International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 89 (2015) A1–A3

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International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt

In Celebration

Professor Issam Mudawar on his 60th birthday

This article is in celebration of the 60th birthday of Dr. Issam
Mudawar, his achievements as a distinguished scholar in mechanical engineering, and his outstanding contributions in the ﬁeld ofheat and mass transfer. He is a well-known expert for his researchin thermal engineering and highly respected among colleagues,friends, and students all over the world. As a Professor of
Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, his primary researchinterests include two-phase ﬂow and heat transfer, materials
processing, electronic cooling, thermal management of aerospacesystems, and nuclear reactor safety.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2015.05.059

Professor Mudawar was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1955.
During his pre-college years, he excelled in mathematics and physics, which were paralleled by a strong passion for oil painting,sculpture and study of art history. While his initial plans were tostudy art and architecture, he ultimately settled for mechanicalengineering. He pursued undergraduate studies at the American
University of Beirut, where he discovered the broad and exciting
opportunities mechanical engineering offers. In 1978, he immigrated to the United States, where he pursued his graduate studies
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). He credits hisyears at M.I.T. for paving a lifelong career dedicated to the study of
two-phase ﬂow and heat transfer, having worked closely withsome of the world’s greatest pioneers in the ﬁeld. He joined thePurdue University School of Mechanical Engineering as assistantprofessor in 1984 and was promoted to associate professor in1989 and full professor in 1993. He currently serves as Chairmanof the Heat Transfer Area at Purdue University.
Since joining Purdue, Professor Mudawar founded both theBoiling and Two-Phase Flow Laboratory (PU-BTPFL) and theInternational Electronic Cooling Alliance (PU-IECA). He also served
as co-principal investigator for both the Rolls-Royce Purdue
University Center in High Mach Propulsion and the Hydrogen
Storage Laboratory. He has supervised over 65 Ph.D. and M.S. students as well as Visiting Scholars. He has written 4 handbooks, 199
archival journal papers, 126 of which were published in theInternational Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 9 book chapters,
and a large number of conference papers and topical reports.
Professor Mudawar is internationally recognized for his theoretical and experimental research on phase change mechanisms
and applications in energy, electronics thermal management,
space, and intelligent materials processing. His theoretical researchencompasses virtually every aspect of phase change. Examples
include theory of initiation of nucleate boiling, critical heat ﬂux(CHF), Leidenfrost point, contact angle, turbulence in the vicinityof moving wavy interfaces, pool boiling, ﬁlm condensation, heating, evaporation and boiling, ﬂow boiling in straight and curved
channels, boiling in rotating systems, droplet impact dynamics,
sprays, jets, surface enhancement, nano-ﬂuids, and carbon nanotubes. He is credited for authoring the ﬁrst comprehensive
methodology for analysis of boiling in micro-channels, which has
recently evolved into universal predictive techniques for adiabatic,
evaporating and condensing ﬂows. He has developed customized
experimental methods for these studies, including simultaneoususe of laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) and interface tracking
probes, micro-particle image velocimetry (micro-PIV), photomicrography, high speed video imaging, and specialized microfabrication techniques and carbon nanotube surface coating.

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In Celebration / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 89 (2015) A1–A3

