Professor of mechanical engineering

According to Jim Baish, variety is what keeps professors interested and interesting. "We're good teachers because we're involved in research, but we're good teachers first," he says.

Baish ought to know about good teaching; he was the 1999 recipient of the Class of 1956 Lectureship. The lecture is given in recognition of inspirational teaching at Bucknell.

Baish has taught widely across the curriculum, including everything from engineering 100 to thermodynamics. He helped found the Residential College on Society and Technology and has mentored students at all levels of their education. He taught Bucknell's first biomedical engineering class over a decade ago, and served as co-director of the biomedical engineering program for the last two years, which offers both a major and a minor in biomedical engineering. He is now chair of the mechanical engineering department, and is looking forward to serving as co-director of Bucknell in London for fall 2005.

Baish's latest research, a collaborative project with Rakesh Jain at Massachusetts General Hospital, is a study of the geometry of blood vessels in tumors and how the shape of a blood vessel affects the delivery of medicine, among other things to the tumor. Their work may play an important role in the development of models for more effective treatment of cancerous tumors.

Teaching areas

• Exploring Engineering
• Mechanics
• Thermodynamics
• Heat transfer
• Thermal design
• System dynamics
• Biomedical engineering
• Form and function: design in the natural and fabricated worlds

Research interests

• Biological heat and mass transport
• Tumor physiology
• System dynamics
• Origins of biological form

Recent publication

• "Mathematical Models of Angiogenesis," Handbook of the Microvasculature, Elsevier, 2004 (forthcoming).

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