ASME to Lead Standards Consortium in China (10/26/04)

ASME and three other leading standards organizations have joined together to form the Consortium for Standards and Conformity Assessment for the purpose of establishing an office in Beijing, China.

The efforts of the consortium will be helped by a three-year, $399,500 award from the U.S. Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration. The consortium will begin startup activities for its Beijing office before the end of 2004.

The primary aim of the consortium is to advocate the use of US and Canadian technical standards in China as well as promote the development of Chinese standards programs that are compatible with programs in North America. While emerging as an industrial power and a key player in the global economy, China has recently begun to develop internationally recognized technical standards that are key to allowing free trade among nations. The consortium will enable U.S.-based international standards developers to establish a continuous presence in Beijing to build relationships and help the Chinese conform to World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on standards and trade.

The Commerce Department award will help the consortium get established even more quickly than had been anticipated. "This award will help us to immediately establish a firmer standards presence in China," stated June Ling, ASME's associate executive director for Codes and Standards.

"Over the past several years, we have developed relationships with key Chinese officials, and having an on-the-ground presence in Beijing will help cement those relationships and further efforts to open Chinese markets to US goods and services," Ling added.

In addition to ASME as the lead organization, the members of the Consortium for Standards and Conformity Assessment are ASTM International, the American Petroleum Institute, and CSA America. All four members of the consortium are world leaders in standards development.

ASME publishes more than 600 codes and standards covering pressure vessels, escalators and elevators, pipelines, plumbing devices, and many other products and systems.

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National Academy of Engineering President Honored by ASME (10/26/04)

William A. Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), Washington, D.C., will be honored by ASME. He is being recognized for outstanding achievements in this position, particularly the development of initiatives for broadening public awareness of engineering. He will receive the Society's Ralph Coats Roe Medal.

The medal, established in 1972, recognizes an outstanding contribution toward a better public understanding and appreciation of the engineer's worth to contemporary society. It will be presented to Wulf during the 2004 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and RD&D Expo, which is being held in Anaheim, Calif., Nov. 13 through 19.

Wulf was elected president of the NAE in April 1997, after previously served as interim president beginning in July 1996. Together with the National Academy of Sciences, the NAE operates under a congressional charter and presidential orders that call on it to provide advice to the government on issues of science and engineering.

Under Wulf's leadership, the NAE launched a major initiative for improving public awareness of engineering. It conducted an extensive survey and appointed a committee of distinguished citizens to analyze the results and make recommendations for actions. Their 99-page report titled "Raising Public Awareness of Engineering" has been widely distributed and implementation of their recommendations is well underway. Initiatives have been launched on the public understanding of engineering, including the 20 greatest achievements; engineering education and the diversity of the engineering workforce; and the impact of information technology on society.

Wulf is on leave from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, where he is a university professor and the AT&T professor of engineering and applied science.

Prior to joining the University of Virginia, Wulf founded Tartan Laboratories Inc. and served as its chairman and chief executive officer (1981-87). He grew the company to about 100 employees. Tartan developed and marketed optimizing compilers, notably for Ada. Tartan was sold to Texas Instruments in 1995.

The technical basis for Tartan was research by Wulf while he was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Pa.), where his research spanned programming systems and computer architecture. Specific research activities included the design and implementation of a systems-implementation language (Bliss); architectural design of the DEC PDP-11, a highly successful minicomputer; the design and construction of a 16 processor multiprocessor and its operating system; a new approach to computer security; and development of a technology for the construction of high quality optimizing compilers.

Wulf is the author of over 100 papers and technical reports, has written three books, holds two US patents and has supervised over 25 Ph.D. students in computer science.

Wulf received his bachelor's degree in engineering physics and master's degree in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1961 and 1963, respectively. He earned his doctoral degree in computer science at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, in 1968.

The ASME Honors and Awards Program is funded through the ASME Foundation by individual award and endowment funds.




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