Professor Joseph Heremans Elected to National Academy of Engineering

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The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has today announced its newest class of members and among them is Professor Joseph Heremans, a faculty member of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. The citation for his election states that he was chosen for his discoveries in thermal energy transfer and conversion to electricity, and for the commercial devices employed in automobiles.

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions that may be accorded to an individual engineer during their lifetime. Professor Ahmet Selamet, Chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, shared his delight in the NAE's announcement, "This is a tremendous honor for Professor Heremans, our department, the college, and the university. We are proud of him and his accomplishments."

Membership to the National Academy of Engineering honors those who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering research, practice, or education, including engineering literature," and to the "pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education." For the past several years, Heremans and his fellow researchers have been investigating thermopower, spin thermal effects and the possibility of a thermoelectric "heat engine" – one with no moving parts and the potential to be infinitely reliable. Their research was published in the July 12, 2012 issue of Nature, the international weekly journal of science.

Professor Heremans, who is also an Ohio Eminent Scholar, is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Sciences and the American Physical Society; he also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Physics at The Ohio State University.

A complete list of the newly elected members and foreign associates, with their primary affiliations at the time of election and a brief statement of their principal engineering accomplishments, can be found at www.nae.edu.

About Heremans' Research
Dr. Heremans directs the Thermal Materials Laboratory at Ohio State and his research is focused on thermal transport properties of solids and nanostructures, aimed at developing thermoelectric materials with improved efficiency for both electrical power generation and heat pumping applications. A decade of research in his group and others has led to improved efficiencies through an increase in the power the devices produce for a given amount of heat input. The latter was obtained by using a carefully designed resonance between electronic levels of specific impurities alloyed into the material. In February 2010, Heremans was 
named Inventor of the Year at the TechColumbus Innovation Awards. Recently, with his colaborators, he explored the effects of heat on spins, opening the way to possible new solid-state heat conversion technology.

 

 

 
 
 
 
Category: Faculty