WSU Recognizes Maughan Brothers for Achievements in Engineering, Science, Medicine

PULLMAN, Wash. — Paul, David and W. Lowell Maughan were honored by the Washington State University Alumni Association May 29 with individual Alumni Achievement Awards. In a ceremony at the Lewis Alumni Centre, the brothers were cited for achievements in engineering, science and medicine, and for bringing recognition to their professions and alma mater.

Paul M. Maughan, a 1959 WSU graduate in mechanical engineering, is an authority in satellite remote sensing and multispectral information for natural resources and environmental applications. A pioneer in earth observations and Global Positioning Systems (GPS), he was a founding partner of Space Development Services in 1984 and of Halcyon Inc. in 1992, both in Washington, D.C. He also was project manager for COMSAT and a consultant to NASA’s Stennis Space Center from 1987-2001. Several of his publications focus on planning an international consortium to design, launch and operate a remote sensing system. He moved to Anacortes in 1993, where his remains active as a consultant.

David W. Maughan, 1964 graduate in physics, has been a research professor at the University of Vermont since 1974. He holds positions in the department of molecular physiology and biophysics, as well as in the cell and molecular biology program and the biomedical engineering program. His home is in Burlington, Vt.

Since 1977, W. Lowell Maughan, M.D., a 1966 graduate in zoology, has held 11 appointments at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he is a professor of medicine and biomedical engineering. He currently is associate chief of cardiology at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He lives in Pasadena, Md.

The Maughans were reared and educated in Pullman. Their late parents Orlo H. and H. Delight Maughan were department chairs; he in agricultural economics, she in foods and nutrition.

After leaving WSU, Paul Maughan completed a bachelor’s degree in meteorology at Penn State and a master’s and doctoral degree in oceanography at Oregon State University.

For more than 35 years, he contributed to many aspects of the use of remote sensing from space. For example, he participated in the design and development of satellite and information systems employing such convergent technologies as Geographic Information Systems and GPS in the technical analyses of spatial data, including earth-looking imagery from domestic and international weather and land satellite systems.

In one contract for NASA, he provided technical and administrative oversight for a project to monitor potato conditions and production on a 25,000-acre farm in Hermiston, Ore., with center pivot irrigation.

The common thread in his career has been his ability to synthesize technical, market, organizational and financial factors by using advanced information systems tools to solve resource, environmental and informational systems problems.

David Maughan’s major research interest is the cellular and molecular physiology of striated muscle, functional genomics and proteomics. He is currently involved in six major projects with grants totaling more than $4 million [three others are pending for $2.25 million] for investigations critical to human health, including the molecular basis of diabetic cardiomyopathy. He has been awarded more than 20 grants for research from such agencies as the Washington State Heart Association, the Vermont Heart Association, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research and the National Institutes of Health Muscular Dystrophy Association.

He received a doctorate in physiology and biophysics from the University of Washington in 1971, and conducted postgraduate research in physiology at the University of Bern in Switzerland from 1971-74. He has lectured and served as a consultant and visiting scholar in England, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and China.

Lowell graduated from the UW School of Medicine with highest honors in 1970, trained in internal medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and Yale University, and in cardiology at Johns Hopkins University, where he earned an MBA. With each appointment, he has been able to use his expertise and skills in systems analysis, health and human services to make wide-reaching advancements for Johns Hopkins Hospital and provide outreach to physicians nationally and internationally.

He has 65 articles in medical journals, 19 published books and book sections, 90 published abstracts and two video productions –“The Cardiac Cycle: Clinical Physiology of the Normal Heart,” and “Pressure-Volume Relationships of the Heart.” He has served on the National Board of Medical Examiners and on the Veterans Administration Merit Review Board for Cardiovascular Studies. 

Two of three sisters are also WSU alumni–Sally Kilpatrick, a 1959 graduate in education of Anacortes, and Judy Busch, a 1969 graduate in education of Pullman. A third sister, Patty Wixon of Ashland, Ore., attended WSU before transferring to the University of Washington, where she completed a degree in education.

Their father’s career at WSU was cut short. He was hired in 1946, but died in the crash of a private plane at Fish Lake, Idaho, in 1947 while on a fishing trip. His widow was left to raise the children, then age 12 years to four m
onths, while maintaining a full teaching and administrative schedule at WSU from 1948 until retiring in 1973.