Four MIE faculty members receive professorships
Four mechanical and industrial engineering faculty members received endowed professorships and were honored by Provost and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Karen Colley and Dean Pete Nelson during a recent investiture ceremony.
The faculty members are Alexander Yarin, Constantine Megaridis, Kenneth Brezinsky and Reza Shahbazian-Yassar.
Alexander Yarin
UIC Distinguished Professor Alexander Yarin received the Richard and Loan Hill Professorship of Engineering.
The Hills have been generous supporters of the UIC Colleges of Engineering and Medicine for years, giving the University $10 million. Rick is a 1974 UIC bioengineering graduate and a 1981 MBA graduate from Syracuse. In 2008, Rick was the first recipient of an honorary UIC Doctorate of Engineering degree.
Formerly chairman and CEO of Novellus Systems—a leader in the design and manufacture of semiconductor equipment used to fabricate integrated circuits that was sold to Lam Research for $3.3 billion in 2012—Rick has deep experience in all aspects of the semiconductor industry, as well as in corporate governance. Before joining Novellus in 1993, Rick Hill spent 12 years in senior leadership roles at Tektronix. Before Tektronix, he held a range of engineering and management positions with General Electric, Motorola, and Hughes Aircraft.
Loan Hill is a Vietnamese refugee. In April of 1975, Loan Tran was airlifted from Tan Son Nhut Airbase in Saigon under harrowing circumstances with five of her siblings and a young niece and nephew. She earned her degree in computer science from San Jose State University. She has worked for several high-tech start-ups where she succeeded and eventually landed at Novellus Systems in 1990, where she rose to be CIO.
Yarin earned his MSc in 1977 in applied physics, his PhD in physics and mathematics in1980, and his DSc in habilitation in physics and mathematics in1989. His affiliations include The Institute for Problems in Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow; Professor at The Technion-Israel Institute of Technolog; Eduard Pestel Chair Professor in Mechanical Engineering at The Technion; Professor and distinguished professor at the University of Illinois Chicago from 2006 to the present; and a fellow of the American Physical Society.
Yarin is the author of six books, 12 book chapters, 469 research papers, and 12 patents. He was a fellow of the Rashi Foundation and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He was awarded the Gutwirth Award, the Hershel Rich Prize, and the Prize for Technological Development for Defense Against Terror of the American-Technion Society. He is one of the three co-editors of the “Springer Handbook of Experimental Fluid Mechanics,” the associate editor of the journal “Experiments in Fluids,” and a member of the editorial advisory board of the journals “Physics of Fluids, the Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and ‘Archives of Mechanics.’”
Yarin is the director of the Multiscale Mechanics and Nanotechnology Laboratory where he works in hydrodynamics, solid mechanics, electrohydrodynamics, polymer science, rheology, nanotechnology, and combustion. His main contributions are related to the hydrodynamics of free liquids jets, films, and drops, electrospinning and solution blowing of polymer nanofibers, and devices based on them. One of his inventions was licensed to the company Ivoclar and is currently marketed in Europe and the United States as a product VivaDent Aerosol Reduction Gel used in dentistry.
Constantine Megaridis and Kenneth Brezinsky
UIC Distinguished Professor Constantine Megaridis and Professor Kenneth Brezinsky received the James P. Hartnett Professorship in Energy Engineering.
Hartnett was a professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at UIC and served as founding director of the university’s Energy Resources Center. He was also a founding editor of the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer. Hartnett passed away in 2021.
Megaridis received his PhD in fluid/thermal sciences from Brown University and holds an MS in applied mathematics, also from Brown. He came to the U.S. after receiving his undergraduate degree from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece’s most venerable polytechnic institution.
He is a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He is an active member of several other professional societies, including the American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Society of Thermal and Fluids Engineers (ASTFE), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He serves as associate editor and editorial board member of several prestigious technical journals. He was named University of Illinois Scholar in 2012, UIC Inventor of the Year in 2015, and UIC Distinguished Professor in 2018. Early on in his career, he was awarded the Kenneth T. Whitby Award of the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR), which recognizes “outstanding technical contributions to aerosol science and technology.”
