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C. Fred Higgs, III, Ph.D.

C. Fred Higgs, III  

C. Fred Higgs, III is a Professor in the mechanical engineering department at Carnegie Mellon University. After graduating from FAMU High School in Tallahassee, Florida, Dr. Higgs received his BS degree in mechanical engineering from Tennessee State University (Go BigBlue!). Later, he earned his MS and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in thermal fluids and tribology. Prior to coming to Carnegie Mellon, he completed a postdoctorate at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

Dr. Higgs is an Associate Editor for both the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME) Journal of Tribology and the STLE Tribology Transactions journal, in addition to being a member of the ASME Tribology Executive Board. He is also the founder and director of the Carnegie Mellon Particle Flow & Tribology Laboratory.

An affiliated faculty member with the Carnegie Mellon Electrical and Computer Engineering department, Dr. Higgs is an interdisciplinary scientist with affiliations in the Center for Multiscale Modeling of Engineering Materials (CM2EM), the Center for Silicon System Implementation (CSSI), the world’s largest academic information storage research center— the Data Storage Systems Center (DSSC). Since becoming a professor at Carnegie Mellon, he has been an invited speaker in numerous international venues, including the International Conference on Abrasive Processes, International VLSI/ULSI Multilevel Interconnection Conference and Fortune 500 companies like Hitachi GST, Intel, and Texas Instrument. He was the lead organizer of the 2009 Materials Research Society Annual Spring Meeting CMP Symposium. With nearly 100 archival publications, of about half which are typically journal publications, His Particle Flow & Tribology Laboratory (PFTL) conducts coordinated high-performance computing and high-fidelity experimentation to predict the behavior of particle-based engineering systems and tribological applications. In 2007, he was awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award, which is the NSF’s most prestigious grant for the nation's top young faculty. In 2010, he received the ASME Burt L. Newkirk award, which is given to an individual under age 40 who has made notable R&D contributions to the field of tribology. In 2013, he was co-awarded the Benjamin Richard Teare Teaching Award, which is the Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering's highest teaching honor. A Sloan PhD program professor, he is also involved with the Pittsburgh community.

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Tribology & Education within Cyberinfrastructure: Online Lecture Modules (Beta versions)

Today’s classroom has no walls, spacial limits, or resource prejudice. Thus, a student in Cairo (Africa) or Cairo, Georgia (USA) can receive a tutorial on hydrodynamic bearings, computational fluid dynamics, numerical methods in tribology, and more. And best of all, this information will be free to low-cost! Taking small steps towards this goal, Prof. C. Fred Higgs III delivered a first generation of online lecture modules.

Please be forewarned, these lectures have not been optimized for online education although future courses will be using Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative (OLI).

The modules below are a result of a beta effort by the PFTL located at Carnegie Mellon University.
The Particle Flow & Tribology Laboratory is running beta tests of online modules of various topics in Tribology & beyond:

  • Video Module 1: A lecture on the Rayleigh Step Bearing and the Hydrostatic Bearing
    Get lecture notes here to follow video.
  • Video Module 2: A lecture on Numerical Solution of Reynolds Equ.
    Get lecture notes here to follow video.
  • The PhD video: Watch Dr. Higgs’ argument for why the best and brightest students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) must consider “The PhD, the Whole PhD, and nothing but the PhD.”

The beta test is in partial fulfillment of the vision written for the PFTL .


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