Thawsome!

Thayer professor Victor Petrenko has one cool car, and not just because it’s an Audi A-6. The vehicle’s ice-encrusted windshield clears in seconds (compared to 7.5 minutes for a regular car) thanks to Petrenko’s innovative deicing system. The director of Thayer’s Ice Physics and Technology Lab, who is shopping the technology around to auto and airplane makers, notes that manufacturing costs are “next to nothing” because the device is actually a system of transparent, electrically conductive parts that send a pulse of electricity through the windshield. This electrolysis breaks the ice down into hydrogen and oxygen gas.

Petrenko’s earlier ice research brought forth a machine that makes ice in less than a second and technologies that prevent snow and ice accumulation from damaging roofs and power lines. Small wonder, then, that Petrenko has his own company, Ice Engineering LLC. The firm’s Web site provides all the frozen facts.

Dr. Jay Dunlap, professor and chair of genetics at the Medical School, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the country’s premier scientific society.

A new campus garden will memorialize professors Half and Susanne Zantop, who were murdered in 2001. Construction began in May on a site behind Rollins Chapel that will double as an outdoor classroom.