Comings…

Charles Westgate, a much-admired former Johns Hopkins Engineering faculty member, associate dean of academic affairs, and interim dean, will return to the Whiting School this fall to teach part time in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Westgate joined the School of Engineering in 1966 and later served as a member of the faculty and administration. Named the William B. Kouwenhoven Professor of Electrical Engineering with a joint appointment at Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory, Westgate was director and associate dean for the part-time engineering graduate programs (now EPP) and chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering before becoming the Whiting School’s associate dean for academic affairs in 1994.

Although Westgate left for Binghamton University in 2001, where he has been the dean of the Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science for the past six years, the Westgate name—and legacy—have continued at the Whiting School. “His interactions with students were so positive that one of his former students endowed our most prestigious and largest merit scholarship in his name,” says Andrew Douglas, the Whiting School’s current associate dean for academic affairs. Douglas is referring to the Westgate Scholarship, a gift from Kwok Li ’79, that provides one or two freshmen each year with full tuition, plus a stipend. When he made the gift, Li said he wanted everyone to know “how much students at Hopkins value good teaching and caring teachers.”

Jim Aumiller, currently the project manager for the HopkinsOne implementation project, will join the Whiting School on September 1 as the new associate dean for finance and administration, where he will oversee finance, human resources, and information technology.

Aumiller has been a member of the Hopkins family for the past 19 years and holds a degree in accounting from the University of Maryland. He is a member and former faculty member of the National Council of University Research Administrators, a member of the Council of Government Regulators, and a member of the National Association of College and University Business Offices.

“I’m excited to move into a divisional school role as opposed to a central role,” Aumiller says. “It’s a new challenge for me. It will be more hands-on and I’ll be working closely with faculty. And, after having worked at both the Eastern and Mount Washington campuses, it’s great to be back at Homewood.”

New Faculty

Sharon Gerecht-Nir, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT who received her PhD from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, will join the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as an assistant professor this fall.

The design and behavior of steel structures, bridge design, and field monitoring are among the interests of Reagan Herman, who will join the Department of Civil Engineering this fall as a senior lecturer and assistant research professor. Currently an assistant professor in the University of Houston’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, she received both her PhD and MS from the University of Texas at Austin and a BS from North Carolina State University.

Susan Hohenberger joined the Department of Computer Science this past January as an assistant professor. Hohenberger earned her PhD in 2006 from MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Her specialty is cryptology and she used her expertise in the subject to launch a new course, Special Topics in Theoretical Cryptography, this past spring. “The students here at Hopkins are very good and the ones in my class were very enthusiastic,” she says. “I’m delighted to be here.”

This September, Hana El-Samad, who was a postdoctoral researcher at U.C. Santa Barbara (where she received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering), will join the Whiting School’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as an assistant professor.

Narutoshi Nakata will join the Civil Engineering Department on August 1 as an assistant professor. Nakata recently completed his PhD in civil engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His interests include the development and application of experimental techniques, performance assessment of structural systems subjected to earthquakes, and cyber-infrastructure applications in engineering. He received his MS in civil engineering systems from the Kyoto University in Japan.

…and Goings

Ilene Busch-Vishniac, mechanical engineering professor and former Whiting School dean, will leave the School of Engineering on August 1 to join McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. At McMaster, she will serve as provost and vice-president academic.

“Johns Hopkins is a wonderful place and I have enjoyed being part of the Hopkins community over the last nine years. I leave with a mixture of regret and anticipation, saying goodbye to Hopkins and our friends and colleagues here, yet looking forward to becoming part of McMaster, another marvelous institution.”

During her time at the Whiting School, Busch-Vishniac made significant contributions to the school’s growth and academic success. She has been widely recognized for her research and has played an active and important role in the education of students. The appointment at McMaster will enable her to continue to make significant contributions to the fields of engineering and education.

Charles O’Melia, the Abel Wolman Professor of Environmental Engineering and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, will retire in July after 27 years of teaching in the Whiting School’s Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering (DoGEE).

“It’s been remarkable to see the growth of environmental engineering in the department from almost non-existent in 1980 to a program that’s consistently ranked among the best in the country,” says O’Melia. Clearly fond of his students— both current and former—O’Melia observes that “students make the professor. To the extent that I’ve done well, it’s been because of my students.”

O’Melia’s retirement plans? “In the coming year, I’m going to read, think, and write,” he says. And while he will continue to pursue his research—in aquatic chemistry, environmental colloid chemistry, water and wastewater treatment, and modeling of natural surface and subsurface waters—he is also ready to pursue new topics. In particular, O’Melia explains, “I hope to get my mind around this idea of sustainability— a pretty amorphous subject. I want to see where I can make an impact, what I can learn and do about it.”

Professor Ed Bouwer will succeed O’Melia as DoGEE’s new chair.

After many years of service to the Whiting School, professors Robert Green Jr., Richard Joseph, and Jack Rugh will retire this year, but will remain involved with the school community as emeritus faculty members.

Green, the Theophilus Halley Smoot Professor of Engineering since 1998, has been a faculty member at Johns Hopkins since 1960 and retired from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. During his career at Hopkins, he has been chair of the departments of Mechanics and Materials Science, Civil, Materials Science and Engineering and was the director of the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation from 1984 to 2001. He is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, American Physical Society, American Society for Metals, and American Society for Nondestructive Testing. He has worked for the Defense Advanced Projects Agency, the National Bureau of Standards, the U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratories, RCA, and the Underwater Explosions Research Division of the Norfolk Naval Shipyard.

Joseph received his BS in 1957 from the City College of New York and his PhD in 1962 from Harvard. He began his career at Raytheon before joining the Hopkins faculty in 1966. He was awarded the Distinguished Young Scientist Award from the Maryland Academy of Sciences in 1970, has been a fellow with the American Physical Society since 1975, and won the Outstanding Teaching Award from the Johns Hopkins Student Council in 1992. Joseph has been the Jacob Suter Jammer Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering since 1982 and his research interests include electromagnetic theory and, in particular, applied optics.

Rugh, who has taught in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering since 1969, was named the Edward J. Schaefer Professor in 1991. Rugh holds his PhD and MS from Northwestern University and BS from Penn State University. He has published over 50 research papers and three books on linear and nonlinear control systems. Rugh is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Distinguished Member of the IEEE Control Systems Society, and he served as the Society’s president in 2001. He received the NEEDS Premier Award for engineering courseware in 2001. At Johns Hopkins, he received the W.H. Huggins Award for Excellence in Teaching and an Alumni Association Award for Excellence in Teaching.