[10/29/2009]    Mechanical Engineering's Michael Modest retires

University Park, Pa. — Michael Modest, distinguished professor of mechanical engineering, has retired after 22 years of service to the University.

Modest came to Penn State from the University of Southern California, where he worked as an associate professor in mechanical engineering from 1980 to 1987. He spent the previous six years as a mechanical engineering faculty member at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., after spending two years at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as a postdoctoral researcher.

In 2005, Modest received the Heat Transfer Memorial Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, of which he was named a fellow in 1988. The Penn State Engineering Alumni Society awarded Modest the Outstanding Research Award in 2000 and the Premier Research Award in 2003.

After earning a diplom-ingenieur degree in mechanical engineering from the Technical University of Munich, West Germany, in 1968, Modest came to the U.S. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972.