Engineering professors to be memorialized this month

Engineering professors to be memorialized this monthApril 04, 2005Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

Two longtime professors in Syracuse University’s L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science will be remembered in April for their extraordinary lives and their many contributions within their respective fields.

A memorial service for Professor James A. Schwarz will be held April 8 at 5 p.m., in Hendricks Chapel. Schwarz, a professor of chemical engineering, died Sept. 26, 2004, in Syracuse. He was 60.

A memorial service for Professor Stanley J. “Sandy” Bolanowski will be held April 10 at 1:30 p.m., in Hendricks Chapel. Bolanowski, a professor of neuroscience and associate director of the Institute for Sensory Research, died Jan. 13 in Nashville, Tenn., where he was on sabbatical at Vanderbilt University. He was 54.

Parking for both services will be available in the Irving Garage.

A native of New Jersey, Schwarz joined the SU faculty in 1979. He was known nationally and internationally for his pioneering hydrogen research, and held 14 patents for his discoveries. In 1990, he established the Laboratory for Advanced Storage Systems for Hydrogen within the college’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science to further hydrogen energy research. His lifelong research resulted in more than 225 publications and numerous awards.

“Jim Schwarz was a relatively quiet person with a blazing intellect; he approached research problems with energy and deep thought,” says Gus Engbretson, chair of the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering. “When the faculty began to think about merging the department of chemical engineering and materials science with the department of bioengineering and neuroscience, it was Jim who actually looked at everyone’s biographical information and showed us the potential for intellectual interactions. – Jim’s colleagues remember him as being dedicated to his students and possessing boundless intellectual energy.”

Bolanowski, a Utica native, was one of the first students to receive the biosystems degree from SU-the first of the bioengineering degrees to be awarded by the University. Through the years, his work touched on many areas within the neuroscience and biosystems fields-physiology, anatomy, psychophysics and others. He joined the SU faculty in 1988, and started the ISR’s program in tactile (touch) physiology. Over the past several years, Bolanowski played a key role in a multimillion-dollar, multi-year grant from the National Institute of Deafness and Communication Disorders (NIDCD) that brought many members of the ISR together for work on auditory and tactile systems.

“Sandy was an entrepreneurial scholar, and he had an intellectual energy to be envied,” says Engbretson. “Sandy was dedicated to the well-being of the Institute for Sensory Research (ISR) where he had trained for his Ph. D. and to which he returned after being on the faculty at the University of Rochester. I remember him as being a hard-nosed negotiator on the outside with a heart of gold and a devotion to the good of the department on the inside. We’ll remember Sandy as a fun-loving colleague, dedicated to his students (and ISR) and filled with intellectual energy.”

A research fund has been established for Bolanowski at the ISR. Contributions may be made to The Stanley J. Bolanowski Research Fund at the Institute for Sensory Research, 621 Skytop Rd., Syracuse, N.Y. 13244. Checks should be made out to Syracuse University with “Stanley J. Bolanowski Research Fund” in the memo line.