STLE Honours Dr. Raj Shah For Outstanding Service

STLE honours Dr. Raj Shah, an STLE member for over 20 years, in recognition for his outstanding service to STLE as the Annual meeting programme chairman for 2015. The rigorous technical programme and conference that Dr. Shah and his committee put together this May in Dallas, had over 400 peer reviewed papers and presentations and was a resounding success .

Society of Tribology and Lubrication Engineers (STLE) is the premier technical society serving the needs of more than 10,000 individuals and numerous companies and organisations that comprise the tribology and lubrication engineering sector. The membership of STLE consists of thousands of technical professionals involved with Lubrication engineering and working in industry, academic institutions and government throughout the United States, Canada and around the world.

Dr. Shah, who has been involved with STLE since when he was in graduate school at Penn State University, over two decades ago, is currently a Director at the corporate headquarters of Koehler Instrument company in Holtsville, NY. He has been actively involved for over 20 years, in the field of petroleum testing equipment, tribology and laboratory analytical instrumentation for the oil and gas industry and has held various leadership positions within STLE over the years. A recipient of the ASTM Award of Excellence thrice in his career so far, (a rare honour), he is also involved in working closely with several Universities and is on the industrial board of advisors at: The Department of Engineering at Hofstra University, Chemical Engineering at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, The School of Engineering, Design, Technology and Professional programs (SEDTAPP) at Pennsylvania State University, and the Samuel Ginn College of engineering, Tribology and lubrication science minor at the University of Auburn.

The Dallas STLE technical meeting this May was one of its best attended meeting in the last 50 years. The highlight of the STLE annual meeting was a plenary speech by Capt. Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, one of the astronauts who spacewalked to lubricate a balky mechanical system (the latching end effector, that rotates the solar panels towards to sun) on the International space Station (ISS). She spoke to a mesmerised room of tribologists on her experience of dealing with grease and spherical rod- end bearings while walking in space. The technical program at the annual STLE conference which had more than 400 papers, included numerous panel discussions and special sessions on emerging subjects in lubrication, such as nanoscale mechanisms of friction, multifunctional surfaces for tribology, molecular chemistry and lubricant rheology, in situ tribology and lubrication of engineered surfaces and was attended by members from over 30 countries.