ASPE is very pleased to award the Graham Siddall Scholarship to Yaoke Wang, Northwestern University (Dr. Ping Guo, advisor). Yaoke’s paper entitled Optical Simulation of Hierarchical Surface Structure Design for Structural Coloration was accepted for a poster presentation on Thursday, October 13 at 3:30 PM. This prestigious award is valued at $2,500 and will support Yaoke in the form of conference and tutorial fees and a stipend to cover the travel costs to the 37th Annual Meeting in Bellevue, Washington. Congratulations Yaoke!

ASPE is also pleased to award the R. V. Jones Scholarship to Barbara Groh, The University of Texas – Austin (Dr. Michael Cullinan, advisor). Barbara’s paper entitled Functional Analysis of a Polariscope Tool for the Evaluation of Strain in Roll-to-Roll Nanofabrication was accepted for a poster presentation on Wednesday, October 12 at 1:30 PM. The R. V. Jones award is valued at $2,000 and will support Barbara in the form of conference and tutorial fees and a stipend to cover the travel costs to the 37th Annual Meeting in Bellevue, Washington. Congratulations Barbara!

Congratulations to Mallory Whalen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Dr. Mark Schattenburg, advisor) for winning one of the ASPE Student Scholarships. Mallory’s paper entitled High-Precision Stress Measurement in Thin Films has been accepted for a poster presentation on Thursday, October 13 at 3:30 PM. The ASPE Student Scholarship will support Mallory by waiving the registration and four tutorial fees.

Congratulations to Aaron Liao, The University of Texas – Austin (Dr. Michael Cullinan, advisor) for winning one of the ASPE Student Scholarships. Aaron’s paper entitled Development of a Meniscus Dragging Coating Approach for Microscale Selective Laser Sintering has been accepted for a poster presentation on Wednesday, October 12 at 1:30 PM. The ASPE Student Scholarship will support Aaron by waiving the registration and four tutorial fees.

The Graham Siddall Scholarship is funded by a ten-year endowment from Graham J. Siddall. The scholarship recognizes a student scholar in the field of precision engineering. 

Both the RV Jones Scholarship and the ASPE Student Scholarships are possible through the generous support from Mark A. Stocker, Stephen J. Ludwick, Don L. Martin, Corning, Inc., and many ASPE members who have donated to the Scholarship Fund.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Piet van Rens
Piet C.J. van Rens received a M.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1980 from the Technical University in Eindhoven. He studied mechanical engineering with Prof. Ir. Wim van der Hoek and was for several years his assistant at Philips CFT. During this time he worked at the Laboratory of Space Research in Utrecht for 3 years, and then for 24 years at Philips. Piet has had a long history in the practice of precision engineering working at the highest levels of precision in applications such as lithography and electron microscopy. He has also taught many generations of precision engineers both formally and informally, including six years at the Technical University in Delft on a part-time basis for six years, alongside 30 years of teaching for the Mikrocentrum in Eindhoven. More recently, for the last ten years Piet has been a practicing independent engineer, predominantly working for Settels Savenije Group of Companies and their customers such as ASML, in all manner of high precision technology applications.
Piet’s contributions stretch back over four decades with contributions to The Devil’s Printbook (desDuivels Prentenboek), one of the foundational books in Dutch precision engineering. Piet is one of the pillars of the Dutch precision engineering community and an extremely gifted practitioner of the art of precision engineering. His contributions can be found in many current ultra-high precision machines in use today.

Piet has had a long history with ASPE where he has imparted much of his hard earned knowledge and experience through extremely well-received tutorials in the ASPE tutorial program.

Distinguished Service Award

Bradley H. Jared
Bradley Jared has a long record of service to the ASPE and has established a reputation as a valuable thought leader who always finds a way to make himself available to assist the Society. He has been a continuous member since 1997, and has served on the planning committees for over two dozen conferences – including chairing the 2011 Annual Meeting. Bradley chaired the Nominating Committee with a seat on the Board of Directors from 2011 through 2013, and was recently elected to a second term on the Board as a Director at Large. Bradley earned his doctorate degree from North Carolina State University, has held positions at Corning, 3M, and Sandia National Laboratories, and presently is an Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

College of Fellows

Eric R. Marsh
Eric Marsh is an expert in machine tool dynamics and spindle metrology. He is both a gifted teacher and a pioneer in the field of axis of rotation metrology who takes particular effort to see his work transferred to the industrial sector. Eric has taught multiple tutorials at ASPE and published the de facto standard text on axis of rotation metrology. He is perhaps best known by virtue of his many past students who as a result of his mentorship have gone on to highly-productive careers themselves within the precision engineering community. Following a long and distinguished career as a professor of mechanical engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, Eric has recently moved into industry full-time with a new position at KLA. Eric earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

College of Fellows

Jeffrey W. Roblee
Jeff Roblee is an accomplished technical leader with over forty years of experience in the design, development, and qualification of diamond turning, milling, and grinding machines used in the manufacturing of optical and high-precision surfaces. He is presently the Division Vice President of Technology at Ametek-Precitech where he is responsible for technology development and applications support for Precitech’s ultra-precision multi-axis diamond turning, grinding, grooving, and milling machines. Jeff began his career as a Systems Engineer in the Large Optics Diamond Turning Group at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and proceeded to technical and managerial positions at Carl Zeiss and Polaroid before ultimately joining Precitech in 2002. He holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley with a dissertation on the design of externally-pressurized gas bearings. Jeff continues to develop and share technical findings related to all aspects of ultraprecision optical fabrication.

Early Career Award

Brandon D. Chalifoux
Brandon Chalifoux is an Assistant Professor in the Wyant College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona where he directs the Lightweight Optics Laboratory. He earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2019 with a dissertation on the figure correction of thin plate and shell substrates using stress generated by ion implantation. Brandon’s general research interests are in establishing techniques for the precision fabrication, mounting, and alignment of lightweight optics. One notable application of these optics are in space telescopes, and particularly in x-ray telescopes, but the techniques extend to novel micro-optical mechanical resonators in glass and glass-ceramics with additional applications in inertial sensing and biomedical technologies. Most notably, Brandon is first and foremost a selfless teacher and colleague with a dedication to educating students and building professional networks that strengthen our precision engineering community.

Early Career Award

Marijn Nijenhuis
Marijn Nijenhuis is an Assistant Professor in the Precision Engineering group at the University of Twente, where he earned his doctorate in 2019 with a specialization in the analysis of spatial flexure mechanisms. At this early stage in his career, he has already published eleven manuscripts representing substantial contributions in flexure mechanism analysis and in the implementation of flexure-based precision motion control systems. His thesis clearly and concisely provides a complete analysis of the linear solutions for small displacements and rotations of three-dimensional flexure elements, but also includes the non-linear analysis necessary for longer-range motions. These were realized in the design of a three-dimensional spherical flexure joint and its integration into a large-stroke flexure-based hexapod. Marijn has further worked to share and disseminate his findings throughout the precision engineering community through an accessible web-based package for flexure design and by preparing materials for an ASPE tutorial.