Professor Falk joined in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the mid-'s He is a former department chairman and has served as the director of the Swanson School of Engineering's Engineering Physics Program He is interested in undergraduate education and recently completed his second five-year term as an engineering evaluator for ABET formerly Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology Before joining the University of Pittsburgh Professor Falk worked for nearly six years at GTE Sylvania in an electro-optics research and development group In early 's he spent a sabbatical year in the Laser Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Falk's research work is in the general area of lasers and nonlinear optics His most recent efforts were concerned with the use of Raman spectroscopy for detection and concentration analysis of gases This work examined the enhancement of Raman signal strengths using hollow-core waveguides capillaries and photonic bandgap fibers to contain the scattering medium The work has applications in maximizing the efficiency of high-power natural gas turbines while simultaneously minimizing pollutant output Professor Falk became an emeritus professor in the fall of