Appointments, honors and activities

June 12, 2015  


Faculty and staff honors:

- Yung Shin, the Donald A. and Nancy G. Roach Professorship of Advanced Manufacturing, has been awarded the Frederick W. Taylor Research Medal by SME, formerly the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. He was among six people from industry and academia who were honored by the organization, receiving the award during SME's 2015 International Honor Award & Scholarship Presentations Ceremony June 1 in Detroit. The awards recognize the recipients' influence in various specialties, impacting automation, lasers, machining, welding, microscale process modeling and other areas of manufacturing.  

Alumni honors:

- Purdue alumnus James A. Tompkins received the Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Industrial Engineering Award at the Institute of Industrial Engineers Annual Conference and EXPO 2015 on June 1 in Nashville, Tennessee. The award is IIE's highest honor. It recognizes individuals who have distinguished themselves through contributions to the welfare of mankind in the field of industrial engineering. Tompkins earned a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering in 1969, a master's degree in industrial engineering in 1970 and a doctorate in 1972, all from Purdue. He received a Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award in 1999 from Purdue's College of Engineering.

- Purdue alumna Melody Birmingham-Byrd is now president of Duke Energy's Indiana operations. For the past three years, she has served as senior vice president of Midwest delivery operations, managing the company's electric distribution system in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. Before the merger between Duke Energy and Progress Energy in 2012, Birmingham-Byrd was vice president of the Southern Region for Progress Energy Carolinas. She earned a bachelor's degree in organizational leadership and management from Purdue and received a master's degree in business administration from Strayer University. Her appointment was effective June 1.

Student honors:

- A biomedical engineering team from Purdue University has won first place in a contest to design pioneering biomedical tools, taking home a prize of $10,000. Awards for VentureWell's BMEidea competition were issued on June 9 during the Medical Design & Manufacturing Medical Device Trade Show & Competition in New York City. The Purdue team developed MarginPAT, an imaging tool for use in breast cancer surgery that enables surgeons to see clearly defined margins around tumors. The MarginPAT team members were Pu Wang, a postdoctoral fellow in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, and doctoral students Rui Li and Lu Lan. The competition challenges students to pioneer a health-related technology that addresses a real clinical need. Competition entries are judged on four categories: technical, economic and regulatory feasibility; contribution to human health and quality of life; technological innovation; and potential for commercialization. VentureWell is a nonprofit organization to help bring student innovations to market. 

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