Portonovo Ayyaswamy Receives the 2014 ASME/AICHE Max Jakob Memorial Award

Portonovo Ayyaswamy, Asa Whitney Professor of Dynamical Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, has been selected as the 2014 recipient of the Max Jakob Memorial Award for his "outstanding contributions to the science and art of heat and mass transfer." This award was established in 1961 by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Heat Transfer Division in honor of Max Jakob, a pioneer in the science of heat transmission, commemorating his outstanding contributions as a research worker, educator and author. In 1962, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) joined in the Award.

Dr. Ayyaswamy's research is in the area of mechanical engineering, with foci in modeling, simulations and experimentation of multi-phase flow/heat and mass transfer. Over the years, Dr. Ayyaswamy has contributed too many diverse areas of heat transfer, mass transfer, and fluid mechanics. These include investigations of finite sized bubble motion and the effects of surfactants in the context of gas embolism, forced convective effects on condensation, evaporation and combustion of moving drops and particles, the effect of electric fields on flames under normal and microgravity conditions, capillary flows related to heat pipes, buoyancy driven flows, and nano particle motion in the context of targeted drug delivery. He has also contributed to the containment safety and large scale safety of nuclear reactors.

"The Max Jakob award is considered to be ‘the Nobel Peace Prize in Heat Transfer,'" notes Eduardo Glandt, Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering. Preceding Dr. Ayyaswamy, two other Penn Engineering professors, Dr. Stuart W. Churchill (1979) and Dr. Benjamin Gebhart (1993) have also received the distinguished honor.

The award will be presented at the ASME 2015 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition in Houston, Texas, in November 2015. Jakob Award winners are required to present a lecture on a heat transfer related topic of their choosing at the conference. For further information regarding University of Pennsylvania's Mechanical Engineering department, please click on the following link: http://www.me.upenn.edu/