IN THIS ISSUE: BUSINESS | COMMUNICATINOS | EDUCATION | ENGINEERING | LAS
business
Lois Meerdink, assistant dean of business career services, was named Boss of the Year by The Secretariat, a fellowship organization for secretaries at the UI. Meerdink was nominated by Lezli Cline and will have her name inscribed on a traveling plaque.
communications
Thomas C. O’Guinn, professor in the Institute of Communications Research, has won the Journal of Consumers Research’s Best Article Award for 2001 for his article “Brand Community,” which he co-wrote with Albert M. Muniz Jr. O’Guinn is the only person to ever receive the award twice. Each year the journal, published by University of Chicago Press, names a Best Article Award from issues published three years earlier. He was a co-winner in 1997 and a finalist in 1989 and 1998.
education
The Global Human Resource Development distance master’s degree program has been given the Best Buy HR Degree Award by GetEducated.com, a Web site designed to help people find online undergraduate and graduate programs. The award was given on the basis of fall 2003 tuition costs and education quality for adult and non-traditional learners.
engineering
John Buckmaster, professor of aerospace engineering, was awarded the Ya B. Zeldevich Gold Medal by the Combustion Institute. The medal is awarded for outstanding contributions to the theory of combustion or detonation. The Combustion Institute is an educational non-profit, international, scientific society whose purpose is to promote and disseminate research in combustion science.
John A. Rogers, professor of materials science and engineering, was selected as a 2004 Small Times Magazine Best Small Tech Researcher Award Runner-up. The Small Tech Awards recognizes the best people, products and companies in nanotechnology, MEMS and microsystems.
Nick Sahinidis, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, won the 2004 Computing Society Prize of the Institute for Operations and the Management Sciences. He shares the award with his former student, Mohit Tawarmalani, now an assistant professor at Purdue. The award is given annually for research excellence in the interface between operations research and computer science. The 2004 prize was awarded to Sahinidis and his former student for “their contributions to the field of nonlinear global optimization summarized in their book, ‘Convexification and Global Optimization in continuous and Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming,’ and embodied in the BARON software package.”
liberal arts and sciences
Martha U. Gillette, professor of molecular and integrative physiology, has received the 2004 Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Neuroscience’s Women in Neuroscience group. The award, given since Salpeter’s death in 2000, recognizes career achievements of women in neuroscience and their roles as scientists, mentors and teachers.
