Special Issue Dedicated to Professor Avi Bar-Cohen in Celebration of His 65th Birthday

Abstract

We are delighted to dedicate this special issue to celebrate the 65th birthday of Professor Avi Bar-Cohen. Dr. Avram Bar-Cohen is an internationally recognized leader in thermal science and technology, an Honorary member of ASME, and Fellow of IEEE, as well as Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland. His publications, lectures, short courses, and research outcomes, as well as professional service in ASME and IEEE, have helped to create the scientific foundation for the thermal management of electronic components and systems and pioneered techniques for energy-efficient sustainable design of manufactured products. His current research focuses on two-phase microgap and microchannel coolers for high heat flux electronic components, on-chip thermoelectrics for hot spot remediation, thermal control of power amplifiers and photonics, and polymer-fiber composite heat exchangers. Bar-Cohen was the general chair for the 2010 International Heat Transfer Conference in Washington DC and is the President of the Assembly of International Heat Transfer Conferences. From 2001 to 2010, he served as the Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Maryland and is currently on assignment as a Program Manager in the Microsystem Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Projects Agency in Virginia.In addition to Honorary membership in ASME, Bar-Cohen’s honors include the Luikov Medal from the International Center for Heat and Mass Transfer in Turkey (2008), ASME’s Heat Transfer Memorial Award (1999), Curriculum Innovation Award (1999), Edwin F. Church Medal (1994) and Worcester Reed Warner Medal (2000), and the Electronic and Electrical Packaging Division’s Outstanding Contribution Award (1994) as well as the InterPack Achievement Award (2007). Bar-Cohen was the founding chair of the IEEE Intersociety Conference on Thermal Management in Electronic Equipment (ITHERM) in 1988 and was recognized with the IEEE CPMT Society’s Outstanding Sustained Technical Contributions Award (2002), the ASME/IEEE ITHERM Achievement Award (1998), and the THERMI Award from the IEEE/Semi-Therm Conference (1997).Bar-Cohen has co-authored Design and Analysis of Heat Sinks (Wiley, 1995) and Thermal Analysis and Control of Electronic Equipment (McGraw-Hill, 1983), and has co-edited 16 books in this field. He has authored/co-authored over 400 journal papers, refereed proceedings papers, and chapters in books; has delivered 70 keynote, plenary and invited lectures at major technical conferences and institutions, and he holds eight U.S. and three Japanese patents. He has advised to completion 64 Master’s and Ph.D. students at the University of Maryland, the University of Minnesota, and the Ben Gurion University (Beer Sheva, Israel), where he began his academic career in 1972. From 1998 to 2001, he directed the University of Minnesota Center for the Development of Technological Leadership and held the Sweatt Chair in Technological Leadership.Avram Bar-Cohen began his professional career at the Raytheon Company in Massachusetts in 1968 and for the past 44 years has been involved in the design, analysis, and optimization of thermal systems, with emphasis on the thermal packaging of electronic equipment. He has lectured widely, published extensively in the archival heat transfer and packaging literature, and taught many short courses on this subject, at universities and major conferences in the United States and abroad. He served as General Manager and Executive Consultant for packaging and physical modeling at Control Data Corporation, 1984–1989, held a succession of academic appointments, from Lecturer to Professor, in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev (Israel), 1973–1988, and was on the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1977–1978, and the Naval Postgraduate School, 1982.Many of Professor Bar Cohen’s students are currently in leadership positions around the nation and around the globe. Some of them are authors of the papers included in this issue covering a wide range of topics related to electronic systems integration and packaging. The topics are very broad ranging, and cover issues from the device level up to the data center level. The technology issues include topics related to mechanical and thermo mechanical stresses at the device level, thermal interface materials using carbon nano-tubes and other materials, thermal and mechanical issues that arise in through silicon vias in chip stacks, thermo electric cooling at the module level and optimization of enclosed aisle Data Centers using bypass recirculation among many others. This broad range of topics as well as the outstanding nature of the research and publications is a direct measure of the impact that Professor Bar-Cohen has had and continues to have on research and development in the field of electronic systems integration and packaging.We are truly delighted to dedicate this special issue to Avi, on behalf of the electronics packaging community, as a thank you for all of his current and future contributions to the community.