Trustees honor 4 professors; OK appointments, academic changes

Trustees also approved a new master's degree program in public health on the West Lafayette campus and a name change for divisions at Purdue North Central in Westville, Ind.

John Contreni

Trustees ratified the appointment of John Contreni, a professor of history and dean of the Graduate School, as dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Contreni's appointment was announced May 16. He is an internationally known scholar specializing in Charlemagne and Carolingian Europe.

Linda M. Finke

Trustees also approved Linda M. Finke as dean of the School of Health Sciences at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. Finke is coming to IPFW from the Northeast Indiana Area Health Education Center, a federally funded health education and services outreach center, where she was its first director. She was previously director of the professional development center at the nursing honor society Sigma Theta Tau International.

Melinda K. Dalgarn

Trustees approved two appointments at Purdue University Calumet.

Melinda K. Dalgarn is the new vice chancellor for student services. She was previously the vice president for student affairs at Mercer University in Atlanta and president of College Survival Guides LLC in Kingston Springs, Tenn. Martine Duchatelet is the new dean of the School of Management and professor of economics with tenure. She comes to Calumet from a position as associate dean of faculty in the School of Business at Barry University in Miami Shores, Fla.

Committees of their peers nominated the designated professors, which were approved by trustees.

Martine Duchatelet

"The professors we are honoring have established solid reputations in chemistry and engineering, two areas that have rich traditions at Purdue," said Provost Sally Mason. "From cancer research to the environment, computer modeling to cooling technologies, their work reaches education and industry at multiple levels."

Those elevated to designated professorships include: Nagabhushana Prabhu as the James J. Solberg Head of the School of Industrial Engineering; Joseph S. Francisco as the William E. Moore Distinguished Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Science and Chemistry; Philip L. Fuchs as the Richard B. Wetherill Professor of Chemistry; and Suresh V. Garimella as the R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Designated professorships honor individuals whose academic achievements have been internationally recognized or who have made a unique contribution to the university through scholarship, research, teaching or leadership functions. Purdue now has 125 designated professors.

Nagabhushana Prabhu

Prabhu was appointed head of industrial engineering this year, having served as interim head since fall 2005. He has been on the Purdue faculty since 1991, and is currently a professor of industrial engineering.

He is an internationally recognized expert in optimization, an area of mathematics concerned with the computation of extreme values of a given function in a designated region. His work has resulted in the development of new methodologies for constrained nonlinear optimization that have extended the capabilities of state-of-the-art commercial optimizers.

His work on infinite-dimensional optimization has contributed to the understanding of soliton solutions in nonlinear differential equations, which are wavelike disturbances with energy content that does not diminish as they travel through a medium.

His work on the applications of optimization has led to developments that include a sensitive new technique for diagnosing malignancy in breast tumors, which earned a national award for his student. He is director of the Molecular Engineering Laboratory, which focuses on the computational investigation of sub-cellular biological systems.

Prabhu received a bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay in 1987, a doctorate in computer science from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University in 1991 and a second doctorate in theoretical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998.

James J. Solberg, for whom the professorship is named, was the Ransburg Professor of Manufacturing and director of the Center for Collaborative Manufacturing. He was instrumental in obtaining and stewarding funds to increase manufacturing research and education in the School of Industrial Engineering. He retired in 2006.

Joseph S. Francisco

Francisco has been a professor at Purdue since 1995. He holds a joint appointment in chemistry and earth and atmospheric sciences. Prior to coming to Purdue, he was on the faculty at Wayne State University from 1986 to 1994.

In 1993 he received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and worked at the jet propulsion laboratory at California Institute of Technology. In 1998 he was appointed the Sterling A. Brown Visiting Professor at Williams College. In addition, he received the Alexander von Humboldt Award for U.S. Senior Sciences and spent 2003 in Germany and 2004 in Italy as visiting senior fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna.

He is widely known for his work in computational atmospheric chemistry, with expertise in chemistry, atmospheric science and numerical modeling. His research focuses on basic studies in spectroscopy, kinetics and atmospheric pollutants.

Among his honors are a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award, the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers Outstanding Teacher Award and the Percy Julian Award for outstanding contributions to fundamental research. He also is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Francisco received a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1977 from the University of Texas at Austin. He earned a doctorate in chemical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983. His postdoctoral work included a research fellowship at Cambridge University and a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT.

