Mechanical Engineering Department Celebrates Students and Alumni

The UNM Depart­ment of Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing has cel­e­brated a year of aca­d­e­mic achieve­ment by award­ing schol­ar­ships to stu­dents and acco­lades to fac­ulty mem­bers and dis­tin­guished alumni.  Depart­ment Chair Chris Hall has inau­gu­rated an Acad­emy of Dis­tin­guished Alumni. The depart­ment has more than 3,000 liv­ing alumni, many of whom have dis­tin­guished them­selves through tech­ni­cal excel­lence and lead­er­ship.  This year nine alumni were named to the academy.

Alice Agogino
Alice Agogino is the Roscoe and Eliz­a­beth Hughes Pro­fes­sor of Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and direc­tor of the BEST Lab­o­ra­tory at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley.  She earned her Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at UNM in 1975 and went on to earn a Mas­ter of Sci­ence degree at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley and a Ph.D. at Stan­ford University. She has received many acco­lades in her career at UC Berke­ley, includ­ing the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion Pres­i­den­tial Young Inves­ti­ga­tor Award and the Soci­ety of Auto­mo­tive Engi­neers Ralph R. Tee­tor Edu­ca­tor Award.  She was given the UNM School of Engi­neer­ing Dis­tin­guished Alumna Award in 1992.

Larry Bickle
Larry Bickle is a retired pri­vate equity investor with exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the energy indus­try, includ­ing more than 25 years expe­ri­ence in oil and gas explo­ration and pro­duc­tion.  Bickle earned his Ph.D. in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at UNM in 1972.  He earned his B.S. from Rice Uni­ver­sity and his M.S. from the Uni­ver­sity of Texas.  Bickle was Chair­man of the Board and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of TPC Cor­po­ra­tion, a New York Stock Exchange listed gas stor­age, trans­porta­tion and mar­ket­ing com­pany that he founded.  Bickle is also a direc­tor of UniSource Energy Cor­po­ra­tion, the par­ent com­pany for Tuc­son Elec­tric Power Com­pany.  He received a Dis­tin­guished Alum­nus Award from the UNM School of Engi­neer­ing in 2006.

Bruce Ben­ton
Bruce Ben­ton grew up in the Albu­querque area and had a life­long love of fly­ing.  He was a stu­dent in the Class of 1940, but World War II inter­vened and he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps as a flight instruc­tor.  As a stu­dent, he was the ring leader of a group of ME stu­dents who pro­cured the “LeR­hone Rotary” air­craft engine that cur­rently resides in the entrance of the ME build­ing.  Dur­ing World War II, he flew sup­plies “across the hump” and has many hair-raising tales to tell about fly­ing across the Himalayas.  After the war, he became a com­mer­cial air­line pilot for Con­ti­nen­tal Air­lines and logged over 30,000 hours of flight time.  He sur­vived three mid-air col­li­sions – one of the few peo­ple ever to do so.  Ben­son was hon­ored as a Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Out­stand­ing Alum­nus in 1996.

George Friberg
George Friberg earned his B.S. degree in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing in 1962.  While at UNM, Friberg demon­strated his exper­tise in move­ment of sym­met­ri­cal gas-filled objects as both quar­ter­back and team cap­tain of the Lobo foot­ball team.  He is cur­rently senior direc­tor for Tech­nol­ogy Ven­tures Cor­po­ra­tion, a com­pany founded by Lock­heed Mar­tin, and has been involved with tech­nol­ogy busi­ness endeav­ors dur­ing his career as an engi­neer, man­ager and exec­u­tive in man­u­fac­tur­ing and small entre­pre­neur­ial com­pa­nies spe­cial­iz­ing in defense hard­ware, lasers, pulsed power, com­mu­ni­ca­tions satel­lites, mis­sile elec­tron­ics, and remote con­trol sys­tems for steel and min­ing pro­duc­tion appli­ca­tions.  He is an adjunct pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Finance, Inter­na­tional, Tech­nol­ogy & Entre­pre­neur­ship in UNM’s Ander­son School of Management.

Allen Fuhs
Allen Fuhs is a Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at the Naval Post­grad­u­ate School.  Fuhs received his Bachelor’s degree in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing at UNM in 1951 and became the first UNM mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing grad­u­ate to earn a Ph.D., which he received in 1958 at the Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy.  Fuhs has been elected fel­low of four dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sional soci­eties and has been elected to the Inter­na­tional Acad­emy of Astro­nau­tics and to the Inter­na­tional Space Hall of Fame.  At UNM has received the Erna Fer­gus­son Award, as well as the Dis­tin­guish Alum­nus Awards from the Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment and from the School of Engineering.

Eric Jumper
Eric Jumper is Pro­fes­sor of Aero­space and Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame.  He received his Bachelor’s degree in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at UNM in 1968, then earned a Master’s degree at the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming and a Ph.D. at the Air Force Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy.  Prior to join­ing the fac­ulty at Notre Dame, he held fac­ulty posi­tions at the United States Air Force Acad­emy and at the Air Force Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy.  Among his many hon­ors, he was elected as a fel­low of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Aero­nau­tics and Astro­nau­tics.  In 1997 he was rec­og­nized as an Out­stand­ing Alum­nus of the UNM ME Dept.

