Dr. Cristina Amon
Director of the
Institute for Complex Engineered Systems and Raymond J. Lane Distinguished
Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University
Cristina H. Amon is the Raymond J. Lane Distinguished Professor of
Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, and Director of the Institute for
Complex Engineered Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. She received
a mechanical engineering degree from Simon Bolivar University in 1981
and, after two years of teaching and engineering practice, continued her
education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she earned
her M.S. and Sc.D. degrees in 1985 and 1988, respectively.
Professor Amon’s research pioneered the development of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for formulating and solving thermal design problems subject to multidisciplinary competing constraints. More recently, her research group has been focused on developing numerical algorithms for sub‐micron and nano‐scale heat transport in semiconductors (molecular dynamics, lattice‐Boltzmann method and phonon Boltzmann transport). She has contributed twelve book chapters, one McGraw Hill custom textbook, and over 200 refereed articles in education and research literature.
Her achievements in education cover the whole spectrum of integrating education, research and engineering practice; conceiving, developing and teaching the freshman course Fundamentals of Mechanical Engineering; and creating a nurturing environment for students, advising 67 undergraduate and 19 master projects, and mentoring 29 doctoral students, ten of whom hold faculty positions. Dedicated to outreach, she co‐developed Engineering Your Future, the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) workshop for female and minority high school students, and Moving 4th into Engineering, an outreach program targeted toward fourth graders. She has been recognized by SWE as their Distinguished Engineering Educator in 1999 and Professor of the Year for 2000. Cristina Amon was also the recipient of both awards given by Carnegie Mellon’s College of Engineering, the George Tallman Ladd Award for Excellence in Research in 1991 and the Benjamin Teare Award for Excellence in Engineering Education in 1998. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) honored her with the Gustus Larson Memorial Award for outstanding achievements in 2000, and the ASME Pittsburgh chapter named her Engineer of the Year in 1999. She received several awards from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), including the prestigious 1997 George Westinghouse and 2002 Ralph Coats Roe Awards. In 2003, she received the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Education Award and, in 2005, she was named one of America’s most important Hispanics in technology and business. Among her other recognitions are the 2003 Electronics and Photonics Packaging Clock Award, best papers awards, and the 2004 ASME EPPD Thermal Management Award, for Outstanding Contributions in Thermal Management Applications to the Field of Electronic and Photonic Packaging.
Active in professional societies, Cristina Amon has served as executive member of the ASME Electronic and Photonic Packaging Division, chair‐elect (2004‐2005) and chair (2005‐2006) of the AAAS Section on Engineering, and president of the SWE Pittsburgh Chapter (2004‐2005). She is co‐founder of Women In Non‐traditional Graduate Studies (WINGS) and served as its first faculty adviser since its inception in 1989 until 1992. She is a Fellow of AAAS, ASEE, ASME and IEEE.