Sheldon Weinbaum
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Sheldon Weinbaum: (born July 26, 1937, in
Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...
,
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...
, United States) is an American biomedical engineer and biofluid mechanician. He is a CUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering at
The City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public research university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 18 ...
. He is a member of all three U.S. national academies (
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...
,
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...
and
National Academy of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), known as the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineerin ...
) and also the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
.Bulletin Board: Triple Crown of Academies
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
10/23/2002
In 2002 when he was elected to NAM he became the sixth living individual to be a member of all three National Academies and the first to achieve this distinction since 1992. He was the founding director (1994–1999) of the New York Center for Biomedical Engineering, a regional research consortium involving the BME program at The City College and eight of the premier health care institutions in
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
. He has been a lifelong advocate for women and minorities in science and engineering. He was the lead plaintiff and organizer of a class-action lawsuit (Weinbaum vs. Cuomo) charging New York State officials with racially discriminatory funding of its two university systems, CUNY and SUNY,“Claim over CUNY Funds Stands, Motion to Dismiss Denied in Lawsuit Based on Racial Bias Theory” Lead article front page New York Law Journal 10/18/1993 by Cerisse Anderson“250 at CUNY Sue New York Citing Racial Bias in Budget” Lead article Metro Section of the New York Times 2/27/1992 by Sam H. Verhovek the first CUNY faculty recipient of the Public Service Award of the Fund for the City of New York,”No Flash, Just Success Honors for 6 Who Help People” New York Times 12//13/1988 by Felicia Lee and the Inaugural Recipient of the “Diversity Award” of the
Biomedical Engineering Society BMES (the Biomedical Engineering Society) is the professional society for students, faculty, researchers and industry working in the broad area of biomedical engineering. BMES is the leading biomedical engineering society in the United States and w ...
(2009). He was the inaugural chair of the Selection Committee that chooses the annual Sloan Awardees for the outstanding math and science teachers in the New York City public high schools and served in this position from 2009 to 2019. In 2022 he received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Biomedical Engineerings from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. In 2023 he received the National Medal of Science from President Biden.


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 Jamaica High School was a four-year public high school in Jamaica, Queens, New York. It was operated by the New York City Department of Education. Jamaica High School was founded as the Union Free School in 1854, and located within a three-stor ...
, Queens, and Abraham Lincoln High School, Brooklyn, and received his bachelor's degree from
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (; RPI) is a private university, private research university in Troy, New York, United States. It is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world and the Western Hemisphere. It was establishe ...
in
Aeronautical Engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...
in 1959. He earned his MS in
Applied Physics Applied physics is the application of physics to solve scientific or engineering problems. It is usually considered a bridge or a connection between physics and engineering. "Applied" is distinguished from "pure" by a subtle combination of fac ...
1960 and his PhD in Engineering 1963 from
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
where he was a Gordon McKay Prize and then
National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...
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 In cellular biology, mechanotransduction ('' mechano'' + '' transduction'') is any of various mechanisms by which cells convert mechanical stimulus into electrochemical activity. This form of sensory transduction is responsible for a number o ...
(how bone cells sense mechanical forces),
vulnerable plaque A vulnerable plaque is a kind of atheromatous plaque – a collection of white blood cells (primarily macrophages) and lipids (including cholesterol) in the wall of an artery – that is particularly unstable and prone to produce sudden major pr ...
rupture (principal cause of cardiovascular death), the role of the endothelial
glycocalyx The glycocalyx (: glycocalyces or glycocalyxes), also known as the pericellular matrix and cell coat, is a layer of glycoproteins and glycolipids which surround the cell membranes of bacteria, epithelial cells, and other cells. Animal epithe ...
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 Shear stress (often denoted by , Greek alphabet, Greek: tau) is the component of stress (physics), stress coplanar with a material cross section. It arises from the shear force, the component of force vector parallel to the material cross secti ...
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 Edward Irving Koch ( ; December 12, 1924February 1, 2013) was an American politician. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 1977 and was mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989. Koch was a lifelong Democrat who ...
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 The New York Court of Appeals is the highest court in the Unified Court System of the State of New York. It consists of seven judges: the chief judge and six associate judges, who are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state senate t ...
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 The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., president and chief executive officer of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support origin ...
and
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) is the third largest Institute of the National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda, Maryland, United States. It is tasked with allocating about $3.6 billion in FY 2020 in tax revenue t ...
at
NIH The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...
1997–2013. The success of the latter program is described by
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
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

*2020
Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring The Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) is a Presidential award established by the United States White House in 1995. The program is administered by the National Science Foundation (NSF) on ...


See also

*
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in ...
*
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in ...
* Members of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies * Guggenheim Fellows 2002


References


External links


Members of the American Academy of Arts and SciencesCCNY News & Events
{{DEFAULTSORT:Weinbaum, Sheldon 1937 births Living people Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Members of the National Academy of Medicine Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumni Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni Abraham Lincoln High School (Brooklyn) alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) laureates City College of New York faculty