Faculty Notes

As submitted by faculty

Dan White, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was awarded the 2023 Michael V. Carano Teacher Excellence Award from the IPC Education Foundation.  IPC is a standards and training association for the global electronics manufacturing industry.  He is the advisor for the Valpo IPC student chapter.
https://www.ipcef.org/2023-scholarship-winner

Bruce Hrivnak, senior research professor of Physics & Astronomy, and Todd Hillwig, professor of Physics & Astronomy, authored a paper published in the January 2024 issue of the Astronomical Journal.  The paper is titled Variability in Protoplanetary Nebulae. X. Multiyear Periods as an Indicator of Potential Binaries.  They analyzed brightness measurements of four stars, including data from the VU Observatory, which revealed light variations with periods of four to eight years.  These they interpreted each of these as due to the periodic obscuration by a disk around each star caused by a binary companion star.  The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Indiana Space Grant Consortium.