Chairman's Corner

Greetings and Happy 2008.

In an effort to communicate more with our constituents, we have decided to divide the newsletter into several issues each academic year, each with a theme. In this edition, we discuss the excellent research being conducted by our graduate students, as well as welcome Thomas Schwartzentruber to our Fluids faculty. He graduated with a Ph.D. degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan. Dr. Schwartzentruber's area of expertise is numerical modeling and simulation of hypersonic flow. Recently, he received the AIAA Graduate Student Award. We are excited to have Dr. Schwartzentruber join our faculty and please join me in welcoming him to the department.
AEM has been fortunate in the fall and winter season with outstanding press coverage of our program. One of our students, David Hauth, who was covered in the last edition of AEM Update, was recognized and profiled by the St. Paul Pioneer Press for his prestigious Honeywell Innovators award. Additionally, our NASA interns and AEM Senior design students have been the subjects of pieces in The Minnesota Daily. We continue to expand and enhance our industry-academia partnerships. One of latest success stories is working with Victory Systems and PDA which was featured in the December issue of Inventing Tomorrow and the business supplement of Minnesota Magazine.
I am pleased to relay to you that a recent report from The Chronicle of Higher Education on Faculty Scholarship Productivity places AEM at #1 for aerospace departments with less than 20 faculty, #2 for percentage of faculty with journal publication cited by another work, #5 overall for public universities and #10 among Aerospace Engineering programs nationwide. It is great to have our aerospace engineering program recognized as one of the top programs in the country. We understand that faculty scholarship is just one measure of a program, but it is one metric that reflects the research excellence of faculty, students and staff. AEM's commitment to education, as well as outreach, complement the department's recognized strength in scholarly research.
We look forward to the expected release of new graduate program rankings in the upcoming year from the National Research Council (NRC). In the last NRC ranking, AEM ranked eighth in the nation for public universities and twelfth overall.
Several of our faculty members have had remarkable success in the past several months. Graham Candler has been elected a Fellow in AIAA and Ellen Longmire was elected a Fellow in the American Physical Society. Ryan Elliott has received a NSF CAREER award for his work on active materials. Daniel Joseph has published his latest book, "Potential Flows of Viscous and Viscoelastic Fluids," with co-authors Toshio Funada and Jing Wang through Cambridge Press. For more information on faculty news and achievements, please see here.
Providing an outstanding work environment for our students, faculty and staff is one of my driving passions. I am excited to tell you that we have completed renovation of the previous AEM shop space into graduate student offices. The room is furnished with 16 workstations and includes enclosed space for teaching assistants to hold office hours and tutoring sessions. This past year, the department combined its machine shop with the Electrical and Computer Engineering shop facilities (run by the AEM shop supervisor Dave Hultman) allowing for the space renovation. Undergraduate and graduate students have access to the Mechanical Engineering student shop. In 2007, the department also added undergraduate and graduate student lounges and renovated the main office. We will continue to look for opportunities to improve Akerman Hall, department offices and laboratories in the new year.
The University of Minnesota is requesting funds from the Minnesota State legislature to renovate all Akerman Hall classrooms as part of their capital bonding request. The AEM department fully supports this request. The renovations would include upgrading the technology and electrical service, energy efficient windows, air conditioning, carpeting, painting and new furniture. We have been working closely with university classroom management to advocate for the planned renovation. This is an exciting opportunity for us. We would appreciate your support of the University capital request and ask you to contact your local legislators regarding your support. More information is available here.
In closing, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of you who have generously donated your time and money to support the AEM department. You have contributed to improving the department in many ways including undergraduate and graduate scholarships, fellowships and projects; endowed professorships; renovation of the undergraduate and graduate lounges and graduate offices; departmental seminar series and much more. The faculty, staff and students are truly honored by your support.
I look forward to another outstanding year for the AEM department in 2008.

Regards

Gary J. Balas
Department Head
balas(@aem.umn.edu)