Gerald H. Luttrell named the A.T. Massey Coal Company Professor
Gerald H. Luttrell, of Blacksburg, professor of mining and minerals engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, was named the A.T. Massey Coal Company Professor of Mining and Minerals Engineering by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors at its quarterly meeting Monday, Aug. 23.
The A.T. Massey Coal Company Professorship was established in 1984 by the A.T. Massey Coal Company Inc. of Richmond, Va., to recognize and reward an outstanding faculty member in the College of Engineering's Department of Mining and Minerals Engineering.
Luttrell began his research career on collectorless flotation, a process in which sulfide minerals are separated by flotation without using collectors. He has made major contributions to the area of bubble-particle interactions occurring during flotation. His research in collectorless flotation has led him to a patented process for removing inorganic sulfur and trace elements from coal.
Since he joined the Virginia Tech faculty in 1986, Luttrell has been instrumental in raising $12.4 million in research funding. He is recognized as the inventor on 14 patents; his publication record includes two book chapters, 29 peer-reviewed journal papers, 116 proceeding papers, 115 published reports, and 67 company reports; and the quality of his publications was recognized in 2000 when he received the prestigious Henry Krumb Lecturer Award from the Society of Mining Engineering.
Recognized as an outstanding teacher from student evaluations, Luttrell has one of the heaviest teaching loads in the Department of Mining and Minerals Engineering. He has developed nine new courses and received College Certificates of Teaching Excellence on three separate occasions, an impressive achievement when one considers that only four awards are presented annually and faculty members are only eligible every three years.
Luttrell was instrumental in the establishment of the Center for Advanced Separation Technologies, a consortium of seven universities with Virginia Tech as the lead institution. The U.S. Department of Energy funded this $10.5 million center for five years.
He received his bachelor's degree, master's degree, and Ph.D. from Virginia Tech.
The College of Engineering at Virginia Tech is internationally recognized for its excellence in 14 engineering disciplines and computer science. The college's 5,600 undergraduates benefit from an innovative curriculum that provides a "hands-on, minds-on" approach to engineering education, complementing classroom instruction with two unique design-and-build facilities and a strong Cooperative Education Program. With more than 50 research centers and numerous laboratories, the college offers its 2,000 graduate students opportunities in advanced fields of study such as biomedical engineering, state-of-the-art microelectronics, and nanotechnology.
Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become the largest university in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Tech's eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities, and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg, and other campus centers in northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 170 academic degree programs.
