Alumna honored by ASME for outstanding contributions to her field
9/25/2015 Julia Cation
MechSE alumna Karen Thole has received the ASME George Westinghouse Gold Medal, an award that recognizes eminent achievement or distinguished service in mechanical engineering.
Written by Julia Cation
MechSE alumna Karen Thole has received the ASME George Westinghouse Gold Medal, an award that recognizes eminent achievement or distinguished service in mechanical engineering.
Thole was selected for her outstanding contributions toward better cooling of gas turbine airfoils, particularly the discovery of a leading-edge fillet to reduce vortices in airfoil passages and the development of physics-based correlations used by industry for predicting micro channel cooling and film cooling. ASME will present her with the award during their Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition, November 13-19, 2015.
“I’m honored to receive this award. It all stems from the great education I received from Illinois and the University of Texas,” she said.
Thole is a professor and has served since 2006 as department head of mechanical and nuclear engineering at Penn State. Prior to joining Penn State, she held faculty positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Virginia Tech.
She earned her BS (’82) and MS (’84) in mechanical engineering from Illinois and a PhD (’92) in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
Thole was named an ASME Fellow in 2014, and received the Distinguished Engineering Educator Award from SWE the same year. She was honored with the MechSE Distinguished Alumni Award in 2013, which recognizes alumni who have established careers and have served in a professional and technical capacity that honors the department and the university. Thole also serves on the MechSE Alumni Board.