Bar-Cohen Unanimously Elected Honorary Member of ASME

Dr. Avram Bar-Cohen, Chair of Mechanical Engineering and Distinguished University Professor.

Dr. Avram Bar-Cohen, Chair of Mechanical Engineering and Distinguished University Professor, was unanimously elected as an Honorary Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in June. His elevation to Honorary Member will be announced at the Honors Convocation of the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition in Seattle, Washington this November.

Bar-Cohen was selected “for development of the scientific foundation for thermal management of electronic components and systems, specifically for buoyant flows in channels, heat sink optimization and pool boiling of dielectric liquids; and for seminal contributions and leadership in research, practice and education in the thermal management of micro and nanoelectronic systems.” Honorary Membership with ASME has come to be regarded as recognition of a lifetime of service to engineering or related fields. The recognition was first awarded in 1880, the founding year of the Society. The roster of Honorary Members contains the names of leaders of world renown who were selected under carefully drawn procedures rigorously maintained by the Society over the years.

University President Dr. C.D. Mote, Jr., the only other Maryland faculty member to attain this recognition, says "Dr. Bar-Cohen is highly deserving of this prestigious recognition, having contributed so much to engineering. He is an excellent engineer, a gifted teacher, and a prolific scholar. To be selected by the profession for a lifetime of contributions to engineering is a distinction that is truly extraordinary."

Avram Bar Cohen is well known for his contributions to thermal science and engineering and at the University of Maryland continues his research in the thermal management of Micro/Nano systems. He has authored and co-authored two text books, some 300 Journal papers, Refereed Proceedings papers, and Chapters in books, and has delivered more than 60 Keynote, Plenary, and Invited Lectures at major technical Conferences and Institutions. Bar-Cohen has advised to completion more than 50 Ph.D. and M.S. students, at the University of Maryland, University of Minnesota, and the Ben Gurion University in Israel.

At the Honors and Awards Luncheon of the recent ASME InterPACK Conference in Vancouver, Canada, Avram Bar-Cohen was honored with the InterPACK Achievement Award “for his long term and continued contributions in the field of Electronics and Photonics Packaging.” The presentation of this bi-annual award was followed by Bar-Cohen’s Keynote lecture on “Hot Aisles to Hot Spots – Thermal Packaging for a Small Planet.”

In 2002 Bar-Cohen received the IEEE CPMT Society, Outstanding Sustained Technical Contributions Award, “for contributions to thermal design, modeling, and analysis and for original research on ebullient and liquid-phase cooling. This followed the 2000 ASME Worcester Reed Warner Medal, “for outstanding contributions to the literature in the area of heat transfer.” He was earlier recognized with the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award and the ASME Curriculum Innovation Award in 1999 (with S. Bhavnani and Y. Joshi), the ASME/IEEE ITHERM Achievement Award in 1998, ASME Edwin F. Church Medal in 1994, and the THERMI Award from the IEEE/Semi-Therm Conference in 1997. He is a Fellow of the ASME and of IEEE, a distinguished Lecturer for IEEE, was the Founding Chairman of the ITHERM Conference in 1988, and served as the General Chairman for the first InterPack (International Intersociety Packaging Conference) in 1995.

Published August 6, 2007