College of Engineering Faculty Honored with Imhoff Awards

Ed Clausen is congratulated with the Imhoff Outstanding Teacher Award

Vijay Varadan is honored with an Imhoff Outstanding Researcher Award

Russell Meller receives an Imhoff Outstanding Researcher Award

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Ed Clausen (left) is congratulated by Rodger Kline, College of Engineering Advisory Council Chairman, as Clausen receives his Imhoff Outstanding Teacher Award.

Edgar C. Clausen, professor and associate department head in the chemical engineering department, received the College of Engineering's 2010 Imhoff Outstanding Teacher.

Since 1981, Dr. Clausen has been a key part of the Ralph Martin Chemical Engineering Department. Most recently, he became associate department head in 2008. In this role, he developed a new program for advising students. He has also worked closely with the College's freshman engineering program. He works to assist students through day-to-day counseling, job placement advising, both before and after graduation, as well as for internships and co-op positions, and encouraging participation in research at the UA. His expertise has also been a key component of two highly successful department of education grants for the College. He helped develop a method to teach middle school teachers how to develop their own hands-on engineering and science classroom activities.

Vijay K. Varadan, distinguished professor of electrical engineering and biomedical engineering, received the College of Engineering's 2010 Imhoff Outstanding Researcher Award.

Dr. Varadan is the director of the Global Nanomedicine Initiative, which is creating a global effort to solve current and future medical concerns using advanced nanotechnologies by developing research hospitals in overseas countries.

This center is providing innovative solutions to key medical concerns by creating a truly international team of doctors, scientists and engineers dedicated to discovering revolutionary answers to these problems.

He has developed neurostimulator, wireless microsensors and systems for sensing and controlling Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, glucose in the blood and Alzheimer's disease. He is founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Smart Materials and Structures and the Journal of Nanotechnology in Engineering and Medicine. Dr. Varadan has published more than 500 journal papers and 14 books and he has 13 patents. He is a fellow of SPIE The International Society for Optical Engineering, as well as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Institute of Physics, and the Acoustical Society of America

Russell D. Meller, professor of logistics and entrepreneurship in the industrial engineering department, received the College of Engineering's 2010 Imhoff Outstanding Researcher Award.

Dr. Meller holds the title of the Hefley Professor of Logistics and Entrepreneurship. He currently serves as director of the Center for Engineering Logistics and Distribution, a National Science Foundation Industry and University Cooperative Research Center with 10 universities, 30 member organizations and more than $5 million dollars in annual research expenditures.

Last year, he also won the Technical Innovation Award in Industrial Engineering from the Institute of Industrial Engineers for his work on “innovative aisle designs for warehouses. He was named a fellow of the Institute in the same year.

His research has been supported by more than 50 grants from government agencies including 6 from the National Science Foundation and companies in many industries.

Meller has consulted with many leading companies and three provisional patent applications have been filed under his name.

The awards were presented at the annual Engineering Alumni Awards Banquet which was held recently in Northwest Arkansas.