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Korybalski Lecture to Feature Dean Cristina Amon (RSVP within)

04/30/2012

KorybalskiOn May 18, the ME department will welcome Cristina Amon, the Dean of University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, to the Chrysler Center for the 5th Annual Korybalski Lecture in Mechanical Engineering. Amon’s lecture, “Emerging Trends, Opportunities and Responsibilities for Engineering Education,” will take place at 4pm in the Chesebrough Auditorium, and will be followed by a reception. Anyone interested in attending the lecture should register online.

Abstract for “Emerging Trends, Opportunities and Responsibilities for Engineering Education”:
This lecture builds on the challenges set out by the National Academy of Engineering in its reports on the Engineer of 2020, and articulates the importance of diversity and system thinking as well as instilling professional transferable skills including global outlook, leadership and entrepreneurship in our engineering education.

Bio for Cristina Amon:
Cristina H. Amon, a distinguished scholar in mechanical engineering, devoted educator and a gifted institutional leader, became the 13th Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto in 2006. She received her Mechanical Engineering diploma from Simón Bolívar University in 1981 and after two years of engineering practice and teaching, continued her education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she earned her MS and ScD degrees in 1985 and 1988, respectively. Prior to her appointment at the University of Toronto as Dean and Alumni Professor in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, she was the Raymond J. Lane Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems at Carnegie Mellon University.

Professor Amon’s research pioneered the development of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for formulating and solving thermal design problems subject to multidisciplinary competing constraints. This led to her creation of a multi-stage concurrent thermal design methodology based on hierarchical model refinement, which combines CFD, non-deterministic experiments and Bayesian statistics. Her research has advanced the scientific foundation of heat transfer enhancement by flow destabilization and hemodynamics mass transport in biological systems including aortic aneurysms and intravenous blood oxygenators. She has made pioneering contributions to concurrent thermal designs, innovation in electronics cooling and transient thermal management of wearable computers. More recently, her research group has been focused on developing numerical algorithms for sub-micron and nano-scale heat transport in semiconductors (molecular dynamics, lattice-Boltzmann and phonon Boltzmann transport). She has delivered keynote lectures world wide and contributed twelve book chapters, one textbook and over 280 refereed articles in the education and research literature.

Her achievements in education cover the whole spectrum of integrating education, research and engineering practice. Dedicated to outreach, she co-developed Engineering Your Future, the Society of Women Engineers workshop for female and minority high school students, and Moving 4th into Engineering outreach program. At the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, Dean Amon promotes women in engineering through a number of outreach initiatives including Skule™ Sisters and Go Eng Girl, and Women Empowered in Engineering.

Among her many awards and honors, she has been recognized by SWE as their Distinguished Engineering Educator in 1999 and Professor of the Year for 2000. Cristina Amon was the recipient of the Carnegie Mellon’s George Tallman Ladd Award for Excellence in Research in 1991 and the Benjamin Teare Award for Excellence in Engineering Education in 1998; the ASME Gustus Larson Memorial Award for outstanding achievements in 2000, and ASME Pittsburgh chapter Engineer of the Year in 1999; ASEE 1997 George Westinghouse and 2002 Ralph Coats Roe Awards; 2003 Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Education Award; ASME EPPD 2003 Electronics and Photonics Packaging Clock Award, 2004 Thermal Management Award, 2008 Women Engineer Inaugural Award, and the 2009 Heat Transfer Memorial Award. She was named one of America’s most important Hispanics in technology and business, and received the Engineers Canada Award for the Support of Women in the Engineering Profession in 2010.

Active in professional societies and executive boards, Cristina Amon has served the engineering profession with distinction and exceptional dedication; she served as the inaugural Chair of the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC), Director of the ASEE Engineering Deans Council Executive Board, Chair of AAAS Engineering, and President of the SWE Pittsburgh Chapter. She was elected chair of IEEE/ASME ITherm 2002 Intersociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems and program chair of the 2005 ASME Heat Transfer conference. She served as ASME Heat Transfer Division Membership Recognition Committee Chair (1996-1998), K-3 Honors and Awards Committee Chair (2000-2001), K-16 HTD Electronics Cooling Committee Vice-Chair and Chair (1997-2003), Pi Tau Sigma faculty advisor (1994-1996), and ASEE campus representative (1993-1997). She is co-founder of Women In Non-traditional Graduate Studies (WINGS) and served as its first faculty adviser since its inception until 1992. Her editorship roles have included the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer, IEEE Transactions on Components and Packaging Technology, International Journal of Thermal Sciences, and Heat and Mass Transfer.

Cristina Amon is a member of the NAE (National Academy of Engineering), Canadian Academy of Engineering and Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering, and Fellow of AAAS, ASEE, ASME, CSME, EIC and IEEE. She is a Director of the MKS Instrument Board and serves on external advisory boards at several institutions, including NAE, Stanford University, UCLA, UIUC, University of Pennsylvania and University of Texas.

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