Professor Mudawar’s energy research encompasses numerous
energy systems and applications, including magnetohydrodynamic
energy conversion, liquid-cooled industrial gas turbine engines,
high efﬁciency gas turbine power cycles, vertical evaporators,
rotating evaporators, vertical condensers, desalination, particle
accelerators, metal hydride hydrogen fuel cell storage systems,
energy efﬁciency improvement and reduced water utilization inmetal processing, and nuclear power generation. Published in1999, his three-volume handbook ‘‘Critical Heat Flux (CHF) for
Water in Tubes’’ is used by nuclear reactor manufacturers to predict upper safely limits for reactor operation.
Launched in 1984, Professor Mudawar’s electronics coolingresearch center quickly became the nation’s ﬁrst laboratory dedicated to the study of very-high-ﬂux and phase change thermal
management of electronics using such schemes as thermosyphons,semi-passive falling ﬁlm cooling, channel-ﬂow boiling, microchannel boiling, micro-channel condensation, jet impingement,
spray cooling, and vapor compression. He has played a pioneeringinternational role in the development of thermal solutions forsupercomputers, servers, laptops, chip testing, hybrid vehicle
power electronics, avionics, and X-ray medical devices.
Professor Mudawar has played a critical role in NASA’s shift
from present mostly single-phase liquid-cooled thermal management and control systems for space missions to two-phase thermalmanagement. These efforts are aimed at capitalizing upon theorders-of-magnitude enhancement that is possible with boilingand condensing ﬂows compared to their single-phase liquid counterparts. His research team performed extensive microgravity ﬂow
boiling experiments in parabolic ﬂight and developed the ﬁrst theoretical model for ﬂow boiling CHF in microgravity. He is presently
partnering with the NASA Glenn Research Center on the design of aﬂow boiling and condensation facility for the International Space
Station (ISS), and on the implementation of phase change processesin space power generation and both cabin and avionics temperature control.
Since the late 1980s, Professor Mudawar has pursued several
studies aimed at developing an intelligent heat-treating technology for complex-shaped metal alloy parts that would eliminate
altogether the trial-and-error approach prevalent in the industry
today. Using cooling and metallurgical transformation models, hedeveloped a CAD-based pilot facility where the most critical phaseof heat treating, the quench, is optimized by conﬁguring watercooling sprays in response to the part’s size and shape. This technology was shown to greatly increase part strength and hardness,enhance corrosion resistance, reduce residual stresses, warping,and cracking, greatly increase productivity, and virtually eliminate
scrap. Another important aspect of this technology is the development of new non-contact temperature measurement techniques
and algorithms.
Professor Mudawar’s research contributions and innovations
have been highly acknowledged worldwide. He earned the titleof Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers(ASME) in 1997, and is a senior member of the American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and member ofboth the American Society for Metals (ASM) and American
Society for Gravitational and Space Research (ASGSR). One of his
key research accomplishments is the attainment of the world’s
highest phase-change cooling heat ﬂux for uniformly heated tubes,
over 27,000 W/cm2. In 1995 and 1996, ‘‘Business Week’’ featured
his breakthroughs under ‘‘Developments to Watch’’ in three separate issues during a single 10-month period. He has received
numerous awards, including best paper awards at the 1988
National Heat Transfer Conference, 1992 ASME/JSME Joint
Conference on Electronic Packaging, and ITherm 2008. He also
received the ASME Journal of Electronic Packaging Outstanding

Paper Award for 1995, in addition to numerous awards and recognitions from ASME, AIAA, JSME, ASM, U.S. Navy, and Rolls-Royce. In
2013, he received the ASGSR Founder’s Award, the ASME HeatTransfer Memorial Award in Science Category, and the 75thAnniversary Medal of the ASME Heat Transfer Division. Many ofhis publications have been recognized for top international citation
rankings, including the International Journal of Heat and Mass
Transfer top two most cited papers for 2005–2008.
At Purdue, Professor Mudawar is widely known for his strong
passion for teaching, evidenced by several awards he received for
dedicated teaching, curriculum development, instructional heattransfer laboratory development, introducing prototyping initiative in design courses, and dedicated service to minority students
and organizations. They include best teacher in mechanical engineering for 1987, 1992, 1996, and 2004, most outstanding teachingat Purdue University for 1997, and Purdue Chapter of the National
Society of Black Engineers professor of the year award for 1985 and1987. He is a Founding Fellow of the Purdue University Teaching
Academy and Inaugural Member of the Purdue University Bookof Great Teachers. While the absolute effects are not quantiﬁable,
it is quite certain that many engineering careers and lives havebeen shaped and enhanced by Professor Mudawar’s love and dedication to education and research in the ﬁeld of mechanical engineering. Professor Mudawar tirelessly pours out his energies into
his graduate students with patience and dedication, helping themto improve their technical and leadership abilities. As a result,many of his students have gone on to be strong contributors in academia and industry.
On behalf of his many students, friends, and colleagues, from allaround the world, we are pleased to wish him a very happy birthday and all the best in the company of his wife Jane and daughter
Alexine. We are grateful for his exemplary contributions in theﬁeld of heat and mass transfer and look forward to his continuedachievements. May he have many more years of happiness andsuccess ahead.
John Bernardin
Los Alamos National Laboratory, USAFrancis Chiaramonte
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, USAVijay Dhir
University of California at Los Angeles, USA
Jesse Galloway
Amkor Technology, USAKen Goodson
Stanford University, USA
Frank Incropera
University of Notre Dame, USA
Oleg Kabov
Kutateladze Institute of Thermophysics, Russia
Massoud Kaviany
University of Michigan, USA
Mujid Kazimi
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Boris Khusid
New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
Jungho Kim
University of Maryland, USA
Sung-Min Kim
Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea

In Celebration / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 89 (2015) A1–A3Jaeseon Lee
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology,Republic of Korea
W.J. Minkowycz
University of Illinois at Chicago, USA⇑Weilin Qu
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu,HI 96822, USA⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 808 956 6332;
fax: +1 808 956 2373.
E-mail address: qu@hawaii.edu

A3John Rose
Queen Mary, University of London, England, United Kingdom
Bahgat Sammakia
Binghamton University, USA
Peter StephanDarmstadt Technical University, Germany
Kambiz Vafai
University of California at Riverside, USA
Chang-Da Wen
National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, ROC
Available online 5 June 2015