Distinguished careers celebrated with honorary doctorates

News, Slideshow — By Greta Harrison on December 19, 2011 5:12 pm

The Melbourne School of Engineering has recognised the outstanding careers of leading engineers, Professor Alexander Smits, Associate Professor James Patrick and Professor David Boger, awarding them honorary doctorates for 2011.

Professor Alexander Smits was presented with a Doctor of Engineering (honoris causa) in recognition of his world-leading research in the field of Fluid Dynamics. Professor Smits graduated with a BE (Mech) 1970 and a PhD, 1975, from the University of Melbourne.

He moved to Princeton University in 1981 and is currently the Eugene Higgins Professor of Engineering at Princeton and the Chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He is known for his pioneering work in the fields of high Reynolds number turbulence, supersonics and hypersonic flows. He conceived and constructed the world famous Superpipe and High Reynolds Number Test facilities at Princeton. These facilities, combined with the novel measurement techniques developed by Prof. Smits’ group, have revolutionised our understanding of high Reynolds wall turbulence.

Professor Smits has maintained strong collaborative links with the University of Melbourne, and has been an Honorary Professorial Fellow since 2009.

Associate Professor James Patrick was honoured for his pioneering work as a world authority on cochlear implants. Professor Patrick worked with Professor Graeme Clark, developing the multi-channel cochlear implant, culminating in the first human implantation in Melbourne in 1978. Professor Patrick developed the elector-mechanical structure of the prototype University of Melbourne (UMDOLEE) implant, and played a leading role in the development of the commercial medical implant.

His range of current roles include Associate Professor within the Department of Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne and Honorary Special Research Fellow at the Bionics Institute.

Emeritus Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, David Boger was also recognised with a Doctor of Engineering (honoris causa).

Professor Boger is world-renowned for his discovery of constant viscosity elastic liquids (Boger fluids). Water flows consistently and predictably but as particles are added to water it changes from a Newtonian fluid to a non-Newtonian fluid and its flow becomes unpredictable. To understand how non-Newtonian fluids behave he synthesised “perfect non-Newtonian” fluids, which are elastic but have constant viscosity.

Professor Boger is a Fellow of The Royal Society. He was one of three inaugural Laureate Professors at the University of Melbourne. His work has been recognised with many awards, including the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science and the Victoria Prize.

Meanwhile, recently-appointed NICTA researcher and world expert in constraint programming, Professor Pascal Van Hentenryck, has been awarded a Doctor of Engineering (honoris causa) from The University of Nantes.

Professor Van Hentenryck, one of the world’s most highly cited researchers in Computer Science, commences his tenure at NICTA and the Melbourne School of Engineering in January 2012.

The Melbourne School of Engineering congratulates all the recipients of the Doctor of Engineering (honoris causa) and thanks them for their groundbreaking contributions to engineering research.

 

Tags: Alumni, biomedical engineering, chemical and biomolecular engineering, mechanical engineering, MSE, research