Prof. Yildiz Bayazitoglu earns high honor from ASME

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Prof. Yildiz Bayazitoglu from Rice University' has been awarded the 2004 Heat Transfer Memorial Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). She is the first woman ever and first Turkish person to win the prestigious honor, which has been bestowed to fewer than 90 people in the past 45 years.

Bayazitoglu, the Harry S. Cameron Professor in Mechanical Engineering, was recognized for contributions to fundamental radiative heat transfer, thermal effects in materials processing and microscale heat transfer; for leadership in engineering education; and for outstanding service to the heat transfer community.

The Heat Transfer Memorial Award honors outstanding teaching, research, practice and design in the field of heat transfer. The award was created in 1959 to honor pioneers in ASME's heat transfer division, which has about 5,000 primary members and another 5,000 secondary members worldwide. Fewer than 90 of the awards have been given in the past 45 years.

" I am very honored to receive this award, which has special meaning for me, in part because it comes directly from colleagues," said Bayazitoglu. "Peer recognition takes on a special importance because it suggests an insider's knowledge of that which is recognized and an appreciation of the challenges as well as successes.

"I am equally honored to receive the Heat Transfer Memorial Award because of the past winners," she added. "I recognize the distant winners as legends and the more recent ones as the colleagues for whom I have the greatest admiration."

A member of the Rice faculty since 1977, Bayazitoglu has authored more than 150 publications in technical journals and conference proceedings, and her undergraduate textbook, "Elements of Heat Transfer," has been translated into Korean. She has been a keynote and invited speaker, and she is a reviewer for several journals and government research funding agencies in the areas of heat transfer, fluid flow, radiation and energy. She is the co-editor in chief (Americas) of the International Journal of Thermal Sciences and associate editor of Thermal Science and Engineering. Bayazitoglu is a fellow of the ASME, a member of the Society of Women Engineers and the American Institute of Astronautics and Aeronautics.

Among the other honors Bayazitoglu has received are SWE National Distinguished Educator Award; Rice's George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching; the Hershel M. Rich Outstanding Invention Award; the Julia Mile Chance Prize for Excellence in Teaching; and the Faculty Teaching/Mentoring Award from the Graduate Student Association.

Bayazitoglu earned her bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the Middle East Technical University and her master's and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Prof. Bayazitoglu’s personal home page is at http://www.mems.rice.edu/bayazitoglu/