Category Archives: News

National Academy of Engineering elects UD’s Norman Wagner — Norman J. Wagner, a University of Delaware engineering professor noted for his groundbreaking research in fluid mechanics and molecular thermodynamics, has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering.

Wagner, the Robert L. Pigford Chaired Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UD, is among NAE’s 67 new members and 12 foreign members.

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer.

Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature, and to the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.

“We welcome Norm Wagner’s election to the National Academy of Engineering, a well-deserved honor that recognizes an outstanding career that has encompassed research, innovation, entrepreneurship and education,” said Babatunde Ogunnaike, dean of the College of Engineering. “This is a good day for the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the College of Engineering, the University of Delaware, and indeed the entire state of Delaware.” Read more…

The University of Delaware’s first “Neutron Day” symposium in 2012 drew about 30 participants. This year, the event attracted more than 100 attendees, reflecting the rapidly expanding use of neutron scattering as a research tool.
Neutron scattering, which shows the location and behavior of atoms, allows researchers to see in real time how material structure changes with variations in temperature, pressure, and magnetic or electronic fields.

The technology supports the development of new materials for a broad range of applications from drug delivery systems to nanostructured membranes for environmental and energy applications, superconducting cables, and solar cells.

The one-day event at UD brought leading scientists and engineers from the University’s Center for Neutron Science together with more than 30 scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Center for Neutron Research (NCNR). The group, which also included industrial scientists, met to discuss new areas of neutron scattering science, with an emphasis on strengths in complex fluids, macromolecular science, and condensed matter physics.

The program featured seven technical talks and more than 25 posters.

In welcoming the participants, Babatunde A. Ogunnaike, dean of the UD College of Engineering, talked about UD’s new Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory (ISE Lab), which is enabling new work in microscopy, materials characterization, and nanofabrication.

Norman J. Wagner, director of the Center for Neutron Science, said that the center grew out of ongoing efforts at UD and NIST and strong collaborations between the two institutions. “We actually have a UD-South at NIST’s facility in Gaithersburg,” he said. “Faculty, postdocs, graduate students, engineers and scientists in residence are not only advancing the science there with NIST researchers but also serving as a bridge back to UD.” Read more…

• Doug Godfrin, jointly advised by Norman Wagner and Yun Liu was awarded the NIST Sigma Xi Most Outstanding Poster Presentation Award for Biotechnology, Biology, and Polymers. His poster, entitled: “Cluster Mediated Dynamics and Viscosity in Concentrated Protein Solutions” will be posted in the NIST Main Admin building for two weeks.
• Congratulations to Jingsi Gao, a graduate student at the University of Delaware, who won Second Place in the student poster session at the Society of Rheology’s 86th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA. The title of her poster is “Rheology of dispersions in ionic liquids” with Dr. Mark Shiflett and Dr. Norman Wagner.
• Congratulations to Doug Godfrin, a graduate student at the University of Delaware who is stationed at NCNR, who won a poster prize for his high impact work on Monoclonal Antibody Characterization at the American Conference on Neutron Scattering.
• University of Delaware Professor Norman Wagner was selected as a fellow of the Neutron Scattering Society of America (NSSA)
• Congratulations to Yun Liu, material physicist in the SANS group at NIST Center for Neutron Research and a research assistant professor in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, for being selected to receive the 2014 NIST-Sigma Xi Katharine B. Gebbie Young Investigator Award! Yun is being recognized “For the discovery of dynamic cluster ordering in complex colloidal systems.”