Recognition and thanks for the contributions of five of our faculty members
The world knows that on April 16 Virginia Tech was the scene of “horror so unspeakable and unimaginable that, even now, our minds cannot fully grasp it,” to quote President Charles Steger. We lost students and faculty members. If you have not read about them already, we recommend the remembrance site, which has lovely articles, photos, and the memorial Issue of Virginia Tech Magazine with the rest of President Steger’s message.
Here, in the Virginia Tech Research magazine, we would like to tell you just a very little bit more about the research and creative work of the five faculty members we lost — just a hint of their contributions to our lives and the future.
Christopher James (Jamie) Bishop | Jocelyne Couture-Nowak
Kevin Granata | Liviu Librescu | G.V. Loganathan
Christopher James (Jamie) Bishop, instructor, joined the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures in 2005. Although his courses were legendarily rigorous, “Herr Bishop” was popular with students, as he provided whatever individual attention they needed to succeed. As an instructor for the Faculty Development Institute, he helped other faculty members master new technology.
After graduating from the University of Georgia (UGA) with a bachelor’s degree in German studies, Bishop attended the Christian- Albrechts-University in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar, and then earned a master’s degree in German linguistics from UGA. He loved languages and also studied Italian, French, Spanish, and Java.
While a faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he created technologies and software that help students learn languages.
Meanwhile, Bishop was a prolific artist. His art vibrantly captures the intensity with which he viewed the world and the beauty he found there. He leaves us with an extensive gallery of photos, multimedia projects, science fiction art, graphic designs for book covers, and computer-generated images on his website — www.memory39.com. He considered his book covers for his father’s books to be some of his best work. Bishop had planned to enter the B.F.A. program at Virginia Tech in summer 2007 to study graphic art.
Michael Bishop writes of his son, “He spoke German like a native, understood computers inside out, played drums in a basement band, bicycled and hiked ... and made friends everywhere.” The message from Michael Bishop is posted here: www.michaelbishop-writer.com/.
A proud French-Canadian, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, adjunct professor in foreign languages, has left a lasting legacy as a result of her passions for teaching and speaking French.
She was born in Montreal and lived both in Quebec and Nova Scotia before moving to Blacksburg. An interest in working with children resulted in education degrees from Nova Scotia Teachers College in Truro and St. Mary’s University in Halifax.
Couture-Nowak taught French at Nova Scotia Agricultural College and worried that her two daughters would lose their mother tongue as they grew older. With two other parents, Couture-Nowak was instrumental in establishing the École acadienne de Truro (http://eat.ednet.ns.ca/), the first French language public school for central Nova Scotia. Coutre-Nowak’s youngest daughter, Sylvie, was one of its first students.
Operated by the Conseil scolaire acadien provincial, the École acadienne de Truro has grown from 36 students in 1997 to 118 students in grades Primary through 10. The school’s first class of seniors graduated in 2006.
Coutre-Nowak’s family, friends, students, and colleagues will remember her community spirit, her love of nature, and her dedication to the preservation of her francophone heritage.
During his career, engineering science and mechanics Professor Kevin Granata was hailed by experts in the field of biomechanics as one of the top researchers in the nation for his studies of movement dynamics in cerebral palsy and in human trunk stability.
After earning his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at Ohio State University, where he began studying the causes and prevention of back injuries, he was recruited by the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Virginia to direct research in the Motion Analysis and Motor Performance Laboratory. His interest in human motion and injury prevention led to studies of the spastic gait of children with cerebral palsy, research that has helped foster further work in potential treatments.
Soon after joining the Virginia Tech engineering science and mechanics faculty in 2003, Granata established a top-flight research facility that he co-directed with Associate Professor Michael Madigan. It has recently been renamed the Kevin P. Granata Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Laboratory.
Among Granata’s projects at Virginia Tech were a study of the influences of fatigue and gender on low-back stability and pain, funded by the National Institutes of Health; research into the effects of physical conditioning programs on the stability of the lumbar spine, supported by the Centers for Disease Control’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH); and a NIOSH-funded study of certain potential lower back injuries at industrial work sites.
As a child living in a Jewish ghetto in Romania during World War II, Liviu Librescu decided to become an engineer. Surviving the Holocaust, he graduated from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest School of Aerospace Engineering and completed a Ph.D. at the Institute of Fluid Mechanics of the Academy of Science of Romania.
He later immigrated to Israel to escape the communist rule that had taken over his homeland. He taught for seven years at Tel-Aviv University before joining the Virginia Tech engineering science and mechanics faculty in 1986.
Through his research in aeroelasticity, thermal stresses, and the behavior of composite structures under complex mechanical loads, Librescu made crucial contributions to the design of aircraft that operate at supersonic and hypersonic speeds, as well as to the design of high-performance aerospace engines. For example, he developed comprehensive theories that predict the load carrying capacity of flight vehicles exposed to severe environmental conditions.
He published more journal articles and conference papers than almost anyone else in his field. He published four books, his last one being Thin-Walled Composite Beams: Theory and Application, published in 2005.
The roster of honors recognizing Librescu’s achievements is lengthy, including his selection as a member of the Board of Experts of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Scientific Research; election as the Foreign Fellow of the Academy of Engineering of Armenia and as an Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Shipbuilding of the Ukraine; Laureate of the prize “Traian Vuia” of the Romanian Academy of Science; an honorary doctorate with the title Doctor Honors Causa from the Polytechnic of Bucharest; and appointment as chairman of the Fifth International Congress on Thermal Stresses, held in Blacksburg in 2003. He was also proud of having received the 1999 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research in the College of Engineering and the Frank J. Maher Award for Excellence in Engineering Education in 2005.
At the time of his death, Librescu had just received an Air Force Office of Scientific Research grant to study advanced composite structures for aircraft.
For 25 years, civil and environmental engineering Professor G.V. Loganathan put his impressive intellect to work for people, investigating and solving water resources systems and surface water hydrology problems, not only in Virginia and throughout the U.S., but in other countries as well.
After completing bachelor’s and master’s degrees in his native India and a doctorate at Purdue University, he made Virginia Tech his home base for research that spanned a remarkable range of topics, including the design and rehabilitation of water distribution systems, radar hydrology, storm water management, geostatistics, and environmental systems optimization. He was sought out by municipal, state, national, and international agencies and organizations in need of his expertise.
One recent project — funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and published in the Journal of Global Optimization — involved assessing the water resources potential of several African nations. At the time of his death, Loganathan was working with Virginia Tech civil and environmental engineering colleagues Andrea Dietrich and Marc Edwards on a $1.64 million National Science Foundation (NSF) project for solving widespread problems related to the effects of corrosion on drinking water quality and infrastructure.
Another of Loganathan’s major research interests during the past few years was engineering education. Widely renowned and honored by both his university and profession for his contributions as a teacher, he had devoted much of his time since 2003 as a key investigator on two NSF projects aimed at improving methods of educating undergraduate students in the College of Engineering.