White House Names UB Professor As President Faculty Fellow

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Christina L. Bloebaum, Ph.D., assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University at Buffalo, has been named a Presidential Faculty Fellow.

The award, bestowed by President Clinton, recognizes the scholarly activities of the nation's most outstanding science and engineering faculty members. The program provides to each recipient a National Science Foundation grant of $100,000 a year for five years.

Bloebaum is one of only 30 scientists and engineers in the U.S. to receive the prestigious fellowship this year, and the second UB faculty member to receive one since the program's initiation in 1992.

Bloebaum conducts research in multidisciplinary design synthesis, concurrent engineering and artificial-intelligence applications in optimal design.

In these areas, she is working to develop new, more efficient and less costly techniques for design synthesis in complex, multidisciplinary environments, such as in aircraft and automotive design. One of her research projects involves the use of a method known as "genetic algorithms," in which approaches to the sequencing of design tasks imitate aspects of genetic processes in nature.

A faculty member since 1991, Bloebaum previously was a research assistant in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Mechanics and Engineering Science at the University of Florida and a NASA/American Society of Engineering Educators summer faculty fellow.

Bloebaum is a University Teaching Fellow and a recipient of the Riefler Award which recognizes outstanding junior faculty at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Her research has been funded by NASA Langley, NASA headquarters, the National Science Foundation, the Engineering Foundation and a seed funding program at UB.

She earned her doctoral, master's and undergraduate degrees at the University at Florida.

Bloebaum lives in Amherst.

The Presidential Faculty Fellow program is intended to foster developments in science and technology, increase the attractiveness of careers in science and engineering, recognize the interdependence of teaching and research in achieving excellence and highlight the importance of science and technology to the nation's future.

Nominees must go through several layers of reviews. Winners are selected by a White House review panel.