He has received multiple teaching and student advising awards at UIC, where he has mentored more than 50 doctorate students and postdoctoral fellows, many of whom now hold tenured academic, federal laboratory, and industrial leadership positions in the U.S. and abroad. He has published more than 150 journal papers and more than 250 conference papers and is a co-inventor of 10 issued U.S. patents.
He is the director of the Micro/Nanoscale Fluid Transport Laboratory where his research has received continuous funding support from numerous federal and industrial sources for over three decades. His current research focuses on fluid/particle transport, multiphase heat and mass transfer, electronics thermal management, surface science and engineering, and interfacial phenomena relevant to micro and nanotechnologies.
Brezinsky received his B.S. with Honors in Chemistry and PhD in Physical Chemistry, both from The City College of New York. He is the director of the High-Pressure Shock Tube Laboratory, where he supervises the work of seven doctoral students and one post-doctoral associate. His laboratory has graduated 14 PhD students and hosted eight post-doctoral associates, 22 master’s degree recipients, and 24 undergraduate researchers throughout its 28-year history.
His research is focused on the shock tube experimental examination and the computer modeling simulation of the kinetics of combustion chemistry. The chemistry of interest is that which takes place during the shock tube pyrolysis and oxidation of hydrocarbon fuels. The UIC shock tube provides a combination of high pressures, up to 1000 bar, and high temperatures, typically up to 1800 K, not found in any other shock tube laboratories. Results from experiments at these high-pressure conditions, notably in the 40-100 bar pressure range, have led to the generation of chemical kinetic models for fuel chemistry that have contributed significantly to the way hydrocarbon fuels are studied.
He has published more than 125 peer-reviewed articles and made more than 170 scientific presentations. His latest publications investigate combustion and fuel properties by exploring the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence in sensing and characterizing fuel properties that impact their burning behavior. This latest avenue of research could further change the paradigm of understanding the way hydrocarbon fuels burn. Brezinsky’s publications have been in the top high-impact journals of combustion, such as “Combustion and Flame,” “Fuel,” “Energy and Fuel,” and the very prestigious and highly competitive Proceedings of the Combustion Institute.
He has been recognized for his contribution to combustion science by his designation as an inaugural fellow of the Combustion Institute. He has recently been recognized by UIC as a University Scholar and previously by the College of Engineering as the recipient of its Teaching Award.
Brezinsky has received wide-scale competitive government funding of more than $22 million from federal agencies, which include the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Army Research Office, and the Army Research Laboratory.
He also served the university by membership on numerous college and departmental committees and was the College of Engineering associate dean of research and graduate education for more than five years.
REZA SHAHBAZIAN-YASSAR
Professor Reza Shahbazian-Yassar received the Robert Uyetani Collegiate Professorship.
Uyetani is an alumnus of the University of Illinois Chicago and University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. He spent his career in the aerospace industry as an electrical engineer, and designed landing gear for F-16s, guidance systems and flight systems for Sidewinder missiles, and the systems for laser guided missiles. Uyetani also worked with NASA on the Cassini probe to Saturn, the Magellan space probe, and some of the components used on the international space station.
Shahbazian-Yassar is renowned for his contributions to advanced materials for energy storage and sustainability. He received his PhD in materials science from Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, and later joined Michigan Technological University as an assistant professor, where he was promoted to the Heins Endowed Chair of Nanotechnology.
In 2015, he joined UIC and was promoted to full professor in 2019. Shahbazian-Yassar pioneered the use of in-situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) for battery materials, enabling real-time analysis of battery performance and failure mechanisms. His work on high entropy materials has significantly advanced the understanding of this new class of materials with promising potential in catalysis, energy, and sustainability. Shahbazian-Yassar has produced more than 290 high-impact publications, with more than 20,500 citations and an h-index of 78.
As the director of the Nano Engineering Laboratory, Shahbazian-Yassar mentored 30 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, many of whom now hold academic and industry positions. He has secured more than $10 million in research funding from federal agencies such as the NSF and DOE, along with multiple industry collaborations. His patented research on battery coatings, funded through Phase 1 and Phase 2 by the UIC Office of Technology Management, highlights his commitment to translating research into practical technologies.