Insana and Stubbins named Willett Professors

Two senior faculty members--Michael F. Insana and James Stubbins—have been named as Donald Biggar Willett Professors in the College of Engineering.

Named professorships and chairs recognize faculty members who have demonstrated leadership in their research areas, distinguished themselves by sustained, exceptional scholarship, and contributed significantly to the reputation of the College and the University.

Michael Insana joined the (then new) Department of Bioengineering in 2004, served as interim department head from 2008-2010 and was named department head in 2010. He is also an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Beckman Institute.

Insana’s research focuses on the development of novel ultrasonic instrumentation and methods for imaging soft tissue microstructure, elasticity and blood flow. The goal is to understand basic mechanisms of lesion formation, disease progression, and responses to therapy. His research includes the fundamentals of imaging system design and performance evaluation, signal processing, detection and estimation. Researchers in his Ultrasonic Imaging Laboratory use hydrogels to develop models of visco- and poroelastic behavior of soft tissues for cancer imaging. Through collaborations with industry, Insana's group is investigating spatio-temporal filtering for noise reduction and enhanced spatial resolution with applications in breast elasticity imaging and arterial-wall shear-stress estimation.

After earning MS and PhD degrees in medical physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Insana was a research physicist at the FDA. He was a professor of radiology and physiology at the University of Kansas Medical Center, and professor of biomedical engineering at the University of California, Davis before coming to Illinois.

Insana has published more than 200 articles and holds five patents. He is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, the Institute of Physics, and of the IEEE (2012), and serves as associate editor for IEEE Transaction on Medical Imaging.

James Stubbins joined the Department of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering in 1980, served as associate head from 1991 to 1998 and became department head in 1999. His primary research interests are in the area of materials performance and development for advanced energy systems including the influence of radiation effects, liquid metal corrosion, high temperature gaseous corrosion, moderate and elevated temperature materials mechanical properties, and microstructural-level examination of materials using advanced electron-optical techniques.

After earning his MS in nuclear engineering and PhD in materials science and engineering from the University of Cincinnati, Stubbins spent one and one-half years as a guest scientist in the Materials Research Institute at the Research Center, Karlsruhe, Germany and an additional one and one-half years as a guest scientist in the Department of Science of Materials, Oxford University and with Harwell Labs in the United Kingdom.

He later became principal investigator for the Very High Temperature Reactor Materials Program at General Electric in the U.S. Since joining the Illinois faculty in 1980, Stubbins has held a number of visiting scientist positions at Argonne National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. In addition, he has also held a long-term visiting scientist position with the Danish national research laboratory, Risø National Laboratory, and he has a continuing appointment with the Department of Mechanical, Nuclear, and Production Engineering at the University of Pisa, Italy.

Stubbins is former co-director of the NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center in Multiphase Flow, and former adjunct professor of Chemical Engineering at Ohio University. Stubbins is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society, where he was past chair of the Fusion Energy Division, the Materials Science and Technology Division, and the Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization. He is the co-author on more than 100 journal articles and holds one patent.

In 2004, Stubbins was named International Scientist of the Year, and was elected a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society in 2007. The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) recognized his teaching contributions by awarding him the Glenn Murphy Award in 2010. In 2011, he received the Engineering Council Award for Excellence in Advising from the College of Engineering.

Donald Biggar Willett Professors of Engineering at Illinois:  

• Daniel P.Abrams, CEE                
• Ilesanmi Adesida, ECE 
• Narendra Ahuja, ECE
• David Cahill, MatSE      
• Glaucio H. Paulino, CEE
• Michael Insana, BioE
• David A. Padua, CS
• William H. Sanders, ECE
• Nancy Sottos, MatSE
• James Stubbins, NPRE
• Dale Van Harlingen, Physics
• John Weaver, MatSE
• Scott White, AE

The Willett Research Initiatives in Engineering funds term professorships, undergraduate and graduate student research, and related research activity. It honors the memory of Donald Biggar Willett (1897-1981) who attended the University of Illinois from 1916-1921. Mr. Willett left the University before graduation, just 6 2/3 credits short of completing his coursework in civil engineering. He started his career as a partner in the family business, Suburban Coal and Supply Company, and later, worked as a self-employed bookkeeper and tax preparer. In 1994, his widow, Elizabeth Marie Willett, willed her entire estate to the College of Engineering, which established the Willett Research Initiatives Fund.   
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Contact: Michael Insana, Department of Bioengineering, 217/333-1867.

James Stubbins, Department of Nuclear, Radiological and Plasma Engineering, 217/ 333-6474.

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, writer/editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.