PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 24, No. 15, Feb. 17, 2005

achievements A report on honors, awards, appointments and other outstanding achievements of faculty and staff members.

Engineering | ILIR | LAS | Library and Information Science | Social Work ||

engineering
An article by Ralf Koetter, professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Coordinated Science Laboratory, and UI colleagues as well as researchers at the University of California, San Diego, was named the top publication in information theory during the past two years by the Board of Governors of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Information Theory Society. The article developed an improved decoding algorithm for error-correcting codes that are used today in communication and storage devices ranging from computer hard drives to deep-space probes.
Koetter and Alexander Vardy of UCSD received the award for their work on “Algebraic Soft-Decision Decoding of Reed-solomon Cods,” published in the November 2003 issue of “IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.”

Paul Kwiat, professor of electrical and computer engineering, was one of the participants selected for a European Union-funded project to study quantum mechanics, which recently won the Descartes Prize for excellence among all EU projects. Kwiat also was recently named a fellow of the Optical Society of America.

George Miley, professor of nuclear, plasma and radiological engineering, has been awarded the 2004 American Nuclear Society’s Radiation and Technology Award for achievements in research on nuclear pumped lasers, radiation energy conversion and IEC neutron sources. He received this award at the society’s winter meeting in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 17.

labor and industrial relations
Kevin Hallock, professor of labor and industrial relations, received an Outstanding Young Scholar Award from the Labor and Employment Relations Association (formerly the Industrial Relations Research Association). The award was given during the association’s annual meeting on Jan. 8 in Philadelphia.

liberal arts and sciences
Hans Henrich Hock, professor of Sanskrit and of the classics, has been elected editor of Folia Linguistica Historica, one of two volumes published by the Linguistic Society of America. Hock has been a member of the Honorary Members Committee of the society for three years, serving as chair of the committee in 2004.

Catherine Prendergast, professor of English, has received the Modern Language Association’s Mina P. Schaughnessy Prize for her book “Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning After Brown vs. Board of Education.” The award is given for outstanding work in the fields of language, culture, literacy or literature with a strong application to the teaching of English. Prendergast’s book is a critical account of the “tangled history of literacy and racial justice” following the landmark 1955 civil rights case. Predergast will receive a $1,000 award.

Chris Wickens, professor of psychology, has been awarded the 2005 Flight Safety Foundation/Airbus Human Factors Award. This award recognizes “outstanding achievement in human factors contributions to aviation safety.” Wickens is also an associate director for the Willard Airport Commercial Operation, a department affiliate for the mechanical and industrial engineering department, and a professor in the Beckman Institute.

library and information science
Betsy Hearne, professor of library and information science and director for the Center for Children’s Books, chaired the 2005 Caldecott Award Committee. The 2005 John Newberry and Randolph Caldecott medals honor outstanding writing and illustration of works published in the United States in the previous years.

W. Boyd Rayward, professor of library and information science, received the Research in Information Science Award at the annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. The award recognizes an individual or organization for outstanding research contributions in the field of information science.

social work
Jess McDonald, clinical professor, was awarded the Exemplar Award by the National Network of Social Work Managers.

Nancy Sidote Salyers, clinical professor and co-director of Fostering Results in the Children and Family Research Center, has received the Girl Scouts Illinois Crossroads Council Community Woman of Achievement Award.

Mark Testa, professor and director of the Children and Family Research Center, received a Blue Bow Award from the Children’s Home and Aid Society of Illinois for leadership and research to improve systems of care for children in Illinois’ foster-care system.

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