UB School of Engineering And Applied Sciences Appoints Two New Department Chairs

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has announced the appointments of Christina L. Bloebaum, Ph.D., as the chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Pao Lo Liu, Ph.D., as chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering.

A UB faculty member since 1991, Bloebaum conducts research in multidisciplinary design optimization, the field of engineering concerned with making complex, large-scale design more efficient and less costly.

In 1995, she was named a Presidential Faculty Fellow, an award bestowed by President Clinton to recognize the scholarly activities of the nation's most outstanding science and engineering faculty members. She was one of only 30 in the U.S. to be so honored that year. The award came with a five-year, $500,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation.

Bloebaum has earned the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, a University Teaching Fellowship from UB and the Riefler Award, which honors outstanding junior faculty in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

She has been a consultant, a visiting scientist and a summer faculty fellow at the NASA Langley Research Center.

She served as technical chair and organizer for the 1996 Symposium on Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization and is general chair and organizer for the Third World Congress of Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, to be held at UB next spring.

Bloebaum earned bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Florida.

She is a resident of Amherst.

A UB faculty member at UB since 1984, Liu conducts research on photonic materials and devices, specifically computer-aided design tools and ultra-high-speed switching phenomena.

Recently, in collaboration with scientists in the Naval Research Laboratory, he demonstrated an optical signal processing system that can dynamically control the phase-array antenna.

In 1985, he was a recipient of the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award.

He serves as associate editor of Photonics Technology Letters and is a member of the Optical Society of America.

Liu has been awarded two patents and authored a book chapter.

He has given numerous conference presentations and published many scientific papers.

Before coming to UB, Liu was a member of the technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories. He also has been a consultant to Bell Communications Research, E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. and Eastman Kodak, among others.

A graduate of National Taiwan University, he earned master's and doctoral degrees in applied physics from Harvard University.

Liu lives in East Amherst.