IN THIS ISSUE: ACES | AHS | ENGINEERING | ENG & LAS | LAS |
agricultural, consumer and environmental sciences
ACES faculty members took more top honors at this summer’s annual conference of the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture than any other institution of higher education with seven professors and one graduate student receiving awards.
NACTA’s most prestigious honor, the Distinguished Educator Award, went to Wayne L. Banwart, who retired from the university in September 2007 as interim associate dean. The award recognizes meritorious service to NACTA and to higher education through teaching, educational research and administration. Banwart was one of three who received the award in 2008.
The Teaching Award of Excellence for 2008 was awarded to Robert M. Skirvin, a professor of natural resources and environmental sciences. The recipient must exemplify excellence in post-secondary instruction in agriculture, and have previously received a NACTA Teaching Fellow Award.
Illinois also received the 2008 John Deere Award, which was given to Philip Buriak, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering. The award is given jointly to a faculty member and his or her institution.
Four ACES professors were honored with NACTA Teaching Fellow Awards: Darin M. Eastburn, a professor of crop sciences; Nicki J. Engeseth, a professor of food science and human nutrition; Jennifer L. Hardesty, a professor of human and community development; and Schuyler S. Korban, a professor of natural resources and environmental sciences.
applied health sciences
Gerald W. “Jerry” Bell, a retired professor of kinesiology and of disability resources and educational services, was inducted into the National Athletic Trainers’ Association Class of 2008 Fellows. This inaugural class was honored in St. Louis during the association’s annual meeting and Clinical Symposium on June 20. Fellows were recognized for outstanding contributions in research and education and service to the athletic training profession.
engineering
Shun Lien Chuang, the Robert C. MacClinchie Distinguished Professor in electrical and computer engineering, received a 2008 Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists.
The award, granted through the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, annually honors up to 100 scientists and scholars from all fields across the world who are expected to continue making advancements. Chuang’s research interests include semiconductor optoelectronic devices and physics, strained quantum-well and quantum-dot lasers, and optical semiconductor amplifiers, among others. Chuang will study with professor Dieter Bimberg, the pioneer contributor of quantum dot lasers, at Technical University in Berlin during his sabbatical in spring semester 2009. Chuang and Bimberg will work on novel nanophotonic quantum-dot devices.
Ravi Iyer, interim vice chancellor for research, director of the Coordinated Science Laboratory, and the George and Ann Fisher Distinguished Professor of Engineering; Zbigniew Kalbarczyk, research professor in the Coordinated Science Lab; and Aleksei Aksimentiev, professor of physics, have been recognized with 2008 IBM Faculty Fellow Awards.
Iyer’s major research areas include reliable and secure networks and systems, computer measurement and modeling, and dependability and security validation and benchmarking.
Kalbarczyk’s areas of expertise in computer systems include dependability and security, measurement, validation, hardware architecture for reliability and security, OS issues, and embedded systems.
Aksimentiev was one of three physicists to be honored this year. His work includes research on molecular motors, mechanical proteins, F-ATP synthase; high-throughput DNA sequencing, silicon biotechnology, nano-sensors; membrane transport, ion channels, biomolecular modeling.
engineering | liberal arts and sciences
Richard Braatz, the Millenium Chair in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering, was one of 16 elected fellows of the International Federation on Automatic Control for 2008. IFAC is a multinational federation of approximately 50 national member organizations concerned with automatic control. The award is presented to persons who have made outstanding and extraordinary contributions in the field of interest of IFAC, in the role as an engineer/scientist, technical leader or educator. Braatz was recognized for his “contributions to the robust control of industrial systems.”
Paul Kenis and Daniel Pack, professors of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Andrew Singer, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, are among 82 scientists selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering’s 14th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. The 2 1/2-day event will bring together engineers ages 30 to 45 who are performing exceptional engineering research and technical work in a variety of disciplines.
Pack is one 15 speakers and Kenis and Singer are general participants. The symposium will be hosted Sept. 18-20 by Sandia National Laboratories at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
Two papers written by faculty members and former students and postdocs of the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the School of Chemical Sciences will be recognized by Journal of Process Control Prize Paper Awards. Prizes will be presented at the IFAC Congress in July in Seoul, Korea.
“First-principles and direct design approaches for the control of pharmaceutical crystallization” was honored as best survey paper. It appeared in the journal in 2005. Co-authors are professor Richard D. Braatz, the Millenium Chair; Mitsuko Fujiwara, a senior research associate, and students Zoltan K. Nagy and J.W. Chew.
“Perspectives on the design and control of multiscale systems” was honored as best theory paper and appeared in the journal in 2006. Co-authors are Braatz; Richard C. Alkire, the Charles and Dorothy Prizer Chair; and Edmund G. Seebauer, the James W. Westwater Professor and head of the department; and students Timothy O. Drews, E. Rusli, Rudiyanto Gunawan and Y. He.
liberal arts and sciences
“Playing America’s Game,” by Adrian Burgos, a professor of history, was named a finalist for the 2008 Seymour Medal. The book award is given each year by the Society of American Baseball Researchers for the best book of baseball history or biography written the previous calendar year. The committee wrote: “Latinos have played a vital role in baseball for generations and Burgos does a masterful job in presenting their history in the context of the complex racial and social history of the game. …Burgos’ work is as scholarly as it is readable and enlightening.”
Martin Gruebele, the William H. and Janet Lycan Professor of Chemistry, director of the Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology, and professor of physics and of biophysics, has been elected to membership in the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina. The German National Academy of Science (the Leopoldina) is highly selective and the world’s oldest academy for medicine and natural sciences. Only 21 members were elected this year, including seven chemists.
Marshall Scott Poole, a professor of speech communication and director of the Center for Computing in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (I-CHASS), received the 2008 Stephen H. Chaffee Career Productivity Award from the International Communication Association, an academic association for scholars of human and mediated communication. The award, which recognizes sustained work on a communication problem over a long period of time, carries a $1,000 prize and a commitment to present the work at the 2009 ICA Conference. Poole received the award May 24, during the association’s 58th Annual International Conference in Montreal.
M. Christina White, professor of chemistry, was recently awarded the 2008 Abbott Young Investigator Award. Her research interests are in the field of organic synthesis with an emphasis on the discovery of transition-metal mediated reactions that address unsolved problems in organic methodology.