Endowed Chair

The following endowed chair election was approved by the Cornell Board of Trustees at its meeting in May of this year.

Donald L. Bartel, a professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, has been elected the Willis H. Carrier Professor in Engineering, effective July 1, 2002.

His research is generally concerned with the mechanics of the musculo-skeletal system, with special emphasis on the analysis and design of bone-implant systems, including total-joint replacements. His work also concerns the development of design criteria for total joint replacements. He currently is involved in research to determine the relative influence of design variables, patient variables and surgical variables on the performance of total joint replacements.

Bartel holds a joint appointment as a professor at the Cornell College of Engineering and as a senior scientist in the Laboratory of Biomedical Mechanics and Materials of the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan.

After studying mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois, Bartel taught engineering, mathematics and physics at Black Hawk Junior College in Moline, Ill., for two years before beginning doctoral studies in mechanics and hydraulics at the University of Iowa. He joined the Cornell faculty in 1969.

Bartel was a Guggenheim Fellow as a visiting scientist in the Department of Orthopaedics at the Mayo Clinic in 1976-1977 and, as a member of the Orthpaedic Research Society, won the prestigious Ann Vaughn Donor Kappa Delta Society Award for research in orthopedics in 1989. He has been named an Outstanding Alumnus of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. In addition he is one of few engineers who are members of the American Academy of Orthpaedic Surgeons, the Hip Society and the Knee Society.

Bartel also has been recognized for his teaching, receiving the Cornell College of Engineering Excellence in Teaching Award in 1995 and 1999 and, on five occasions, being named a most influential professor by Cornell Merrill Presidential Scholars.