Wood Researchers Win Awards

Two University of Maine faculty members and a UMaine graduate student recently won awards for wood-related research at the 66th International Convention of the Forest Products Society.

William Davids, the John C. Bridge Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Stephen Shaler, a professor of wood science, were named winners of the L.J. Markwardt Wood Engineering Award, which is given for promoting knowledge of wood in the engineering field. Davids, Shaler and their co-authors R. Lagana and L. Muszynski were recognized for their paper, “Moment-Curvature Analysis of Coupled Bending and Mechano-sorptive Response of Red Spruce Beams,” which was published in Wood and Fiber Science in 2011.

Yucheng Peng, a Ph.D. student in the School of Forest Resources, won the Wood Award, which recognizes and honors the most outstanding graduate student research in the field of wood and wood products. His paper was “Spray-drying Cellulose Nanofibrils: The Effect of Spray-Drying Process Parameters on Particle Morphology and Particle Size.” Peng’s research focuses on developing nanotechnology.

Contact: Jessica Bloch, (207) 581-3777