Penn State Behrend
    School of Engineering
    5101 Jordan Road
    Erie, PA  16563-1701

    Office: REDC 241
    Phone: (814) 898-6391
    Fax: (814) 898-6125
    Email: lasher@psu.edu

William C. Lasher
Biography

Bill Lasher is associate professor and program chair of the Mechanical Engineering program at Penn State Behrend.  He received his B.S.E. and M.S.E. degrees in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering from the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo.  He has worked as a yacht designer at C&C Yachts in Oakville, Ontario; as an assistant professor at Gannon University in Erie, PA; and as a computer applications engineer at American Sterilizer Company in Erie, PA.  He joined the faculty at Behrend in 1984 and led the transition from a multi-disciplinary engineering program to separate Mechanical and Electrical Engineering programs, and also played a key role in initial accreditation of the ME program in 1994.  He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, as well as a member of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, the American Society of Engineering Education, and Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honorary Society.  His research interests are in computational fluid dynamics and engineering education.  In 2003 he took a sabbatical leave to work with the Yacht Research Unit in Auckland, New Zealand on sail aerodynamics.  He teaches courses in engineering design, computer-aided engineering, and computational fluid dynamics