IN THIS ISSUE: administration | ACES | engineering | FAA | LAS | Eng & LAS |
administration
Morton W. Weir, UI chancellor emeritus, will receive a commendation from Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso in recognition of Weir’s promotion of Japanese arts and culture, which has fostered friendship and mutual understanding between Japan and the U.S. The Consulate General of Japan at Chicago will present Weir with a certificate of commendation and a silver cup on behalf of Aso this fall. Weir was chancellor of the Urbana campus from 1988-1993.
agricultural, consumer and environmental sciences
David H. Baker, professor emeritus of nutrition and a University Scholar with the department of animal sciences, has been named the third annual winner of the New Frontiers in Animal Nutrition Award from the Federation of Animal Science Societies and the American Feed Industry Association. The award was designed to stimulate, acknowledge and reward pioneering research involving the nutrition of animals.
engineering
Karl Hess, the Swanlund Chair Professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering, has been nominated by President George W. Bush to serve on the National Science Board, the 24-member body that oversees and establishes policies for the National Science Foundation. The NSF is an independent federal agency with an annual budget of $5 billion that accounts for about 20 percent of all federally funded basic academic research. Board members are selected on the basis of their eminence in certain fields. Hess and seven others were nominated to the board and await confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Pierre Wiltzius, director of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, recommended Hess to Chancellor Richard Herman for nomination to the board. Hess retired in May.
Wen-mei Hwu, Sanders-AMD Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering, with several co-authors and former students, was awarded the 2006 ISCA Influential Paper Award by the 2006 International Symposium on Computer Architecture, which was presented at the ISCA’s June 20 meeting in Boston. The award recognizes the paper from the 1991 ISCA Proceedings that has proved the most influential and exerted the greatest impact on the field in terms of research, development, products or ideas.
Several College of Engineering faculty members received awards from the Illini-Entrepreneurship Center Network, one of several networks that serve as regional hubs for coordinating small business development, entrepreneurship training and entrepreneurial development activity in Illinois.
John A. Rogers, professor of chemistry, of engineering and of materials science and engineering, received a 2005 Innovation Discovery Award. The award recognizes faculty members and/or academic professionals who in the past three years have made significant and groundbreaking discoveries with the greatest potential for societal and/or economic impact. Rogers was recognized for his work in the field of flexible electronics systems. Nick Holonyak Jr., the John Bardeen Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics, was awarded the 2005 Innovation Leadership Award in recognition of the many inventions and technologies he discovered that have affected people’s lives in significant ways.
fine and applied arts
The work of Donald E. Frith, professor emeritus in the School of Art and Design, is featured in “The Way of Clay: Ceramic Invitational,” an exhibition at the Topanga Canyon Gallery in Topanga, Calif. The work of more than 20 ceramic artists is being displayed through Aug. 20. Frith is known for his ceramic teapots and his book, “Mold Making for Ceramics.”
liberal arts and sciences
Richard D. Braatz, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, received the 2005 Antonio Ruberti Young Research Prize, presented by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. Control Systems Society and the Antonio Ruberti Foundation. The award recognizes distinguished cutting-edge contributions by a young researcher under age 40 to the theory or application of systems and control. Additionally, Braatz was awarded the 2005 IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Award. He also delivered the Distinguished Lindsay Lecture at Texas A&M University on April 27 about his research in multiscale systems engineering.
Richard I. Masel, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, has received the 2005 Innovation Discovery Award from the Illini-Entrepreneurship Center Network in recognition of his novel work in the development of formic acid fuel cells.
Nikolaos V. Sahinidis, a 2005 University scholar and professor in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering, was awarded the 2006 Beale-Orchard-Hayes Prize from the Mathematical Programming Society July 30 at the 19th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The award is given once every three years for the best paper in computational optimization during the intervening period and favors work that has reached a particularly high level of recognition and impact. Sahinidis’ development of the BARON optimization code underlies the recognition. Sahinidis also gave the 2006 Bayer Lecture in Process Systems at Carnegie Mellon University on May 2.
Michael Strano, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and affiliate at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, was selected to receive the 2006 Coblentz Award for Molecular Spectroscopy, which is given annually by the Coblentz Society to recognize outstanding contributions to the field of molecular spectroscopy by investigators under the age of 36.
Additionally, Strano received a 2006 Beckman Young Investigator Award. This program provides research support to the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences.
Strano and three of his graduate students also were awarded a 2006 Collaboration Success Award at a recent national meeting of the Council for Chemical Research. The award recognizes outstanding collaborative research between academic and industrial teams. The collaborative research units were from the UI, University of California, Dupont University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Texas, Arlington.
Huimin Zhao, professor of biomolecular engineering, was named a Helen Corley Petit Scholar for 2006-2007. The honor recognizes extraordinary scholarship and teaching by young faculty members in the college.
Two faculty members in the department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese received the 2005 Social Entrepreneurship Award from the Illini-Entrepreneurship Center Network. Annie Abbott and Darcy Lear were recognized for their work in establishing the Spanish and Entrepreneurship Program at the UI. Their pioneering program connects local bilingual professionals who use Spanish in their daily work with students at the UI. Students can utilize their acquired language skills to be of service to the local Spanish-speaking communities as well as gain an appreciation of the advantages of bilingual skills in today’s business world.
engineering and liberal arts and sciences
An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Urbana campus won a Silver Humie award and a $3,000 prize at the Human Competitive Results award ceremonies July 12 at the 2006 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference. The awards are conferred annually to recognize computer-generated results that rival the creativity or inventiveness of humans. The Illinois team’s entry, “Multiobjective Genetic Algorithms for Multiscaling Excited-state Direct Dynamics in Photochemistry,” used sophisticated genetic algorithms search procedures based on the mechanics of natural genetics and selection to enable chemistry calculations to be performed thousands of times faster and significantly more accurately than previously possible.
The effort combined researchers from UI’s departments of industrial and enterprise systems engineering, materials science and engineering, and chemistry. Team members included Duane D. Johnson, professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and of physics; David E. Goldberg, professor of computer science; Todd J. Martinez, a chemistry professor in the Beckman Institute; and students Jeff Leiding, Jane Owens, Kumara Sastry (who presented the entry) and Alexis L. Thompson.