFOSR, and several international research councils and foundations. His book “A Course in Robust Control Theory: A Convex Approach,” which he co-authored with Fernando Paganini, has become a standard for graduate courses in several top universities. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in journals and conference proceedings and has given 40 lectures around the world. In addition to ASME, he is an active member of SIAM and a Fellow of IEEE.

Anthony Jacobi is the Richard W. Kritzer Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering. He studies convection in complex flows, with a focus on heat exchanger applications. He has advanced the understanding of convective heat transfer and proposed enhancements, improving energy efficiency in air-cooling/heating applications and other systems. He developed performance interpretation methods to account for condensation and frosting on heat exchangers, and demonstrated methods to control wettability using micro-scale surface morphology for condensate management. His work on two-phase flows established a complete flow pattern map for the inter-tube falling film. He also clarified the heat transfer mechanisms during in-tube convective boiling in micro-channels, and he demonstrated enhancements during in-tube convective boiling with nanofluids.

Jacobi has been instrumental in developing the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center, which is located at the University of Illinois. He has served as co-director of the Center for 10 years and has helped it to grow into a research facility with support from approximately 30 industrial partners who provide funding for the research with grants and contracts for projects. The Center provides participating faculty and graduate and undergraduate students with the opportunity to engage in research on a wide range of thermal management and energy conversion topics that are directly relevant to the air conditioning and refrigeration industries.

As an active member of ASME, ASHRAE (Fellow 2009), and the scientific committees of several important international conferences, he has played a significant leadership role in organizing the heat transfer research community. He has served on numerous professional journals and is a founding, and current, associate editor of the ASME Journal of Thermal Science and Engineering Application.
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Contact: William Bowman, associate director of communications, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, 217/244-0901.

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