Message from the Chair
Chair & Professor
It has been my pleasure to have served as the department chair for the last eight years. I believe our department has improved significantly over this time. We have achieved an all time high in terms of faculty quality and student numbers. We have extremely dedicated and hard working faculty and staff and I am honored to have served as chair. I have announced that I will be stepping down as department chair as of November 16, 2012 to serve as an Associate Vice President in the Florida State University Provost Office. I will remain a faculty member in the department and will maintain my research efforts and graduate student supervision. I am expecting that I will be able to contribute to the University, the College of Engineering, and the Department in the areas of international programs, interdisciplinary research, and other aspects as required and needed by the Provost. Dr. John Collier will serve as Interim Department Chair while a faculty committee conducts an open search for a permanent replacement to start in the fall of 2013. The Department extends a great "thank you" to Dr. Collier for his service.
I believe the department will continue to develop through collaboration and interdisciplinary research and education and participation in some of the major efforts in a) materials and energy, b) medical sciences, and c) international programs. Florida State University has recently announced plans to strategically hire up to 8 new faculty members in the area of "materials for energy production, conversion, storage, and utilization". This is part of the president's "Big Idea" in energy and builds upon the strong efforts in energy and materials research in many of the programs at the university including the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, the Center for Advanced Power Systems, the new interdisciplinary PhD and MS program in materials and various departments including Chemistry and Biochemistry and all the engineering departments. Our department faculty members are strongly connected to the research and educational efforts in both energy and materials. Another "Big Idea" is the Institute for Successful Longevity where the biomedical engineering faculty in our department can contribute extensively. The successful implementation of our recent international agreement with the China University of Petroleum has already brought several outstanding students into our program and this program agreement is serving as a model for other departments at the university expand their international efforts.
We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Daniel Hallinan will be joining the Department as of mid-December 2012. He earned his PhD in chemical engineering from Drexel University and had postdoctoral training at the University of California and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His research interests are in the general areas of electrochemical engineering, polymers, and fuel cells. His work in the energy field is quite important to the overall thrusts into the field of energy at the University and the College of Engineering. The Department is also pleased to have Dr. Chang Samuel Hsu as an adjunct professor. Dr. Hsu holds a PhD in chemistry from the University of Kentucky and has over 30 years of experience in the petroleum industry where he worked at ExxonMobil and BP. He is teaching a petroleum engineering senior/graduate elective and has been instrumental in the Department establishing international agreements with the China University of Petroleum. His research in the chemical analysis of petroleum of fuels is widely recognized in the petroleum field.
Best Regards,
Dr. Bruce R. Locke
