Dr. Walden C. (Wally) Rhines, whose father, Dr. Fred Rhines, founded the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at UF, continued his father’s legacy in support of the department when he made a gift of $1 million to establish the Rhines Rising Star Professorships. Dr. Fred Rhines established the department on the talents and promise of early career faculty with the philosophy that outstanding people want to work with other outstanding people. This gift, says Wally, will continue to honor his father’s legacy to support assistant professors of this caliber. According to Dr. Michele Manuel, Chair for the Department of Materials Science & Engineering, “The Rhines family is an important part of the department’s past and future, and we are grateful for their continued support.”
The professorships will not only bear the Rhines name, they will also include the names of two outstanding pioneering faculty in honor of their service to the department – Dr. Robert DeHoff and Dr. Larry Hench. Drs. DeHoff and Hench were both in the early phase of their careers when Dr. Fred Rhines hired them. Dr. Hench joined the department in 1964, where he invented Bioglass, the first man-made material to bond with living tissues and which is now used to repair bones, joints and teeth. Dr. DeHoff joined the department during its founding year in 1959 and was Dr. Fred Rhines’ final Ph.D. student at Carnegie-Mellon University. Dr. DeHoff became an expert in thermodynamics, writing the first and second editions of Thermodynamics of Materials Science.
With a $1 million gift that establishes the Arnold and Lisa Goldberg Rising Star Professorships in Computer Science, the Goldbergs are powering the New Engineer by enabling research into technology such as machine learning and artificial intelligence that helps detect, protect and restore security in the cyber and physical systems. Mr. Goldberg summed up his vision for the benefits the professorships will bring to the CISE department, “I have personally witnessed the opportunity that a degree in computer science will afford an individual. I wanted to accelerate the awareness and stature of UF’s CISE department as a preeminent destination to get that degree.”
“Endowed professorships carry a level of prestige that positively reflects on the department, our faculty and their research. We are thankful for the Goldbergs’ support,” said Juan E. Gilbert, Ph.D., The Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Professor and CISE department chair. Dr. Gilbert and Cammy R. Abernathy, Ph.D., Dean of the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, named associate professors Dr. Kevin R. B. Butler and Dr. Daisy Zhe Wang as holders of the Arnold and Lisa Goldberg Rising Star Professorships for their contributions to the field of computer science.
Dean Cammy R. Abernathy, Ph.D., Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering
“We are very thankful to our alumni who provided the gifts that helped us attract and retain these gifted young academicians. These promising investigators from diverse backgrounds will become the innovators and leaders who will define the fields of engineering over the next ten years. They are our future – from the halls of our college to the expanses of our global community.”