Brigham Young University Academic Vice President John Tanner announced the appointment of Wynn C. Stirling as the new dean of Graduate Studies. "Professor Stirling brings a strong academic record to his new position as dean of Graduate Studies, as well as long experience on the Graduate Council," said Tanner. "The latter has given him broad understanding of graduate education at BYU. He is committed to BYU's mission of sponsoring graduate programs that are excellent in quality, though limited in number, and which serve to strengthen our undergraduate programs." Click here for more information.

BYU ECEn professor, Dr. David Long, is a co-author on a paper to be recognized as the IEEE Tranactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing Best Paper of the Year Award at the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium in South Africa in July. The paper is titled "Windsat Passive Microwave Polarimetric Signatures of the Greenland Ice Sheet" written by Li Li, Peter Gaiser, Mary R. Albert, David G. Long, and Elizabeth M. Twarog. The paper appeard in the Volume 46, No. 9, issue in Sept. 2008 on pp. 2622-2631. The paper describes polarimetric observations made from the Windsat satellite of the Greenland ice sheet.

Ph.D. student Stan Ness presented his research co-authored with Dr. Greg Nordin and Dr. Seunghyun Kim at a special symposium on MEMS and InkJet Applications during the Nanotech 2009 Conference held May 3-7, 2009 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas. The presentation was entitled "Deposition of Functionalizing Materials on Photonic Microcantilever Chemical/Biological Sensors using Inkjet Technology". It focused on how a high-tech inkjet printer can be used to place and immobilize proteins or other biological material on silicon substrates, in this case, a photonic microcantilever. The ability to immobilize proteins is of great interest to the sensor and biomedical communities since it forms the crucial link between inorganic sensors and organic analytes. The level of immobilization was qualitatively determined using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and fluorescent microscopy.