Paul Steen named as the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Engineering
October 23, 2008
Professor Paul Steen has been named as the Maxwell M. Upson Professor in Engineering, effective November 1, 2008. Paul Steen recently invented the 'electro-osmotic droplet switch' which drew its inspiration from nature, from palm beetles capable of super-adhesive strength to surfaces (Spiderman capability). This work was published in PNAS and described in http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug05/DropletSwitch.kr.html.
Steen was the winner of the 2007 Henry Marion Howe Medal for the best paper appearing in Metallurgical & Materials Transactions A & B describing the discovery by Steen, and students Byrne, Theisen and Reed, of the source mechanism of 'cross-stream' defects in single-role spin-casting by which glassy alloys are produced. A class of particularly important glassy alloys includes MetGlas materials used for power-distribution transformer cores. The energy efficiency of these cores plays a significant role key in mitigating global climate change: if all conventional (steel-core) power-distribution transformers in use today were replaced by more energy-efficient (amorphous-core) transformers, worldwide CO2 emission would decrease by 2.5% (one-third of the Kyoto Protocol target for reduction).