UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Charles Godfrey Binder Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, and Tony Huang, professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State, have been named fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
They are two of only 7,410 fellows out of more than 426,000 IEEE members. Less than 0.1 percent of voting members of IEEE are selected annually for this member-grade elevation.
The fellow grade is the highest grade of membership in IEEE. Fellowship is conferred upon a member with at least five years of membership and who has an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest.
Lakhtakia was cited for his for contributions to isotropic chiral, bianisotropic materials and metamaterials.
His current research interests lie in the electromagnetics of complex materials including chiral and bianisotropic materials, sculptured thin films, mimumes, chiral nanotubes, nanoengineered metamaterials, surface multiplasmonics, engineered biomimicry, bone nano-refacing and forensic science.
Since joining Penn State in 1983, Lakhtakia has been honored for his teaching and research with a 1996 Penn State Engineering Alumni Society Outstanding Research Award, a 2005 Nanotech Briefs’ Nano 50 Award for Nanotechnology, a 2006 Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal, a 2008 Penn State Engineering Alumni Society Outstanding Premier Research Award, and the 2010 International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) Technical Achievement Award.
He is also a fellow of the Optical Society of America, SPIE, the UK Institute of Physics, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society.
IEEE honored Huang for his contributions to acousto-opto-fluidics and nanoelectromechanical systems.
A Penn State faculty member since 2005, Huang has been recognized with awards and honors including the 2010 National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award, a 2011 Penn State Engineering Alumni Society Outstanding Research Award, a 2011 JALA Top Ten Breakthroughs of the Year Award, a 2012 Society of Manufacturing Engineers Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, a 2013 American Asthma Foundation Scholar Award, a 2014 IEEE Sensors Council Technical Achievement Award, and the 2015 Huck Distinguished Chair in Bioengineering Science and Mechanics.
This is the fifth fellowship announcement in 2015 for Huang, who was also recently elected a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.