Three Cornell faculty members in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering recently have earned honors.

Albert R. George, the J.F. Carr Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is the 1997 recipient of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Aeroacoustics Award. John L. Lumley, the Willis H. Carrier Professor of Engineering, has been elected a Fellow of the AIAA. Kenneth E. Torrance, professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell, has been selected as recipient of the Mu Tau Sigma Excellence in Teaching Award for the summer of 1996.

The AIAA award to Albert R. George is presented for an outstanding technical or scientific achievement resulting from an individual's contribution to the field of aircraft community noise reduction. The AIAA is the largest professional technical society and information resource devoted to the progress of engineering and science in aviation and space.

George has been an outstanding contributor to the understanding, prediction and control of aircraft aeroacoustics noise beginning with his classic work on sonic boom in the late 1960s. As new branches of aeroacoustics opened, his research papers often were the first to be published, setting the standards in the field. His theories are widely used for the design of new products and for the analysis of research results, and his broad understanding of aeroacoustics has led him to become a widely sought-after lecturer on rotor noise at NASA.

The award, which consists of an engraved bronze medal, a certificate of citation and a rosette pin, will be presented at the AIAA/Confederation of European Aerospace Societies (CEAS) Third Joint Aeroacoustics Conference May 12-14 in Atlanta. The citation reads:

"For outstanding contributions to the understanding of aircraft and automotive noise mechanisms and their analysis, measurement and control."

George has been a member of the faculty of the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell since 1965. He served as director of the school from 1977-87 and has been director of the Center for Manufacturing Enterprise since 1993. In addition to his research activities, he has served as faculty adviser for a student team that designs and builds a formula race car for a competition sponsored each year by the Society of Automotive Engineers. The Cornell team won first place in this national competition in both 1992 and 1993, and has never finished lower than fourth place among the approximately 80 teams competing each year.

John L. Lumley, the Willis H. Carrier Professor of Engineering, has been elected a Fellow of the AIAA. Fellows are people of distinction who have made notable and valuable contributions to the arts, sciences or technology of aeronautics or astronautics. Lumley, who is internationally recognized for his work directed at understanding turbulent fluid motions, will be recognized in conjunction with the Global Air and Space '97 Conference in Arlington, Va., in May.

Lumley has received numerous national and international awards in recognition of his contributions to the understanding of the turbulent motions of fluids. He has received the 1982 Fluid and Plasma Dynamics Award of the AIAA and was the 1996 Dryden Research Lecturer of the Institute. He also is recipient of the 1993 Timoshenko Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

The citation of Lumley's fellow certificate reads:

"For pioneering research in turbulent fluid motion and for inspiring intellectual leadership in fluid mechanics and education."

Lumley has been a member of the faculty of the Sibley School since 1977. He is the author of almost 200 journal articles, four books, and two widely distributed educational movies on various topics in fluid mechanics. He was technical editor of several important Russian texts on turbulence and has served as associate editor or co-editor of the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics since 1976. Lumley also is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Kenneth E. Torrance, professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell, has been selected as recipient of the Mu Tau Sigma Excellence in Teaching Award for the summer of 1996. This is the sixth year that the award has been presented by Mu Tau Sigma, the engineering co-op honorary society. The award is based on student balloting in each summer's co-op classes in engineering at Cornell and consists of a plaque that was presented to Torrance, the addition of Torrance's name to the plaque that hangs in the co-op office and a $500 honorarium.

Torrance has been a member of the Sibley School Faculty since 1968, and was associate dean of the College of Engineering from 1983-86. He is an active contributor to the research programs in computer graphics and electronic packaging, and was honored as recipient of the 1994 Computer Graphics Achievement Award of ACM SIGGRAPH for his contributions in the field of radiosity and physically based reflectance models that are becoming the standard for computer generation of realistic images of natural scenes. A paper written by Torrance, jointly with graduate students Tim Fisher and Kamal Sitka, was named the best paper presented at the Inter-Society Conference on Thermal Phenomena in Electronic Systems (I-Therm) conference last May. Torrance is a Fellow of the ASME.

Torrance is known as a dedicated teacher who works hard to ensure the students in his classes understand the material.

Student comments in last summer's balloting refer to him as "one of the best professors I've had at Cornell" and praise him for the extra effort he put in coaching and coaxing the students to perform at the highest levels of which they are capable.