Trustees ratify appointments, approve academic program, OK degree name change

May 10, 2013  


WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The Purdue University Board of Trustees on Friday (May 10) ratified appointments of five named and distinguished professors at the West Lafayette campus and approved a new health studies program at Purdue North Central.

Trustees also approved a degree name change in the College of Veterinary Medicine.

The board approved Timothy S. Fisher as the James G. Dwyer Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Eckhard A. Groll as the Reilly Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Kathleen Howell as the Hsu Lo Distinguished Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Alyssa Panitch as the Leslie A. Geddes Professor in Biomedical Engineering, and Kaushik Roy as the Edward G. Tiedemann Jr. Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Timothy Fisher

Timothy Fisher 
Download Photo

Fisher came to Purdue in 2002 as an associate professor of mechanical engineering. Before that he was an assistant professor from 1998-2002 at Vanderbilt University. He became a professor in 2007. From 2009-2012 he served part-time as a research scientist at the Air Force Research Laboratory.

His areas of research are in heat, mass and electrical transport associated with nanoscale carbon materials such as carbon nanotubes and graphene. His research has resulted in significant improvements in thermal and electric transport at interfaces, advanced electron emission devices and enhanced cooling of semiconductor devices. He also has research programs involving transport processes in hydrogen storage devices, microfluidic sensors for bioanalysis and modeling of thermal systems. He recently co-founded a new company, Folium Nanotechnologies, LLC, that will commercialize several of his group's inventions.

He is co-director of the India-U.S. Joint Networked Centre on Nanomaterials for Energy. He has received the National Science Foundation Career Award, is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and has won the ASME's McDonald Mentoring Award. He also has been a Purdue Faculty Scholar. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals and is the incoming co-editor of the journal Energy Conversion and Management.

Fisher received his bachelor's degree and doctorate from Cornell University.

Eckhard Groll

Eckhard Groll 
Download Photo

Groll has been at Purdue since 1994 when he was appointed assistant professor of mechanical engineering. He was appointed associate professor in 2000 and professor in 2005. Since 2008 he has been director of the Office of Professional Practice in the College of Engineering. From 2005-2008 he was director of global initiatives, cooperative education and professional experiences in the School of Mechanical Engineering. He served as interim assistant dean of engineering for research in 2012.

His research focuses on fundamental thermal sciences as applied to advanced heating, ventilating, air conditioning and refrigeration systems, components and their working fluids.

He is a fellow of the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers and also has won that organization's E.K. Campbell Award and the Distinguished Service Award. He is a Purdue Faculty Scholar and was inducted into the Book of Great Teachers at Purdue in 2008. He also received the Wilbur T. Pentzer Achievement and Leadership Award from the International Institute of Refrigeration. He serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Refrigeration and is on the board of directors for the IIR and the ASHRAE.

Groll earned his bachelor's degree from Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, and his doctorate from the University of Hannover in Hannover, Germany.

Kathleen Howell

Kathleen Howell 
Download Photo

Howell joined Purdue in 1982 as assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics. Her area of research is astrodynamics.

In 1996 she was one of eight engineering faculty nationally named a fellow in the first year of NASA's Advanced Concepts Research Project Program. The program supports research projects to investigate new concepts for future government and commercial space applications.

Discover Magazine named Howell one of the "50 most important women in science" in 2002. She has published more than 80 archival papers and in 2004 she received the American Astronautical Society's Dirk Brouwer Award for significant contributions to spaceflight mechanics and astrodynamics. She has received 13 teaching awards from Purdue and eight national and international teaching awards. She was on the board of the American Astronautical Society for 10 years and has been editor-in-chief for the Journal of Astronautical Sciences since 1992.

She received her bachelor's degree from Iowa State University and her master's degree and doctorate from Stanford University.

Alyssa Panitch

Alyssa Panitch 
Download Photo

Panitch came to Purdue in 2006 as an associate professor of biomedical engineering. She has been associate head of research for the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue since 2009. Prior to coming to Purdue, she was assistant professor and associate professor of bioengineering at Arizona State University.

