Twenty-Year Veteran of Colorado State Named Chair of College of Engineering’s Mechanical Engineering Department

A specialist in heat and mass transfer in engines and buildings who joined Colorado State University in 1980 has been designated head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Allan Kirkpatrick, a professor of mechanical engineering, has held several posts within the College of Engineering, including interim head of mechanical engineering and associate department head for undergraduate studies.

Kirkpatrick, who earned a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981, has received a variety of honors and awards for his research and teaching. His research is in the area of fluid jet mixing, which has applications including fuel injection in engines and indoor air quality in buildings. He earned a bachelor’s from MIT in 1972 and a master’s from the College of William and Mary in 1974.

He received Colorado State’s George Pennock Distinguished Service Award and the George Abell Teaching Award from the engineering college, both in 2000. He was named an Honored Researcher by Colorado State in 1993. In addition to these and other recognitions from the university, Kirkpatrick won the DOW Outstanding Young Faculty award from the American Society for Engineering Education in 1985 and was named to the ASEE-DOE Faculty Program of the Solar Energy Research Institute in 1982, 1984 and 1985.

"I will be working with the college, my colleagues in mechanical engineering and our graduate and undergraduate students to develop new initiatives in engineering education and research. I would like to strengthen the reputation of the department through innovative approaches to technical problems in areas such as energy, materials and bioengineering," Kirkpatrick said.A member of Sigma Xi scientific research society, Kirkpatrick served as its president in 1998-99. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers; American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers; and American Society for Engineering Education.

He has held a number of professional journal editorship positions, including a six-year stint as associate engineer of the ASME Journal of Solar Energy Engineering.