John Verboncoeur of Michigan State University's College of Engineering will receive the Richard F. Shea Distinguished Member Award from the Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society of the IEEE, or Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
Only one award is presented internationally each year.
"I am very proud of John's willingness to step up and lead both within the college and within his professional society," said Leo Kempel, dean of the College of Engineering. "He exemplifies the very best in a senior faculty member at a land-grant university."
Verboncoeur is associate dean for research in the College of Engineering, as well as professor of electrical and computer engineering, and computational mathematics, science and engineering. With over 30 years of experience developing and applying kinetic particle simulation tools, Verboncoeur leads MSU's Plasma Theory and Simulation Group.
Verboncoeur has pioneered several key technologies in his area of expertise, including the first self-consistent model for plasmas bound by electrodes and connected to real driving circuits, the first interactive graphical user interface and the first object-oriented plasma model. His group also developed the first time-dependent explanation of the transition of multipactor breakdown to gaseous discharge, as well as a novel kinetic global model.
He joined MSU as a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering in 2011, and now oversees a growing research enterprise among the college's 225 faculty members, up from 167 when he became associate dean three years ago.
In a niched research community, Verboncoeur's work has been cited nearly 4,000 times. He has more than 90 journal publications in computational plasmas and applications, in addition to more than 300 conference publications and five book chapters. He is a fellow of the IEEE, is past-president of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Science Society and an IEEE director-elect.
The Richard F. Shea Distinguished Member Award will be presented at the IEEE ICOPS 2018 meeting in Denver, June 24-28, 2018.