German moves on to Mississippi and CAVS - Smid 'to head CISP'

Professor Randall German is to leave Penn State and the Center for Innovative Sintered Products (CISP) he founded to take up a chair in mechanical engineering at Mississippi State University and head the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS) which is located there. "This opportunity fits well with my interest in research policy and the creation of productive industrial linkages with universities," said Dr German.

CAVS attracts $3.5 million in funding from Mississippi and several times that amount from other sources. It employs around 180 people and an extension centre is being built near the Nissan plant in Guangzhou in southern China.
CAVS and CISP have a track record of collaboration that began last year on a National Science Foundation - Engineering Research Center proposal on multiple-scale virtual manufacturing. Congratulating Dr German on his new appointments, Penn State's Professor Judy Todd said that a collaborative agreement between the two universities to formalise co-operation was being explored.

Penn State, however, has no intention of allowing CISP to drop from its internationally recognised position as a centre of excellence for the industry, she added. "The Engineering Science and Mechanics Department and the College of Engineering is strongly supportive of the continuation of CISP as a centre of excellence for the powder metallurgy industry. During the next few months, I shall be working closely with CISP staff, members of the CISP Advisory Board and the CISP industrial community to establish a future strategic plan for the centre."

The university intends to appoint assistant professor and hardmetals specialist Dr Ivica Smid as interim director of CISP. Dr Smid has a PhD in physical chemistry and an MS in chemical engineering from the University of Vienna. He also has studied and developed novel hard metals at Metallwerk Plansee, a leading producer of hardmetal materials, and at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées in Rennes, France.

His post-doctoral work included investigation and qualification of materials and braze-joined composites at Juelich, Germany, and research at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. From 1991, he conducted research for 18 months at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute in Naka-machi.
Dr. Smid started his employment at the Austrian Research Center Seibersdorf in 1990 as project leader at the Department of Materials Technology, working on high melting and refractory alloys, materials for fusion, modelling, and thermal shock testing. He has co-ordinated international research efforts in electronic packaging and material selection. He is been a member of the Plasma Facing Component Group in the NET Team, preparing and monitoring research and development industry contracts within the European Fusion Programme.

Ivi Smid joined Penn State in January 2002 as associate professor in the Engineering Science & Mechanics Department. He has published more than 150 papers and technical reports in the areas of high-performance materials and composites, hardmetals, components and processing, and numerical modelling, plus many programme evaluations for government agencies. He is a member of: The American Society of Mechanical Engineers; The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society; The Professional Society for Powder Metallurgy; and the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Materialkunde.

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