Dr. Shuck has patents in four different disciplines that are in fields considered to be largely unrelated.
MORGANTOWN, WV, December 19, 2023 /24-7PressRelease/ -- L. Zane Shuck, PhD, PE, has been included in Marquis Who's Who. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Leveraging more than four decades of excellence in research science and engineering, Dr. Shuck has earned distinction as a leader in inventing multidisciplinary technologies. The venues created as founder, president and owner, of Technology Development Inc have served him well. He focuses his efforts on investigating the many manifestations of diverse scientific multivariate disciplines and principles, particularly in theoretical and applied mechanics, biomechanics, and oil and gas extraction technologies. He holds the distinction of receiving the first U. S. patent awarded through WVU. Additionally, he has served as the founder and president of the WMAC Foundation and is a member of numerous professional organizations, including the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Petroleum Division, and valued advisor to academia, such as, the West Virginia University and WVU Tech Colleges of Engineering Advisory Committees for 16 years, and Science Advisor to WV Governor Jay Rockefeller.
Prior to his current role, Dr. Shuck began his career as a sales engineer for the West Virginia Armature Co. in 1958 and became an associate professor and chairman of the mechanical engineering department at West Virginia Institute of Technology from 1960 to 1965. Following this time, he was a National Science Foundation Science Faculty Fellow and Research Engineer with West Virginia University until becoming a Supervisory Mechanical Engineer with the Morgantown Energy Research Center of the United States Department of Energy in 1970 to 1976.
Dr. Shuck continued his career as an Associate Director of the engineering experiment station and Professor of mechanical engineering for West Virginia University until 1980 when he founded his company TDI. He then served as an adjunct professor for the University's College of Engineering in 1980 until 1985. Additionally, he served as an expert advisor for numerous professional organizations and committees, including the State of West Virginia Coal and Energy Advisory Committee, the West Virginia Air Pollution Control Commission, WV Inventors Council, the United Fuel Gas Company and Consultant to Mound Laboratories, among several others.
Outside of his primary career efforts, Dr. Shuck was the science and technology coordinator for the West Virginia Legislature in 1979 and was the founder and chairman for the Appalachian Rivers Conference and Exhibit in 1998 for two years. He also still serves on the West Virginia Region VI Planning and Development Council. He also lent his expertise to the production of four technical films for the United States Department of Energy and to the editorial board of the journal In Situ. Having contributed more than 60 articles to his fields himself, he has also served as an editor for the Second Underground Coal Gasification Symposium Proceedings, the Transactions Journals, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Journal of Energy Resources Technology.
Prior to embarking on his professional journey, Dr. Shuck earned a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from the West Virginia Institute of Technology in 1958 and participated in a graduate program with Iowa State University in 1962. He also participated in four postdoctoral summer programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1965. He also earned a Master of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from WVU in 1965 and attended further graduate programs at Wayne State University the same year. In 1968 he returned to West Virginia University to earn a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in theoretical and applied mechanics and biomechanics in 1970. Well-qualified in his field, he is a registered professional engineer in WV and Ohio and certified by the National Council of Engineering Examiners. He was also granted a U. S. Security Q Clearance while employed by U.S. Dept. of Energy.
Among his professional accomplishments, Dr. Shuck has patents in four different disciplines that are in fields considered to be largely unrelated, including in fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, materials science, geomechanics, instrumentation engineering and biological sciences of biomechanics and gastroenterology. His research with patents earned him an award for "Most Patents Awarded in One Year Ever by a Federal Government Employee" from the United States Department of Energy in 1975. His research and invention methodology are also unique by instead of doing literature searches first in pursuing patents, he ignores prior art in order not to bias, plagiarize or disrupt his creative thought processes. Within the scope of his research, Dr. Shuck was the first to hypothesize the discrete jump nature of fracture growth in materials such as sandstone, limestone and shale during hydraulic fracturing, and later experimentally proved it in his laboratory. He was the first to analyze and predict the three-dimensional stress distribution in the earth's crust during hydraulic fracturing and demonstrate feasibility of re-orienting the earth's stress field sufficiently to control the orientation of new induced fractures. Through his company TDI, he drilled/completed 67 gas wells in WV, with some still producing today. He was the first to map the orientation of a natural vertical fracture propagation during hydraulic fracturing process in Bradford third sand, and invented better and more efficient oil and gas recovery processes. The huge significance can be differences in world-wide gas recovery efficiencies of original gas in place from 20% to 60%.
Having been integral in research in biomechanics, Dr. Shuck discovered the roles of the human microbiome in various diseases, including how they lead to temporary memory loss or other issues in the neurological and gastrointestinal systems. His research of the human gut microbiome that contributes to human diseases, lead to five patents awarded by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. (2012-2017).
In recognition of his stellar work in several disciplines, Dr. Shuck was honored with a Science Faculty Fellowship from the U. S. National Science Foundation to attend WVU, another NSF Fellowship to attend Iowa State University, and four Ford Foundation Fellowships to attend special summer programs at MIT and Wayne State University. He also won a Materials Testing Award from the American Society for Testing and Materials in 1970. Additionally, he received a Ralph James National Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1980. He was also recently honored with an eponym for the L. Zane Shuck Nanobiotechnology Laboratory at West Virginia University in 2016 and was admitted as an Alum Emeritus by the University in 2022.
In the future, Dr. Shuck intends to continue inventing and utilizing his skills and knowledge to produce world-changing research. He is presently working on a project with processes that have unique supply chain relevance in procuring special transducers and other manufactured components that used to be made in America, but have been outsourced to China. In 2020, he advocated the formation of a graduate school of technologies integration and commercialization at WVU to bring back manufacturing to America and fund underprivileged youth higher education. He believes U. S. society is in a degenerative stage with high risk of being irreversible. Dr. Shuck is determined to contribute to improving the evolutionary curve of multi-disciplinary technologies. He also advocates rewriting of engineering, secondary, and primary school curricula, to focus on coding, AI, IT, machine learning, robotics, multi-disciplines integration, especially biological sciences and systems, and emphasize basic sciences of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology in all secondary schools.
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