Background and personal life
Weinbaum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. His parents are Alex Weinbaum, who emigrated to the U.S. from Russia in 1921, and Frances (Stark) Weinbaum. He attended Jamaica High School, Queens, and Abraham Lincoln High School (Brooklyn), Abraham Lincoln High School, Brooklyn, and received his bachelor's degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Aeronautical Engineering in 1959. He earned his MS in Applied Physics 1960 and his PhD in Engineering 1963 from Harvard University where he was a Gordon McKay Prize and then National Science Foundation Fellow. His dissertation is titled “Natural convection phenomena in horizontal circular cylinders” and completed under the direction of George F. Carrier. He subsequently worked for the Avco Everett Research Laboratory and the General Electric Space Sciences Laboratory in Valley Forge, where he did research in high altitude aerodynamics. He developed what is now referred to as the Weinbaum-Weiss model of the high altitude laminar near wake. He became active in the anti-war movement of the 1960s and returned to academia in 1967 as an associate professor in the Department Mechanical Engineering at The City College of New York. He was promoted to professor in 1972, became a Herbert G Kayser Chair Professor in 1980 and a CUNY distinguished professor in 1986. Weinbaum married Alexandra Tamara Wolkowicz in 1962 and they have two children, Alys Eve Weinbaum and Daniel Eden Weinbaum.Contributions to science and engineering
Weinbaum is widely recognized for novel biomechanical models that have changed existing views in such areas as bone fluid flow and mechanotransduction (how bone cells sense mechanical forces), vulnerable plaque rupture (principal cause of cardiovascular death), the role of the endothelial glycocalyx in initiating intracellular signaling, microvascular fluid exchange, revised Starling hypothesis now referred to as Michel-Weinbaum model for capillary filtration, endothelial transport aspects of arterial disease, glomerular-tubular balance in the renal tubule, and bioheat transfer (Weinbaum-Jiji equation for microvascular heat exchange between blood and tissue). In each case he resolved a long-standing “mystery” by discovering either a new structure-such as micro-calcifications in the fibrous caps of vulnerable lesions or leaky junctions for transport of LDL across vascular endothelium- or a new function for a known structure –such as by demonstrating that the glycocalyx on endothelial cells senses the fluid shear stress of the blood flow and transmits it to the intracellular cytoskeleton. He has also proposed a new concept for a high speed train where lift is generated by a giant ski riding on a soft porous material in a channel with impermeable side walls. Weinbaum has been instrumental in the development of the biomedical engineering program at The City College of New York and CUNY. In 1994 he and Stephen C. Cowin established the New York Center for Biomedical Engineering and in 1999 they introduced the new CUNY PhD program in Biomedical Engineering. This led to the creation of the Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2002 and an undergraduate degree program in this field.Contributions to diversity
Weinbaum is recognized as a pioneering advocate for women and minorities in science and engineering. As an untenured professor he was almost fired in 1969 for his role in supporting Black and Hispanic students in their takeover of the City College campus in their protest against existing admission policies. In 1977 he established the first summer outreach program at The City College for low income public high school students in science and engineering. In 1988 he received the Public Service Award of the Fund for the City of New York from Mayor Edward Koch for his role in recruiting women and minority faculty and students to the Grove School of Engineering. His 1992 class-action lawsuit Weinbaum vs. Cuomo (lead article Metro Section of the ''New York Times'') brought national attention to the alleged racially discriminatory funding of higher education in New York State. The initial positive ruling was overturned on the New York State Court of Appeals in 1996 on the grounds that the state did not have to fund its two university systems CUNY and SUNY equally provided neither university had racially biased admissions. Weinbaum then turned his attention to encouraging high achieving underrepresented minority (URM) students to go to graduate school and pursue a PhD in a series of grants from the Sloan Foundation and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at NIH 1997–2013. The success of the latter program is described by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Kenneth Cooper in “Diverse Issues in Higher Education”. In 2020 Weinbaum received the PAESMEM Award from the White House for his excellence in mentoring of underrepresented minority students.Selected awards and recognition
*1959–61 Gordon McKay Prize Fellow, Harvard University *1961–1963 National Science Foundation Fellow, Harvard University, *1974 Senior fellow Scientific Research Council Great Britain *1988 Public Service Award Fund for the City of New York *1994 The Research Award of the European Society of Biomechanics *1996 Elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering *1996 Melville Medal (best original paper) American Society Mechanical Engineers *1997 Whitaker Distinguished Lecturer Biomedical Engineering Society *2002 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Molecular & Cellular Biology *2002 Elected National Academy of Sciences *2002 Elected Institute of Medicine *2007 Woodruff Lecturer, Georgia Institute of Technology *2007 Sackler Lecturer, Tel Aviv University *2007 Tenth Anniversary Ascher Shapiro Lecture, M.I.T. *2007 70th Anniversary Lecture, Hong Kong Polytechnic University *2008 Davies Medal RPI (highest honor for engineering alumnus) *2008 Beckman Distinguished Lecture, University of Illinois *2009 Inaugural Diversity Award Biomedical Engineering Society *2012 Honorary Doctorate of Science, The City College of New York, CUNY board of trustees *2013 Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences *2020 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering MentoringReferences
External links
*List of members of the National Academy of Sciences (Engineering sciences), Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences *List of members of the National Academy of Engineering (Bioengineering), Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering *National Academy of Medicine, Members of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies