Congratulations to Mr. Daniel Vilceus who has been awarded a Bridge to the Doctorate Fellowship by the National Science Foundation. As a winner of this prestigious award, he will receive a stipend of $30,000 per year of graduate study, plus graduate tuition and fees for up to five years of study. Mr. Vilceus completed his M.S. degree at USF and will begin graduate study at IMG in the fall under Dr. Mark Sheplak.

Steve Horowitz (Ph.D. 2005) has recently accepted a position as Senior Sensors Engineer at Miltec, Inc. in Huntsville, AL.  He will be leaving IMG to begin work at Miltec by the end of August.

Zheng Xia will be defending his dissertation, "Microfluidic Mixing and Its Use in Lab-On-Chip Devices" on Friday, July 18th at 2:00pm in 221 MAE-A. All are welcome to attend.

Congratulations to Sivam Masilamani for successfully defending his Master's thesis, "Design, Fabrication and Characterization of a Micromachined Heat Exchanger Platform for Thermoelectric Power Generation." He will graduate this summer and will be taking a job at Intel.

Lei Wu will be defending his dissertation proposal, entitled "MEMS-based Micromirror/lens Scanners with Low Voltage, Large Scanning Range and Their Applications", in Larsen 234 at 3:00 pm Friday, June 20th. All are welcome and refreshments will be served.

Congratulations to Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professors Mark Sheplak, Lou Cattafesta, and Hugh Fan. Professors Sheplak and Cattafesta were recently promoted to the rank of Full Professor while Dr. Fan was awarded tenure. Promotion and tenure are critically important milestones in faculty careers. IMG extends its warmest congratulations to our colleagues/advisors!

Congratulations are in order for both Brian Homeijer and Naigang Wang, who both recently passed their dissertation proposal defenses. Brian presented his topic, "Design, Fabrication and Characterization of a MEMS piezoresistive Microphone for use in Aeroacoustic Measurements." Naigang's topic was "Fabrication and Integration of Microscale Permanent Magnets in Magnetic MEMS."

IMG undergraduate researcher Randy Gruby is one of several UF students featured on the UF College of Engineering website as a part of their rotating "spotlight" feature. You can read a brief article about Randy's work here.

Last night, the first IMG Spring Social was held at Mr. Han's Restaurant. The social was generously sponsored by Dr. Sheplak and organized by Alina Soderholm and Janhavi Agashe, with help from several other students. The social featured dinner, an awards ceremony ("MEMSees Awards"), an IMG "homecoming court," and karaoke. Thanks to everyone for attending and for your ongoing work as members of IMG.

Brian will present his thesis proposal, "Design, fabrication and characterization of a MEMS piezoresistive microphone for use in aeroacoustic measurements" in LAR234 on Thursday, 5/1 beginning at 11:30 am.