Three faculty members from the College of Engineering have been elevated to the rank of distinguished professor.
The faculty members are Theresa Mayer in electrical engineering, Padma Raghavan in computer science and engineering and Darrell Velegol in chemical engineering.
The title of distinguished professor recognizes outstanding faculty for exceptional instruction, research and service as demonstrated by evaluation of teaching, research support, graduate student supervision, refereed journal publication, professional society activities and service to the University community.
A total of 15 faculty in the College of Engineering hold the distinguished professor title.
Mayer joined the Penn State faculty in 1994. She was promoted to associate professor in 1999 and professor in 2005. She has served as associate director of the Materials Institute and is currently site director for the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Nanotechnology Network and co-director of the Nanofabrication Laboratory. Mayer is internationally recognized in the area of nanotechnology and nanomanufacturing to create next-generation electronic and optical microsystems. In addition, Mayer has developed innovative teaching methods for undergraduate courses and was a recipient of the Penn State Engineering Alumni Society's (PSEAS) 2009 Outstanding Research Award and its 2000 Outstanding Teaching Award.
Raghavan has been a member of the Penn State faculty since 2000, was promoted to professor in 2005, and appointed the founding director of Penn State's Institute for CyberScience in 2007. She is among the leading researchers in high performance computing and widely recognized for her pioneering work in scalable parallel algorithms for sparse linear solutions and methods for energy-efficient supercomputing. Raghavan was awarded the 2006 Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Teaching Award and the 2010 Faculty Scholar Medal in Engineering in recognition of her outstanding research accomplishments.
Velegol joined the Department of Chemical Engineering in 1999. He was promoted to associate professor in 2005 and professor in 2009. Velegol is recognized internationally as one of the leading researchers in colloidal science and engineering. His research focuses on the fabrication of colloidal devices, colloidal forces and dispersion, electrokinetic flows and nanoscale charge nonuniformity on particles. Application areas include micro/nanoscale motors and pumps, chemical delivery systems and miniature robotic systems. Velegol was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011. In addition to being an outstanding researcher, he received the 2010 PSEAS Outstanding Teaching Award.