McLaughlin Takes over as Associate Dean David McLaughlin, a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the director of the Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), has stepped in as the new associate dean in the College of Engineering, replacing Theodore Djaferis, who became dean in August. The first faculty member to hold the John and Elizabeth Armstrong Career Development Professorship, Professor McLaughlin has been the guiding spirit behind the seven-year-old CASA and its potentially revolutionary new radar network, called a Distributed Collaborative Adaptive Sensing system, or DCAS. He earned his B.S. (1984) and Ph.D. (1989) in Electrical Engineering from UMass Amherst. Read More

Chem-E-Car Team Places 10th in Nationals In its first ever appearance in the national finals of the Chem-E-Car Competition, sponsored by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), our UMass Amherst team finished a very credible 10th in a field of 34. The team of chemical engineering students pulled off the feat with a shoebox-sized vehicle whimsically called the “Green Rock Eating Monster” during the competition at the 2009 AIChE National Student Conference, November 6 through 9, at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville. The Chem-E-Car Competition requires each team to build a self-propelled model car that, driven by a chemical reaction alone, travels a pre-set distance while carrying a pre-determined weight. Our students also won an award for their poster presentation. The UMass Amherst team was composed of chemical engineering students Niva Ran, Jonathan Rayla, Sean Paradiso, Gregory Su, Ben Novello, and Elli Schmidt, and the team’s faculty advisor was Professor W. Curtis Conner form the Chemical Engineering Department. Read More

Wiley-Blackwell Publishes Second Edition of “Wind Energy Explained” The Wiley-Blackwell publishing house has just issued the second edition of the bestselling text book, “Wind Energy Explained: Theory, Design and Application,” by James. F. Manwell and Jon G. McGowan of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department and former MIE Senior Research Fellow Anthony L. Rogers. “We are very excited about this!” says Manwell. “The second edition is a substantial expansion and upgrade over the first edition and has taken a long time to complete.” This second edition includes up-to-date data, diagrams, illustrations, and thorough new material on: the fundamentals of wind turbine aerodynamics; wind turbine testing and modeling; wind turbine design standards; offshore wind energy; and special purpose applications, such as energy storage and fuel production. Read More