UMass Amherst Professors Elected to National Academy of Engineering

Feb. 12, 2008

Contact:

Daniel Fitzgibbons 413/545-0444

AMHERST, Mass. – Professors Stephen Malkin and Thomas P. Russell of the University of Massachusetts Amherst have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Malkin is a distinguished professor in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering and Russell is the Silvio O. Conte Distinguished Professor in the polymer science and engineering department.

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.”

This year, 65 new members were elected to academy, raising the membership to 2,227. The academy also has 194 foreign associates.


Stephen Malkin

Malkin, who was recognized for “pioneering research in and the implementation of grinding-system simulation and optimization,” is internationally recognized for his work on grinding and abrasive processes.

A member of the UMass Amherst faculty since 1986, Malkin directs the grinding and machining research laboratory in the College of Engineering. The author of more than 150 technical papers and a book, “Grinding Technology: Theory and Applications of Machining with Abrasives,” he is a elected fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), and an elected member of the International Institution for Production Engineering Research. He has received the Gold Medal of the SME, the Blackall Award of the ASME, and the Outstanding Senior Engineering Faculty Award at UMass Amherst. He was appointed a distinguished professor in 1998.

Malkin received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before joining the UMass Amherst faculty, he taught at the University of Texas, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.


Thomas P. Russell

Russell was elected to the academy for “contributions to the processing of thin-block copolymer films to achieve well-organized nanostructures.”

He joined the UMass Amherst faculty in 1996 after working as a research fellow at the Institut fuer Physikalische Chemie at the Universitat Mainz in Germany and at IBM.

Russell was named director of the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center in 1997. He also is a lead organizer and associate director of MassNanoTech, UMass Amherst’s nanoscience and nanotechnology initiative and he played a key role in securing a National Science Foundation grant to fund an instructional program in nanotechnology.

The author of more than 400 publications, his work has been published in Macromolecules, the most cited journal in the polymer field, and has also appeared in the journals Nature, Science and Physical Review Letters. He is currently associate editor of Macromolecules.

Russell’s honors include the Dutch Polymer Award from the Netherlands and the High Polymers Prize, the highest honor accorded to a polymer scientist by the American Physical Society.

On campus, Russell was named a Distinguished Professor in 2004 and the Conte Distinguished Professor in 2006. In 2005, he received the Chancellor’s Medal as a Distinguished Faculty Lecturer and an Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity.

A graduate of the polymer science and department, he earned his master’s degree 1976 and his Ph.D. in 1979.

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