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PUBLICATIONS
Inside
Illinois
Vol.
26, No. 3, Aug. 3, 2006
achievements
A report
on honors, awards, appointments and other outstanding achievements of
faculty and staff members.
adminisration
| ACES | engineering | FAA
| LAS | Eng & LAS
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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.
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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.
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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.
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