News of Note From Pitt

• Chemical Engineering Professor Eric Beckman Wins Edison Awards Gold Medal

• Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Radisav Vidic Receives Grand Prize for Water Reuse Project

• Librarian Haihui Zhang Edits Review of Chinese Studies in North America

PITTSBURGH—Behind the larger stories about the University of Pittsburgh are other stories of faculty, staff, and student achievement as well as information on Pitt programs reaching new levels of success. The following is a compilation of some of those stories. 

Chemical Engineering Professor Eric Beckman Wins Edison Awards Gold Medal
Eric J. Beckman, George M. Bevier Professor of Engineering and codirector of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation within the Swanson School of Engineering, has won an Edison Awards 2013 Gold Medal in the category of Surgical Aids for his work with TissuGlu® Surgical Adhesive. The award, which recognizes excellence in new product and service development, marketing, and design and innovation, was announced April 26.

Beckman is cofounder of and equity holder in Cohera Medical, the developer of TissuGlu®—a product designed to reduce the need for surgical drains in plastic surgery procedures. It is resorbable, biocompatible for internal use, and forms a strong bond between tissues. Beckman’s research encompasses two major areas: the use of carbon dioxide as either a solvent or raw material, and polymer chemistry and processing.

Sponsors of the 2013 Edison Awards included Discovery Communications, McAndrews Held & Malloy, Nielsen, Science Channel, and USA Today. 

Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Radisav Vidic Receives Grand Prize for Water Reuse Project
Radisav Vidic, William Kepler Whiteford Professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering within the Swanson School of Engineering, has received the 2013 Grand Prize in University Research in Environmental Engineering and Science from the American Academy of Environmental Scientists and Engineers. He shares this recognition with Carnegie Mellon University’s David A. Dzombak, the Walter J. Blenko, Sr., University Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Vidic specializes in environmental engineering, including physical chemical processes for water, wastewater, and hazardous waste, as well as water treatment adsorption technologies. Vidic and Dzombak’s winning project, “Use of Treated Municipal Wastewater as Power Plant Cooling System Makeup Water," addresses the global shortage of usable water in power plant cooling systems. Visit http://www.waterreuse.pitt.edu for more information on their research. 

Librarian Haihui Zhang Edits Review of Chinese Studies in North America
Haihui Zhang, Chinese studies librarian in the University of Pittsburgh’s University Library System, has coedited A Scholarly Review of Chinese Studies in North America (Association for Asian Studies, 2013), which provides introductory essays on, and extensive references for, 21 major subfields in the area of Chinese studies, including economic history, Chinese music, and the literature of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The volume includes contributions from Pitt University Professor of History Evelyn S. Rawski and Professor of Economics and History Thomas G. Rawski. The review is available as a free, downloadable e-book in both English and Chinese. Visit http://www.asian-studies.org/publications/Chinese-Studies.htm to download the English version of the book. 

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6/3/13/mab/cjhm

Written by Melissa Carlson and Adam Reger