UNM President Bill Gordon is touting another faculty appointment to a prestigious national academy as a sign of UNM's success and the foundation for future growth.
Gordon says the recent election of C. Jeff Brinker, a Chemical and Nuclear Engineering and Chemistry professor and senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories, to the National Academy of Engineering is part of a positive trend for UNM.
"When you look at it nationally at how most major research universities rank themselves, one thing they tend to look at is the number of faculty they have on National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering," Gordon said. "You really have to have a strong record to recruit good faculty and strong graduate students."
Election to the National Academy of Engineering is one of the highest professional distinctions that can be awarded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made important contributions to engineering theory and practice and those who have demonstrated unusual accomplishment in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology.
Brinker is among 74 new members and seven new foreign associates elected to its membership, which brings the total U.S. membership to 1,857 active members, 250 emeritus members and 158 foreign associates. He also is one of six UNM faculty members to be elected to a national academy.
Brinker was recognized for his outstanding contributions to the science of sol-gel processing, which is the preparation of glasses and ceramics from molecular precursors. He also was honored for developing a variety of templating strategies employing ligands, molecules and supramolecular assemblies to precisely control the pore size of films. The key to this approach is the concept of evaporation-induced self-assembly. This approach has significant implications in a diverse range of technologies like drug delivery, cosmetics, catalysis, chromatography, custom pigments in addition to providing a method for making selectively activated bio-materials for national security applications.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
"I feel the most immediate importance of my election into the NAE is the recognition it brings to our materials programs at the University of New Mexico and Sandia," Brinker said in a University statement.
No member of the UNM faculty had been elected to the National Academy of Sciences or the National Academy of Engineering until 1995. Gordon said1995 proved to be a key turning point for the University because it marked the addition of anthropology professor Jane E. Buikstra to the faculty.
Buikstra was elected to the National Academy Sciences before coming to the University. The following year, fellow anthropology professor Eric Trinkaus, who has since left to teach at the University of Washington, was elected to the same academy.
"Once you see people from one institution who are pioneers in their field elected to these academies, you are more likely to see names from their institution surface more regularly," Gordon said.
William Gross, professor emeritus in the Mechanical Engineering Department, extended the trend when he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1996. Former UNM Engineering Dean Paul Fleury, now dean of the same program at Yale University, joined gross in the academy the same year. Fleury was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1999. Jesse Summers, a professor in molecular genetics and microbiology at the UNM School of Medicine, was the last professor elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.
The mission of the National Academy of Engineering is to promote the technological welfare of the nation by marshaling the knowledge and insights of eminent members of the engineering profession. It is the portal for all engineering activities at the national academies, which include the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.
National Academy of Sciences is a nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the promotion of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. According to its charter, which was granted by the U.S. Congress in 1863, the academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters.
