By Larry Bernard
Two Cornell faculty members have been elected to the National Academy of Engi neering, one of the nation's highest engineering honors.
Francis C. Moon, the Joseph C. Ford Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering, and James S. Thorp, the Charles N. Mellowes Professor in Engi
neering and director of the School of Electrical Engineering, were among 78 engi
neers elected to the academy on Feb. 15. Academy membership honors those who
have made "important contributions to engineering theory and practice" and those
who have demonstrated "unusual accomplishment in the pioneering of new and
developing fields of technology."
Moon was elected "for experimental research in chaotic and nonlinear dynamics and development of superconducting levitation devices," according to the academy. Thorp was recognized "for contributions to the development of digital techniques for power system protection, monitoring and control."
Moon, whose research focuses on chaos in mechanical systems, superconducting levitation, control of robotic structures and dynamics of materials processing, has been at Cornell since 1975. He was chairman of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics for seven years and was director of the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from 1987 to 1992.
His four books and more than 100 technical papers span a wide spectrum of prob lems in dynamics, including chaotic dynamics, space structures and robotics, su perconducting bearings and magnetic levitation of vehicles.
In 1988 he was awarded a Humboldt prize and spent six months on sabbatical leave doing research in Germany. Moon earned a bachelor's degree in 1962 from the Pratt Institute, and a master's degree in 1964 and a Ph.D. in 1966, both from Cornell.
Thorp has been at Cornell since 1962. He has been director of the School of Electrical Engineering since 1994. In 1976, he was a faculty intern at the American Electric Power Service Corp. He was an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems from 1985 to 1987. In 1988, he was an overseas fellow at Churchill College, Cam bridge, England. He is a member of the IEEE Power System Relaying Committee and CIGRE (the French acronym for the International Conference on Large High Voltage Electric Systems).
His current research concerns the protection and control of large-scale power systems, including algorithms for digital protection, adaptive relaying and real-time control of power systems using measurements obtained from microprocessor relays and GPS sys tems. He also studies the complicated dynamical behavior of power systems, includ ing the generation of fractals by such systems.
He has written more than 100 research papers and a book. Thorp earned a bachelor's degree in 1959 and a doctorate in 1962, both in electrical engineering at Cornell.