Alejandro Garcia, professor of physics at San José State University, has received the university's 2000/2001 President's Scholar Award. One of the three highest faculty awards given by the university, the award recognizes a faculty member who exemplifies excellence in scholarship and research.

A member of the faculty since 1989, Garcia has earned an international reputation as a researcher in computer simulations of fluids at the microscopic level - a field that blends physics, chemistry, applied materials, computer science, and mechanical engineering.

Garcia, according to Gerry Selter, dean of the College of Science, is a "complete" faculty member. "He is an excellent teacher, a superb researcher and a respected colleague. His work in microscopic modeling of fluid dynamics is of the highest caliber and has gained international recognition. His President's Scholar Award is richly deserved," said Selter.

Over the years, Garcia has been involved with research for IBM, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., and the Institute for Scientific Computing Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

His textbook, Numerical Methods for Physics, is "the most popular and definitive textbook in the field of computational physics," according to SJSU colleague Pat Hamill.

In addition, Garcia has written more than 30 articles in scholarly journals and has given talks as numerous international conferences in Germany, Australia and Japan.

In May, he will participate in a four-day, invitation-only workshop that he co-organized at the European Center for Atomic and Molecular Computation in Lyon, France, for the leading researchers in the field of computational kinetic theory.

Garcia holds a B.S. degree from Florida Atlantic University and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin.