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 Professor
David Boger has joined the department as a Courtesy Faculty member,
spending part of his time each year at UF. David is Laureate Professor
at the University of Melbourne and is known internationally for his
fundamental research in non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, highlighted by a
class of fluids which now bear his name - Boger fluids. Professor Boger
has been awarded numerous prizes for his research including the
Annual Award of the British Society of Rheology in 1983 for notable
contributions to rheology, and the 1995 Walter Ahlström Environmental
Prize awarded annually by the Finnish Academies of Technology in
recognition of significant technological achievements which advance
industrial applications using energy and raw materials. He is a
Fellow of the Learned Academies of Science and of Technological Sciences
and Engineering. In 2003, Professor Boger received the Clunies
Ross National Science and Technology Award, following from the
Chemeca Medal of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and the
Flinders Medal of the Australian Academy of Science in 2000, and the
Victoria Prize in 2002. In 2004, Professor Boger received the
British Society of Rheology Gold Medal, its highest award, and in
2005, he received the Australian Prime Minister’s Prize for Science.
 Professor
Richard Dickinson has been promoted to the rank of Professor of
Chemical Engineering. Professor Dickinson’s research focuses on applying
engineering principles to study the behavior of living cells or other
small-scale biological systems (e.g. bionanotechnological systems). A
combination of mathematical modeling and quantitative experimentation,
together with the tools of molecular cell biology, are used to better
understand the relationship between cell function and the physical and
molecular properties of cells and their surroundings. The field is
often called cellular bioengineering or cellular engineering.
 Professor
Mark Orazem has been elected Vice President of the International
Society of Electrochemistry for 2006-2008. One of Professor Orazem’s
research areas is fuel cells. His combined modeling and experimental
program is intended to enhance the application of impedance spectroscopy
as a tool for electrochemical characterization of polymer-electrolyte
proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells. The issues he addresses
include establishing the range of validity of data, establishing the
relationship between electrode non-uniformity and overall impedance
measurements, and developing interpretation models for the impedance
response that are based on the physics, transport, and kinetic
mechanisms. The impedance models integrate models for transport with
multiple reactions associated with the fuel cell electrode assemblies.
These models therefore link the electrochemical processes with fluid
flow and heat transfer. Experiments on one-dimensional systems are used
to extract kinetic parameters.
 Professor
Tony Ladd received a University of Florida Research Foundation
Professorship Award. This award recognizes UF faculty who have
established a distinguished record of research and scholarship.
Professor Ladd’s research interests focus on the application of
numerical simulations to complex systems containing a wide range of
length scales and time scales. The goal is to model the essential
physics of the problem in as simple and fundamental a way as possible.
By comparing the predictions of numerical simulations of a mathematical
model with experimental measurements, he gains understanding of the
underlying physical phenomena in situations where analytic theory is
impossible. Current research includes instabilities in a rotating
suspension, reactive flows in porous media, inertial migration in duct
and pipe flows, and hydrodynamic interactions between confined polymers.
 Professor Dinesh Shah and his former student, James Kanicky, won the
2005 Soap and Detergent Association Award for the best paper published
in 2004 in the Journal of Surfactants and Detergents, a publication of
the American Oil Chemists Society Press. Professor Shah’s research
projects are in three major areas: biomedical, surfactant solutions and
advanced materials. In the biomedical area, he investigates surface
chemical aspects of polymer adsorption on contact lenses in relation to
biolubrication and comfort in the eyes. He also studies transdermal
diffusion of local anesthetics. For more information about Professor
Shah’s many accomplishments, please see page 7 of this newsletter.
 A special February 2005 issue of
Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces
(Volume 40, Issue 2) has been published in honor of Professor Dinesh
Shah's 65th birthday.
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