The William E. Moore professorship is named for the first African-American to receive a doctorate from Purdue's chemistry department. Moore received his bachelor's degree from Southern University in 1963 and his doctorate from Purdue in physical biochemistry in 1967. He went on to hold faculty and administrative positions at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., and Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View, Texas, Texas Southern University in Houston. He was appointed chairman of the General Research Support Review Committee at the National Institutes of Health and was selected as one of five editors of the first proceedings of the White House Conference on Science and Technology for Minorities.

Philip L. Fuchs

Fuchs is an organic chemistry professor and has been on Purdue's faculty since 1973. He previously worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Nobel Laureate Elias James Corey at Harvard University.

Fuchs is internationally regarded as a leading figure in synthetic organic chemistry. His research focuses on the use of strategies employing organosulfur chemistry to promote efficiency in combination with computer-based evaluation of potential anticancer agents.

His awards and honors include an Eli Lilly Young Faculty Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan fellowship, a Pioneer in Laboratory Robotics Award and a Purdue McCoy Research Award in 2003. He was voted by his undergraduate students as one of top 10 teachers in Purdue's College of Science for four separate years. Fuchs has consulted for Pfizer Inc. and Eli Lilly and Co., served on the editorial board of The Journal of Organic Chemistry and is an executive editor for the Electronic Encyclopedia of Organic Reagents, an online dynamic database.

Fuchs earned his bachelor's degree in 1968 and a doctorate in chemistry with Edwin Vedejs in 1971, both from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Richard B. Wetherill, for whom the professorship is named, was a broadly recognized surgeon and lecturer born in Lafayette, Ind., in 1859. Wetherill left a large bequest to Purdue for the creation of a chemistry building, which was named the Wetherill Chemistry Laboratory.

Garimella is a professor of mechanical engineering and has been on Purdue's faculty since 1999. He previously held the Cray-Research Professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Garimella's research interests lie in microsystems engineering, micro- and nano-scale thermal phenomena, high-performance compact cooling technologies, electro-thermal co-design, and electronics packaging and materials processing.

He established and directs the Cooling Technologies Research Center, with membership that includes leading electronics and computer companies from around the world and is co-funded by the National Science Foundation. The center explores high-performance, compact cooling solutions for chip-, package- and system-level solutions to heat dissipation problems in electronics.

Suresh V. Garimella

Garimella received his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989, his master's degree from Ohio State University in 1986 and his bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1985.

R. Eugene (Gene) and Susie E. Goodson, for whom the professorship is named, live in Ann Arbor, Mich. Gene Goodson graduated from Purdue with a master's degree in 1961 and a doctorate in 1963. Until 1981 he was a Purdue faculty member in mechanical engineering and served as chief scientist of the U.S. Department of Transportation. He also served as director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Engineering Studies, associate dean of engineering and director of the Engineering Experiment Station. He most recently served as president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board at Williams Controls, a company that manufactures electronic throttle controls. Susie Goodson has continued her musical career as organist at several churches, currently at the Imanuel United Church of Christ in Manchester, Mich.

Trustees also approved a master of public health degree to be offered by the College of Liberal Art's Department of Health and Kinesiology. The degree, which will offer areas of concentration in community health education and health communication, is an interdisciplinary effort with seven academic departments participating. This degree will prepare graduate students for the increasing number of public health careers in both the public and private sectors. The curriculum is based on 45 credit hours, a 400-hour internship and a research thesis. The degree is subject to approval by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

In other business, trustees approved changing the designation of "divisions" at Purdue North Central to "colleges." The modification, effective July 1, provides terminology that is more commonly used in four-year institutions and will aid in the transition from a two-year institution to a baccalaureate institution with select graduate degrees. The academic areas utilizing the new designation are the College of Business, College of Engineering & Technology, College of Liberal Arts and College of Sciences.

Writer: Maggie Morris, (765) 494-2432, maggiemorris@purdue.edu

Sources: Sally Mason, (765) 494-9709, sfmason@purdue.edu

John Contreni, (765) 494-2604, contreni@purdue.edu

Nagabhushana Prabhu, (765) 494-5444, prabhu@purdue.edu

Joseph S. Francisco, (765) jfrancis@purdue.edu

Philip Fuchs, (765) 494-5242, pfuchs@purdue.edu

Suresh V. Garimella, (765) 494-5621, garimell@purdue.edu

Wes Lukoshus, assistant vice chancellor for advancement, Purdue Calumet, (219) 989-2217

James Dworkin, chancellor, Purdue North Central, (219) 785-5331

Irene Walters, director of communications, IPFW, (260) 481-6104, walters@ipfw.edu

Tom Templin, head of health and kinesiology and education, (765) 494-3178, ttemplin@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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