Cipolla Elected Honorary Member of the ASME
John W. Cipolla, College of Engineering Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Northeastern University, has been elected an honorary member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He was one of only three people elected in 2017.
“Being elected to Honorary Membership in ASME is a singular honor and I am deeply grateful to my colleagues who made it possible. In particular I am indebted to all my colleagues in the MIE department and in the College of Engineering for their support and friendship over my career at Northeastern and to my MIE colleague, Yiannis Levendis, for preparing the nomination for this award.”
~ John W. Cipolla
COE Distinguished Professor Emeritus
According to the ASME, an honorary member is a person who has made “distinctive contributions” to engineering, science, industry, research, public service, or other pursuits allied with and beneficial to the engineering profession. Cipolla was elected for “his distinguished contributions to the profession of mechanical engineering that expanded the scientific knowledge in thermo-fluids, emphasized mathematics-based education, and enhanced the value of the ASME through dedicated service to the Center of Education and the Committee on Honors.”
Cipolla joined Northeastern’s mechanical engineering faculty in 1971, and his research has been in the areas of the kinetic theory of gases and plasmas, radiative transfer and aerosol mechanics. He was appointed chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 1991, implemented the merger with the Department of Industrial Engineering in 1995, and served as chair of the combined department until 2003, when he was appointed vice provost for Graduate Education. He returned to the full-time teaching faculty in mechanical engineering in 2004, and retired in December 2016.
Cipolla was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 1991, and has been recognized with several ASME awards, including the Dedicated Service Award in 2011 and the Edwin F. Church Medal in 2014 for distinguished contributions to mechanical engineering education. He served as a member and chair of the ASME Department Heads Committee as well as the ASME Committee on Engineering Accreditation. Additionally, he served for ten years as a member of the ASME Committee on Honors, including two years as its chair, and also represented ASME as a program evaluator for the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and as a member of the ABET Board of Directors.
About ASME
ASME is a not-for-profit membership organization that enables collaboration, knowledge sharing, career enrichment, and skills development across all engineering disciplines, toward a goal of helping the global engineering community develop solutions to benefit lives and livelihoods. Founded in 1880 by a small group of leading industrialists, ASME has grown through the decades to include more than 130,000 members in 151 countries.