COLLEGE STATION, Texas - Dr. G. Kemble Bennett, vice chancellor and dean of engineering, has appointed Dr. John W. Poston Sr. interim head of the Department of Nuclear Engineering at Texas A&M University. The appointment is effective Jan. 17. Dr. William Burchill, who has headed the department since 2003, will retire Jan. 16. Poston headed the Dwight Look College of Engineering’s Department of Nuclear Engineering from 1988 to 1998. Before coming to Texas A&M in 1985, he was an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has also been a researcher for Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and a physicist for Babcock and Wilcox Co. in Lynchburg, Va. An expert on internal and external radiation dosimetry, Poston and his colleagues at Texas A&M developed the only ABET-accredited program in Radiological Health Engineering, which combines the basics of engineering with nuclear engineering, safety engineering and radiation protection. He is also a researcher in the Nuclear Engineering Division of the Texas Engineering Experiment Station, the engineering research agency of the State of Texas and a member of The Texas A&M University System. Poston is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Health Physics Society (HPS) and the American Nuclear Society (ANS). He is a member of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM), the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and the International Radiation Protection Association (IRPA). Poston is a past president of HPS and received the society’s Founders Award in 1994 for his exceptional service to the society and the nuclear engineering profession. In 1996, ASEE honored Poston with the Glenn Murphy Award, which is given annually to a distinguished educator in recognition of outstanding contributions to the nuclear engineering discipline through teaching. He was inducted into the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni in 1995. In 2005, he was awarded the HPS Robley D. Evans Commemorative Medal in recognition of his long and distinguished career. In 2005, Poston was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health. Poston holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Lynchburg College, and master’s and Ph.D. degrees in nuclear engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