Her research focuses on designing biological and synthetic materials for drug delivery and tissue engineering as well as developing peptide-based pharmaceuticals for restoring normal healing of vascular, neural and fibrotic diseases.

Panitch launched three successful startup companies and was the first faculty entrepreneur-in-residence at Discovery Park's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship from 2010-2012. She has received the NSF Career Award and has been a Purdue Faculty Scholar. She served on the biomaterials and biointerfaces study section for the National Institutes of Health from 2008-2012 and in 2011 was elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineers College of Fellows. She has been on the editorial advisory board for Biomacromolecules since 2004 and on the editorial board of Biomatter since 2010.

She earned bachelor's degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and in biochemistry from Smith College. She completed her doctorate at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Kaushik Roy

Kaushik Roy 
Download Photo

Roy has been at Purdue since 1993 when he was appointed assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. He became associate professor in 1997, professor in 2001 and the Roscoe H. George Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2005.

His research interests include spintronics, low-power electronics, silicon and non-silicon device/circuit co-design, and new computing models/architecture enabled by emerging devices. He was the first to propose the use of power gating (sleep transistor) to reduce leakage, a technique now widely used in industry. He has been awarded 19 patents and published more than 200 journal papers, 400 conference papers and two books.

He has received the Humboldt Research Award for senior scientists, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Circuits and Systems Society Technical Achievement Award, Semiconductor research Corporation Technical Excellence Award, Fulbright-Nehru Distinguished chair, Distinguished Alumnus Award from Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, the National Science Foundation Career Development Award, and was a Purdue Faculty Scholar. He is a fellow of the IEEE.

Roy earned his bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur and his doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Trustees also approved a bachelor of science in health studies degree program at Purdue North Central.

"This program is an integral aspect of Purdue North Central's strategic plan, contributes to economic development in northern Indiana and meets the needs of employers in this region," said Timothy Sands, executive vice president for academic affairs and provost and Purdue's Basil S. Turner Professor of Engineering. "This degree builds upon PNC's successful baccalaureate in nursing."

 Sands said nearly 400 students are enrolled as pre-nursing at PNC but most will not be admitted into nursing. He said they complete the first two years of the program, and then many leave because there is not a program that meets their needs.

Ten of the 20 fastest-growing occupations are related to health care, Sands said. Health-care support occupations have a 28.7 percent projected growth rate through 2018, according to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development Agency.

One of the positions that health studies graduates will be well prepared for, medical services manager, is No. 10 in the top 50 "Hot Jobs" in Indiana.

The program, which must be approved by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, includes an articulation agreement with Ivy Tech Community College Northwest.

In other business, trustees approved the request of the College of Veterinary Medicine to change the name of the associate of science degree in veterinary technology to associate of applied science in veterinary technology.

Sands said the degree's new title is what the two-year degree was called at the time of its inception in 1976. It was changed to the associate of science degree when the bachelor of science degree program began in 1997.

"Although the majority of students in the program continue on to the bachelor of science degree, they are all eligible to be credentialed as registered veterinary technicians in the state of Indiana and 49 of 50 states with the associate level degree," Sands said. 

Writer: Greg McClure, 765-496-9711, gmcclure@purdue.edu 

Sources: Timothy D. Sands, 765-494-9709, tsands@purdue.edu

Timothy Fisher, 765-494-5627, tsfisher@purdue.edu

Eckhard Groll, 765-496-2201, groll@ecn.purdue.edu

Kathleen Howell, 765-494-5786, howell@purdue.edu

Alyssa Panitch, 765-496-1313, apanitch@purdue.edu

Kaushik Roy, 765-494-2361, kaushik@purdue.edu

Carol Connelly, director of media and communication services at Purdue University North Central, 219-785-5200, ext. 5267, cconnelly@pnc.edu

Purdue University, 610 Purdue Mall, West Lafayette, IN 47907, (765) 494-4600

© 2014-18 Purdue University | An equal access/equal opportunity university | Integrity Statement | Copyright Complaints | Brand Toolkit | Maintained by Marketing and Media

Trouble with this page? Disability-related accessibility issue? Please contact us at online@purdue.edu so we can help.