MBE Alumni

We love to recognize our alumni, but aren’t always aware of what you’re doing! Here’s a chance for you to tell us about your achievements and share recognition with your peers!

The Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering department at Boise State University has established an MBE Outstanding Alumni Award to honor and celebrate the outstanding achievements of our graduates within their profession and the community at large.

Notice

No Outstanding Alumnus Award will be presented for 2021 due to complications from the COVID health crisis. New nominations will be solicited in 2022.

SUBMIT A NOMINATION

SELECTION PROCESS

Nominations are reviewed annually by the MBE department Awards and Recognition Committee at the beginning of the spring semester and presented to honorees at an award ceremony held later in the semester. To submit a nomination, please complete the form below and supply as much information as possible. The Awards and Recognition Committee will not conduct further research on behalf of any nominee. Nominations must be received by January 1, 2020, for consideration in Spring 2020.

AWARD CRITERIA

• The nominee must have graduated from the BSU MBE program at least five years ago.
• The nominee must have made significant career accomplishments and/or made significant contributions to his/her community through professional service, public service, and/or civic activities.
• The nominee must deliver a presentation related to his/her accomplishment at an InspireME seminar held in conjunction with the award ceremony.
• Current faculty, staff, and students of Boise State University are not eligible to receive this award.

Melissa Elkinton (BME ’03) leads the Wind Energy Assessment group for DNV GL Energy Americas, a technical consulting, independent engineer, testing and certification company. She manages technical and commercial aspects of pre-construction and operational wind energy assessments for clients in the US and Canada and provides technical supervision for projects in Latin America. Of the approximately 12 GW of project-financed wind farms that have been implemented in the US and Canada since 2014, Melissa has provided oversight on 80%, nearly 10 GW, of energy production assessments related to these successful projects. Prior to joining DNV GL in 2007 as a wind analyst, Melissa researched wind power at the Renewable Energy Research Lab as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. She received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Boise State University and MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Melissa is the recipient of the 2016 AWEA Technical Achievement Award.

Read our LinkedIn story on Melissa.

SEMINAR

Supporting Growth in the Wind Energy Industry
February 10, 2017

RECEPTION

Seminar and Reception

Friday, April 19, 2019
12:00-1:00 PM Seminar: ‘Silicon as a mechanical material’: revisiting a seminal paper in MEMS and NEMS
1:30-2:30 PM Reception – Ruch Engineering Building Atrium (sandwich/salad bar and sweets)

DR. FRANK W. DELRIO
Material Measurement Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering , University of Colorado, 2002-2006
M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Boise State University, 2001-2002
B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, 1994-1998

Frank W. DelRio received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1998, after which he worked as a Product Support Engineer at C&D Aerospace (now C&D Zodiac). In 2001, he returned to academia, ultimately receiving an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Boise State University in 2002 and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2006. After working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory (now the Material Measurement Laboratory, MML) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

At NIST, Frank has served as the Leader of the Nanoscale Strength Measurements and Standards Project from 2007 to 2014, as the Leader of the Small-Scale Mechanics for Advanced Materials Project from 2014 to 2016, and as a Science Advisor in the MML Lab Office from 2016 to 2017.

Currently, he is the Leader of the Fatigue and Fracture Group, which conducts research on the fatigue and fracture of advanced structural materials for pipeline safety, hydrogen storage, additive manufacturing, and cardiac device reliability. His research focuses on the development and use of materials and assemblies for small-scale mechanical applications via advancements in stand-alone and integrative mechanical measurement and microscopy techniques, with an emphasis on advanced materials in electronics, biomedical and health, infrastructure, energy, and forensics applications.

In all, he has published more than 60 peer-reviewed papers in journals such as Nature Materials, PNAS, Nano Letters, and ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. Frank is also the recipient of several awards and honors, including an ASME Orr Early Career Award, a Department of Commerce Bronze Medal Award, an Adhesion Society Outstanding Young Adhesion Scientist Award, and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.