Feb. 13, 2015
ECE Professor Elias Strangas will teach and conduct research in Austria as a Fulbright Scholar
Elias Strangas, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University, has been named a Fulbright Scholar and will teach and conduct research in Austria beginning next month.
The highly coveted Fulbright grants are issued by the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to foster international academic exchange. It is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Each year, about 1,200 U.S. scholars study in 155 countries.
Strangas will spend from March 1 to June 30 at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) Electric Drives and Machines Institute. TU Graz is located in the south of Austria and serves as the country's focal point for teaching and research in the technical sciences.
“I will work with my colleagues there and will teach a class on the fault diagnosis and failure prognosis of electrical machines and drives,” he said. “We have already had exchanges, joint work, and publications with the institute there.”
Strangas said one of the doctoral students in his Electrical Machines and Drives Laboratory recently spent six months at this institute in Graz, working on a joint research project.
“I hope and expect that this exchange will further enhance our collaborative work with TU Graz, the University of Vienna, as well as with institutes and universities in France and Spain, with whom we have been having close cooperation and exchanges in the last six years.”
Strangas earned a PhD at the University of Pittsburgh in 1980. He is a past recipient of the Withrow Teaching Excellence Award.
The Fulbright Program was established in 1946 under legislation introduced by then Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. The program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The Fulbright Program awards approximately 8,000 grants annually to 1,600 U.S. students, 4,000 foreign students, 1,200 U.S. scholars, and 900 visiting scholars, along with several hundred teachers and professionals. More than 300,000 "Fulbrighters" have participated in the program since 1946.