Bill Miera
Bill Miera is founder and CEO of Fiore Indus­tries, Inc.  He was born and raised in Albu­querque, earn­ing a Bachelor’s degree with dis­tinc­tion in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing in 1980 and a Master’s with a spe­cial­iza­tion in robot­ics from UNM.  He helped found and is a past pres­i­dent of the New Mex­ico Chap­ter of the Soci­ety for His­panic Pro­fes­sional Engineers. He has twice received the President’s Award from the Soci­ety of His­panic Pro­fes­sional Engi­neers, and has served on the Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Advi­sory Coun­cil since 2001.  In 1999, he was pre­sented with the School of Engi­neer­ing Dis­tin­guished Alum­nus Award.

Heinz Schmitt
Heinz Schmitt retired from San­dia National Lab­o­ra­to­ries as Chief Engi­neer and Vice Pres­i­dent for Weapons Sys­tem Devel­op­ment.  He received his Bachelor’s degree at Brook­lyn Poly­tech­nic Insti­tute before join­ing SNL.  At San­dia, he was selected to pur­sue a Master’s degree in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at UNM.  He later earned his Ph.D. from Okla­homa State University. He has received the Sec­re­tary of Defense Medal for Out­stand­ing Pub­lic Ser­vice and the Melvin R. Lohmann Medal from Okla­homa State Uni­ver­sity.  In 2007 he was hon­ored as a UNM School of Engi­neer­ing Dis­tin­guished Alumnus.

Jack Thomp­son
Jack Thomp­son spent 39 years at Chrysler and Daim­ler Chrysler begin­ning as a prod­uct engi­neer in 1964 and retir­ing as direc­tor of the Com­puter Aided Engi­neer­ing and Con­cept Devel­op­ment Divi­sion in 2004.  Thomp­son earned his Bachelor’s with Dis­tinc­tion in the Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment at UNM in 1961.  He earned a Master’s degree at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity and a Ph.D. from the Uni­ver­sity of Detroit.  He is a fel­low of the Soci­ety of Auto­mo­tive Engi­neers, and was hon­ored as a School of Engi­neer­ing Dis­tin­guished Alum­nus in 2004.

This year there are nearly 400 under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate stu­dents in the ME Depart­ment, which first awarded Bachelor’s degrees in 1933.

Schol­ar­ship Award Win­ners
Ash­ley Brill — Alan Evan Mor­ri­son Memo­r­ial Scholarship

Ross Saave­dra – Harold S. Bluestein Memo­r­ial Scholarship

Luke Yates

Bryan Kaiser

Andrew Krieger

Gary Macias – Mar­ilee & Mau­rice Wildin Scholarship

Damian Albil­lar

Elisa Was­son – Stephen Rose Memo­r­ial Scholarship

Julie Do

Mor­ris Huang

Sebasian Gomez – James A. Cou­p­land Scholarship

Amanda Luketa-Hanlin

Joshua Her­rera

Steven Mar­tinez

Jeremy Sment – B.G. Tay­lor Grad­u­ate Award

Phil Jones

Justin Simp­son

Miller Metal Endowed Fellowship

Cyrus Abbasi

Amanda Cloud – Citgo Funded ME Scholarship

Luke Eng­vall

George Gorospe

Andrew Krieger

Drew Lan­dis

Fac­ulty Recog­ni­tion
The depart­ment rec­og­nized five fac­ulty mem­bers who have received national or regional recog­ni­tion dur­ing the past year.

Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Tariq Khraishi joined the ME Depart­ment in 2000, after com­plet­ing his Ph.D. at Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­sity.  He is a fel­low of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Mechan­i­cal Engi­neers.  In 2011 he received the Out­stand­ing Teach­ing Award from the ASEE Gulf-Southwest Sec­tion for his excel­lence in teach­ing and men­tor­ing students.

Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Andrea Mam­moli has been with the ME depart­ment since 1997, fol­low­ing two years as a post-doctoral fel­low at Los Alamos National Lab­o­ra­tory.  He earned his Ph.D. at the Uni­ver­sity of West­ern Aus­tralia.  In 2011, he was pre­sented with the Energy Edu­ca­tor of the Year award by the NM Asso­ci­a­tion of Energy Engineers.

Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor Svet­lana Poro­seva joined the ME Depart­ment in 2010.  She has pre­vi­ously been a research sci­en­tist at Florida State Uni­ver­sity.  Poro­seva earned her Ph.D. at Novosi­birsk State Uni­ver­sity in Rus­sia.  In 2011 she received a STC.UNM Cre­ative Award for her work on a copy­righted soft­ware prod­uct called the Power Sys­tem Graph Converter.

Pro­fes­sor C. Ran­dall Tru­man has been with the ME Depart­ment since 1981.  He earned his Ph.D. at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity.  In 2012 Tru­man received a Spe­cial Ser­vice Cita­tion from the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Aero­nau­tics & Astro­nau­tics at the 50^th Annual Aero­space Sci­ences Meet­ing.  The cita­tion reads “for ded­i­cated ser­vice and supe­rior lead­er­ship as the chair of the Hon­ors and Awards Sub­com­mit­tee of the AIAA Stu­dent Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee dur­ing a decade of unpar­al­leled growth in AIAA’s recog­ni­tion program.

Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Peter Voro­bi­eff joined the depart­ment in 1999.  He pre­vi­ously served as a research asso­ciate at Los Alamos National Lab­o­ra­tory after earn­ing his Ph.D. from Lehigh Uni­ver­sity.  Pro­fes­sors Tru­man and Voro­bi­eff dis­cov­ered a new fluid mechan­ics insta­bil­ity in shock-accelerated mul­ti­phase flow.  This dis­cov­ery was cited as a Top 10 UNM Research news story for 2011.