Instructors
John M. Cimbala, Ph.D., professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State, has taught
both graduate and undergraduate courses in fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, instrumentation, and air pollution control. He created the Undergraduate Fluid Flow Laboratory
in 1986 and has been a leader in using the Internet for teaching enhancement. Dr. Cimbala is the recipient of several teaching and advising awards, including the College of Engineering
Premier Teaching Award and the University-wide George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching. Dr. Cimbala conducts research in fluid mechanics, both experimental and computational,
and is the author or co-author of dozens of abstracts and papers that have been published in technical journals. His recent research emphases include turbomachinery, room ventilation,
nuclear reactor cooling, heat pipes, and chilled water units. Dr. Cimbala and Dr. Robert J. Heinsohn are co-authors of the textbook, Indoor Air Quality Engineering, Marcel
Dekker, 2003. Dr. Cimbala is also co-author of a popular undergraduate fluid dynamics textbook, Fluid Mechanics: Fundamentals and Applications, Ed. 2, McGraw-Hill,
2010.
Smoke School Instructor — Wayne Pauley
Wayne R. Pauley, Ph.D., P.E., principal research engineer, is affiliated with LeMont Nittany Corporation. His research interests include turbulent flow and flow noise,
unsteady aerodynamics, advanced heat transfer, and biomedical flows. He is a consultant to industry and government and has conducted research projects sponsored by DOE, NASA, NSF, ONR,
and Sandia National Laboratory. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at Penn State and Stanford University in fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, gas dynamics, experimental
aerodynamics, thermodynamics, and heat transfer. He has developed several wind tunnels, flow channels, and gas dynamics test facilities, and quantitative optical measurement techniques
for gas and liquid flows and heat transfer. He has published dozens of technical papers.
Smoke School Field Test Instructor — Vern Irwin
Vernon C. Irwin, M.S., certification test instructor, is an instructor with the College of Engineering at Penn State. He has participated in several environmental research
projects and has been an instructor in the field certification test for the Visible Emissions Training Program since 1978. He developed and now coordinates the computer test-scoring and
data-collection software programs used for this program. He has attended several EPA Visible Emissions Training seminars and has twenty-five years of active field experience in visible
emissions training. His research activities include generation and measurement of aerosols and the design of animal exposure facilities. He is co-author of several technical papers and is
an industrial consultant.
Margaret Gearhart
Margaret Gearhart, B.A., is the owner of Cricket Trax, a consulting, training, and database management business. She is involved in the field of adult education in the home
and in the workplace and has created and produced various training manuals. As a technical writer, she has been a contributor to and editor of several informational newsletters. She has
been associated with the visible emissions evaluation program at Penn State for six years as a field certification instructor and has attended Visible Emission Evaluation training
seminars given by the EPA.