Kenneth Goodson, Bosch Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering, Elected to AAAS

Kenneth Goodson, Professor and Bosch Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering, is being named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for "his distinguished contributions in the thermal sciences, particularly for the advancement of heat transfer research in electronic nanostructures and packaging."

Fellows are nominated and selected by their scientific peers. In her letter of nomination, Cristina Amon, dean of applied science and engineering at the University of Toronto, cited the crucial relevance of Goodson's research to the electronics industry, which must reconcile the differential heating and cooling rates of components in order to insure overall system reliability.

"Professor Goodson, along with many of his PhD graduates, has developed a unique style of thermal management research . . . which manages to address fundamental concepts while achieving direct impact on semiconductor companies," Amon wrote.

She described Goodson as "a committed mentor to junior faculty and a devoted contributor to engineering education." Of the 38 PhD graduates Goodson has supervised, 14 are professors at top-ranked schools including MIT, UC Berkeley, Stanford, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, University of Michigan, UCLA and Purdue, while others pursue research at companies such as IBM, Intel and Exxon-Mobile.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is the world’s largest general scientific society. The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874. Goodson is also a Fellow with both ASME and IEEE, the primary societies in mechanical & electrical engineering.