Prof. Romel. D. Gomez received the Department’s George Corcoran Award for the 1997-98 academic year. This faculty award is presented for significant contributions to electrical engineering education, campus leadership, contributions at the national level, and creative and other scholarly activities.

Gomez, who joined the Department in 1996, received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Maryland in 1990. His research focuses on information storage technology and the fundamental nanoscopic properties of magnetic thin films. He is engaged in the development of scanned probe magnetic microscopy to understand the physics of magnetism at reduced dimensions, as well as the development of new magnetic devices that utilize the novel properties of magnetic films at the nanometer length scales. With more than 30 authored papers and U.S. Patents on these and other related subjects, Gomez also serves as editor for IEEE Transactions on Magnetics.

Profs. Fawzi Emad, Martin Reiser Retire

After more than 30 years of teaching and research at the University of Maryland, Profs. Fawzi Emad and Martin Reiser retired last summer.

Prof. Fawzi Emad, who joined the Department in 1967, continues to teach at the University. He has served as Associate Chair and Director of the Office of Undergraduate Studies for the department. He has received both the Department’s George Corcoran Award and the “High Impedence” Award, presented by the Eta Kappa Nu student honor society for Outstanding Teacher of the Year.

His contributions to academics in the department have been signifcant. In 1972, Emad worked with a committe to revise the undergraduate curriculum for the department. From 1982-1990, he and Dr. Isaak Mayergoyz worked to create a new power education program within the department.
Dr. Emad has received nearly $4 million for research, from companies such as Northrup Grumman, General Electric, PEPCO, Eastalco, and BG&E, as well as government agencies such as NASA.

Dr. Martin Reiser came to the department in 1965 with a joint appointment from the Department of Physics.

Reiser’s contributions to research at the University have been substantial, especially in the areas of charged particle beam physics and accelerator design. In 1981, he co-founded Maryland’s Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), a center focused on conducting advanced interdisciplinary research in the physics and application of plasmas and charged particle beams. Dr. Reiser currently directs the Charged Particle Beam Research Laboratory in IPR.

Reiser is author or co-author of more than 200 research papers, co-editor of two books, and the author of the book “Theory and Design of Charged Particle Beams,” published in 1994 by Wiley and Sons, Inc. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and of the IEEE, and has served on numerous national and international committees. Most recently, he was chair of the Executive Committee of the APS Division of Physics of Beams (DPB), from May 1997 to April 1998, and of the Program Committee for the 1997 Particle Accelerator Conference in Vancouver, B.C.