Honors Assembly Highlights the Achievements of the Profession’s Finest
Honors Assembly Highlights the Achievements of the Profession’s Finest
Oct. 20, 2017
The careers and achievements of eight of leaders of the engineering profession — including Adrian Bejan, Ph.D., Paul D. Edwards, John Staehlin, P.E., and Evelyn N. Wang, Ph.D. — will be highlighted next month at the annual ASME Honors Assembly, to be held during the ASME 2017 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE 2017) in Tampa, Fla. The ceremony, which is open to all IMECE attendees, will take place Monday, Nov. 6, from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Tampa Convention Center.
Adrian Bejan, the J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University, will be presented the Ralph Coats Roe Medal during the event. The medal, which was established in 1972, recognizes an outstanding contribution toward a better public understanding and appreciation of the engineer’s worth to contemporary society. As winner of this year’s award, Dr. Bejan will also deliver the Ralph Coats Roe Medal Lecture at IMECE on Tuesday, Nov. 7 from 8:00 a.m. to 9:45 a.m.
Bejan, an ASME Honorary Member and Fellow, is being honored for permanent contributions to the public appreciation of the pivotal role of engineering in an advanced society through outstanding accomplishments as an engineering scientist and educator, renowned communicator, and prolific writer. A member of the Duke University faculty since 1984, Bejan’s research focuses on thermodynamics, applied physics, constructal law, and design and evolution in nature. He is also the author or co-author of 30 books and 630 peer-reviewed journal articles.
In addition to having been named an Honorary Member and Fellow, Bejan is the recipient of a number of Society awards, including Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award, the James Harry Potter Gold Medal, the Heat Transfer Memorial Award – Science, the Worcester Reed Warner Medal, the Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award, and the Edward F. Obert Award. He also received the Max Jakob Memorial Award from ASME’s Heat Transfer Division and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Paul Edwards, vice president and construction manager for ASME programs at WECTEC Global Project Services Inc. in Canton, Mass., will receive ASME Standards & Certification’s most prestigious award — the Melvin R. Green Codes and Standards Medal — during this year’s Honors Assembly. The award, which was established in 1976 as the Codes and Standards Medal, was renamed in 1996 to pay tribute to the memory and extraordinary contributions of Green, a dedicated supporter of industrial standards and longtime employee of the Society.
Edwards is being recognized for championing ASME Standards and Certification efforts, most notably the development of new products and programs including the CA-1 Standard–Conformity Assessment Requirements standard and the Parts (PRT) Certification Program, as well as for his contributions to and leadership of numerous ASME technical and conformity assessment committees. At his company, WECTEC, Edwards is responsible for the overall management of the firm’s ASME Section I–Power Boilers and Section VIII–Pressure Vessels certification activities, and for technical program development, welding program support, and coordination of ASME Section III–Rules for Construction of Nuclear Facility Components and Section XI–Rules for Inservice Inspection of Nuclear Power Plant Components activities.
An ASME Fellow, Edwards has served on more than 20 different ASME committees, held seven officer positions, and participated on both the Board on Conformity Assessment and Council on Standards and Certification during his 34 years as a Codes and Standards volunteer. In appreciation of his codes and standards work for the Society, he received a Certificate of Appreciation for his boiler and pressure vessel accreditation efforts and an ASME Dedicated Service Award in 2001 and 2002, respectively.
A third honoree, John Staehlin, president emeritus of Volunteers for Medical Engineering (now known as V-LINC) in Baltimore, Md., will receive the Hoover Medal at the ceremony. The medal, which was established in 1929, honors the civic and humanitarian achievements of engineers, and is presented to an engineer whose professional achievements and personal endeavors have advanced the well-being of humankind. The Hoover Medal is administered by a board representing ASME, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, and IEEE.
Staehlin, an ASME member, is being honored for founding a not-for-profit volunteer organization to create special-purpose assistive devices that enable the physically disabled to achieve greater independence and improve their quality of life. An inventor and innovator with a career spanning more than 60 years, Staehlin has more than 200 invention disclosures and 33 patents. The main focus of his early work was on inventions for such defense programs as the F-16 fighter aircraft, AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) and the B-1B bomber programs.
Staehlin started Volunteers for Medical Engineering in 1982 to try to address problems encountered by people living with disabilities. In 2010, the company merged with Learning Independence Through Computers (LINC) and became V-LINC. In 1992, he received the Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award, which is presented to an engineering graduate who has demonstrated outstanding achievement in mechanical engineering 20 years or more following graduation with a baccalaureate degree.
Evelyn Wang, the Gail E. Kendall Professor in the mechanical engineering department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be presented the Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award at the Honors Assembly. Established in 1974, the award honors Gustus L. Larson, Fellow and founder of Pi Tau Sigma, and is given to an engineering graduate who has demonstrated outstanding achievements in mechanical engineering within 10 to 20 years following graduation.
Dr. Wang, who has been an MIT faculty member for 10 years, is the associate director of the Solid-State Solar Thermal Energy Conversion (S3TEC) Center and an associate director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratory. Her research program combines fundamental studies of micro/nanoscale heat and mass transport processes with the development of novel engineered structures to create innovative solutions in thermal management, energy and water-harvesting systems.
Wang, who is an ASME Fellow, was the chair of the 2017 International Conference on Nanochannels, Microchannels and Minichannels (ICNMM) and co-chair of ICNMM in 2016. She is a reviewer for the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer and serves on the Heat Transfer Division’s K-9 Nanoscale Transport Phenomena Committee. In addition to the award she is receiving this year, Wang also received the Society’s Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer in 2012 and the Electronic and Photonic Packaging Division’s 2016 Women in Engineering Award.
For more information on the Honors Assembly and the special events scheduled to take place at IMECE 2017, visit go.asme.org/IMECE.
Related Content
