Spectrum - Volume 17 Issue 29 April 20, 1995 - Engineering faculty members named to professorships

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Engineering faculty members named to professorships

By Liz Crumbley

Spectrum Volume 17 Issue 29 - April 20, 1995

The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors has approved three endowed professorships for the College of Engineering. These professorships recognize engineering faculty members for their effective teaching and distinguished scholarship.

Chris Fuller of the Mechanical Engineering Department will hold the Roanoke Electric Steel Professorship. Fuller, an internationally recognized expert in the field of acoustics controls, initiated and is the director of Tech's Vibration and Acoustics Laboratories.

Fuller recently received a $2.5-million grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research for active acoustics control research. He was instrumental in forming the Virginia Consortium of Engineering and Science Universities and is among the first Tech faculty members to teach and conduct research within the consortium.

Robert Heller of the Engineering Science and Mechanics (ESM) Department received the Frank Maher Professorship. Heller has produced distinguished research in several fields, especially that of applying reliability and probability methods to designing and predicting failure of engineering structures. He recently spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria.

Heller has received more teaching awards from the students of his department than any other faculty member. His awards include Outstanding Professor of Engineering Mechanics, Outstanding Educator Award, ESM Society Teaching Award, the Frank Maher Outstanding Educator Award, the College Certificate for Teaching Excellence, and the American Society for Engineering Education's Western Electric Fund Award for Excellence in Instruction of Engineering Students.

Fred Lee of the Electrical Engineering Department will hold the Lewis A. Hester Chair of Engineering. Lee, an international leader in the the field of power electronics, established the Virginia Power Electronics Center, now a Technology Development Center of the Center for Innovative Technology.

Lee is president of the IEEE Power Electronics Society and has won numerous prestigious awards, including the Ralph R. Teeter Educational Award, the William E. Newell Power Electronics Award, the Virginia Tech Alumni Award for Research Excellence, and the PCIM Award for Leadership in Power Electronics. He has received honorary professorships from Shanghai University of Technology, Shangai Railroad and Technology Institute, Nanjing Aeronautical Institute, and Zhejiang University of PRC.