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July 11, 2005 Volume 30, Issue 1 |
German is new CAVS director
An award-winning mechanical engineer and materials scientist at Pennsylvania State University is the new director of Mississippi State’s Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems.
Dr. Randall German, who officially assumed his new duties at CAVS July 1, also will hold one of three CAVS endowed chairs in the Bagley College of Engineering. He begins his new duties full time in October.
“Dr. Rand German is an internationally recognized faculty member who will bring a tremendous amount of passion and vision as the next director of CAVS,” said Bagley College Dean Kirk Schulz. “We are very fortunate to be able to recruit a person of his caliber to join the engineering faculty.”
German succeeds CAVS director J. Donald Trotter, also MSU associate vice president for strategic initiatives, who retired June 30. Trotter has led CAVS since the center was created by the Legislature in 2001 to provide research and development support for Canton-based Nissan Motor Co. and help lure other automotive industries to the state.
“We are delighted that Rand German will be joining the excellent team at CAVS,” said Colin Scanes, MSU’s vice president for research. “Rand has an outstanding international reputation. He will be invaluable in moving vehicle manufacturing in Mississippi to the next level, with a consequent increase in high-wage jobs.”
The Brush Chair Professor in Materials in Penn State’s department of engineering science and mechanics since 1991, German also has served since 1999 as director of the university’s Center for Innovative Sintered Products at University Park, Pa. Penn State recently was recognized as the most dominant university in the field of material science internationally by the Institute for Scientific Information.
German is listed in various issues of Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Engineering and Who’s Who in American Education. He has received more than 20 national and international awards over the past 20 years of his career.
“This is an outstanding growth opportunity for me—allowing a marriage of my prior emphasis on materials processing with the CAVS strength in computational and systems engineering,” German said. “Such a combination is relevant today since more than 35 percent of all National Science Foundation funding is for computational modeling.”
German earned a bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from San Jose State University in 1968, a master’s in metallurgical engineering from Ohio State University in 1971, and a doctorate in materials science from the University of California at Davis in 1975. He also completed an intense management program at the Hartford Graduate Center in 1979.