Professor Incropera received his B.S.M.E. (1961) from M.I.T. and his M.S.M.E. (1962) and Ph.D. (1966) from Stanford University, all in mechanical engineering.  He has worked for the Lockheed Missiles and Space and the Aerojet General Corporations, and except for research leaves spent at NASA-Ames (1969), U.C. Berkeley (1973-74) and the Technical University of Munich (1988), he was with Purdue University from 1966 to 1998.  He was promoted to Full Professor in 1973 and was Chairman of the Heat and Mass Transfer Area of Mechanical Engineering from 1976 to 1985.   He was Assistant Dean of Engineering for Graduate and Research Programs from 1987 to 1989 and was Head of the School of Mechanical Engineering from 1989 to 1998.  In 1998, he became the Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, as well as the Clifford and Evelyn Brosey Professor of Mechanical Engineering.  He has had a long-standing interest in energy conversion and has authored or co-authored 11 books and more than 200 archival journal articles on related topics.  Professor Incropera has received four major Purdue teaching awards and was the 1982 recipient of the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Ralph Coats Roe Award for excellence in teaching.  He was the 1983 recipient of the ASEE George Westinghouse Award for achievements in teaching and research.  In 1984 he became a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and in 1988 he received the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award for twenty years of research accomplishments in the fields of plasma heat transfer, radiative transfer in participating media, and double-diffusive and mixed convection.  In 1988 he was also recipient of the Senior Scientists Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and recipient of the Melville Medal for the best original paper published by ASME.  In 1995 he received the Worcester Reed Warner Medal of ASME for contributions to the fundamental literature of heat transfer and his textbooks on the subject.  In 1996, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his research on the science and practice of heat transfer and for contributions to engineering education.  In 2001 he was named by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the 100 most frequently cited engineering researchers in the world.