Noor to Represent ODU at ASME Conference

Old Dominion University's Ahmed K. Noor, William E. Lobeck Professor of Aerospace Engineering, eminent scholar and director of the Center for Advanced Engineering Environments, will be a lecturer and panelist at the 2008 Annual Meeting for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The conference will be held June 7-11 in Orlando, Fla.

Noor will deliver a 90-minute keynote presentation titled "Visualizing the Future," describing the future research, learning and work environments and showcasing the latest advancements in visualization technologies. He will also be a member on the panel addressing "Critical Skills Needed to Overcome 21st Century Challenges," and focusing on closing the skill-set gap between current engineering training/ learning and future needs.

"The future will be characterized by lightning-fast, complex and disruptive changes in several technologies that will lead to profound redefinitions of such concepts as 'corporation,' 'community' and even 'university,'" Noor said.

Noor is a Fellow of the National Institute of Aerospace and of five professional societies: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Academy of Mechanics, and U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics. He is a founding member of both the International and U.S. Associations of Computational Mechanics, and is a past president of USACM.

He has received several national awards, edited 30 books and authored more than 450 papers in the fields of advanced learning technology, intelligent synthesis environment, and structural and computational mechanics.

His current professional activities focus on the following: future intelligent design and synthesis environments; novel learning technologies/paradigms; collaborative distributed visual simulations; structural and computational mechanics; multiscale modeling and simulation; and distributed immersive hyper-reality environments.

"The ASME meeting is a useful forum for sharing views with senior-level engineers from top organizations, and articulating a vision for future engineering practice and education," Noor said.