Alan McGaughey (PhD '04) has accepted an appointment in the Mechanical Engineering department at Carnegie Mellon University as an assistant professor beginning in August 2005.
At present McGaughey is conducting post-doctoral work at the University of Florida, Gainesville, in the Materials Science and Engineering department. As part of a collaborative effort with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, he is working on the development of molecular dynamic simulations that will allow for the modeling of different types of materials--metals, oxides, covalent structures--at the same time. His specific focus right now is the formation of oxide islands on copper surfaces, which is of fundamental interest to researchers and has application to catalysis, thin film and nanostructure formation and to the environmental stability of nanodevices.
The availability of such techniques is currently limited, he says, and "I saw this as both an excellent opportunity to learn something new and also as a way to gain a collaborator in Pittsburgh before even moving there," he says. "So far it's been an excellent experience."
His work in this area began while a master's candidate at the University of Toronto working with Professor Charles Ward and while earning his PhD at U-M with thesis advisor Professor Massoud Kaviany. "My advisors gave me a significant amount of freedom to explore, which helped me to develop the ability to do research independently, while still benefiting from the expertise of a mentor."
McGaughey is expecting another excellent experience at Carnegie Mellon later this year. The ME department there is strong, he says, with increasing emphasis on diverse and non-traditional areas of research. "I feel its collaborative and multidisciplinary nature will suit me very well. I'm looking forward to continuing to develop an understanding of how heat is transferred at the atomic level and to developing some new courses to expose mechanical engineers to the physics of heat transfer."
Jeremy "J." Michalek (MS ME '01), who will receive his PhD in ME in 2005, will assume a faculty appointment at Carnegie Mellon University as Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the fall of 2005.
Michalek is currently completing post-doctoral work in the Optimal Design Laboratory in U-M's ME department. There he is continuing work to coordinate models of stakeholder preferences with models used in engineering design decision-making He also serves as education chair for BLUElab, formerly Engineers Without Borders.
Michalek says it was his advisor, Panos Papalambros, who "encouraged me to push disciplinary boundaries" and who encouraged working with experts in other fields. Michalek's cross-disciplinary interest in design optimization and social, economic and policy perspectives on design led to his decision to join the Carnegie Mellon faculty. "It's a wonderful fit for my interests. CMU has a strong respect for design research, a tradition of interdisciplinary research and teaching and research centers for complex engineered systems, computational design, the environment and engineering and public policy."
Plenty of teaching experience in the ME department also influenced his decision. Michalek co-developed a new interdisciplinary course, Engineering for Community (ENGR 490), which earned an MLK Spirit Award in 2004, and Analytical Product Design (ME 499/599), which grew in part out of techniques developed in his dissertation. He has served as course aid, graduate student instructor and GSI mentor. "I hope that through teaching I can encourage my students to continuously consider the impact of their decisions within the context of the society around them."