Two earn highest promotion to Regents professor
PULLMAN, Wash. – Two Washington State University faculty members have been promoted to Regents professor. The promotion honors the highest level of international distinction in the discipline that raises university standards through teaching, scholarship and public service.
The employees will receive recognition along with other annual award-winning faculty and staff at the Celebrating Excellence Banquet March 28, part of the annual Showcase celebration of WSU excellence and achievement.
Reservations for the banquet are being accepted through March 19 at http://showcase.wsu.edu.
The Regents professor honorees are:
Kelvin Lynn, School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and Department of Physics and Astronomy.
He is internationally renowned for pioneering research on positrons, antimatter particles that want to annihilate matter the instant they run into it. He is developing a trap for the particles and using them to characterize defects embedded deep inside materials.
Lynn is director of the WSU Center for Materials Research. He and colleagues there work with worldwide industry leaders on the challenge of growing better crystals and characterizing them for use in civilian and military laser applications.
He continues to build materials research capability at WSU into a truly interdisciplinary effort. The university’s material science and engineering graduate program is growing, the number of students is increasing and the program’s reputation is on the upswing.
Lynn is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society. He is a member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences. At WSU, he is Boeing chair of advanced materials and George and Diane Conniff distinguished professor.
Juming Tang, distinguished chair of food engineering and associate chair of biological systems engineering.
In 2012 he received the International Food Engineering Award from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers and Nestle for breakthrough microwave/radio frequency thermal processing technologies and outstanding leadership and education of food engineering professionals.
Tang’s research program during his 19 years at WSU has focused on applying fundamental scientific and engineering principles to long-term economical and environmental issues in food safety, value-added processing and sustainable post-harvest practices for agricultural commodities.
He leads a multi-institutional team investigating engineered solutions to ensure microbial safety of frozen and refrigerated meals in retail markets.
In 2010 Tang received the Research and Development Award from the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) for Development of FDA Accepted Microwave Sterilization Process. IFT is the largest international professional organization for food related research and the food industry.
He is a fellow of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (2014) and the International Microwave Power Institute (2013).
