|
Greetings and welcome back for Spring Quarter, 2004: Here is a wrap up of the many exciting things that have been happening this week and over the break week and finals: 1. Professor and Associate Dean Chen-Ching Liu has been named the Power Engineering Educator of the Year by the IEEE Power Engineering Society (PES). Prof. Liu's award reads "For the integration of advanced concepts into power engineering educational curricula and the mentoring of students." CONGRATULATIONS, Chen-Ching! 2. One of our graduate students, Luca Cazzanti, has won a prestigious Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) Graduate Fellowship, which carries an award of $15,000. Luca is presently working at the Applied Physics Laboratory while pursuing his degree in EE. Well done, Luca! 3. I am extremely pleased to announce that two more of our new faculty have won the prestigious CAREER awards from the National Science Foundation. Assistant Professor Eric Klavins has won a CAREER award for his proposal titled "Programmed Robotic Self Assembly," and Assistant Professor Tara Javidi has won a CAREER award for her proposal titled "Cross-Layer Integrated Protocol Design for Broadband Wireless Data Networks: A Microeconomic Approach." Hooray for Eric and Tara!!!!!!!!! These awards are for five years duration and are funded at approximately $100,000 per year. They are the most prestigious award offered by the National Science Foundation in support of new faculty who are launching their careers. This now brings our department total to 12 CAREER awards to our new assistant professors! In fact, since the beginning of the CAREER program, every one of our assistant professors who has been eligible for the award has won it. Prior to the CAREER program, NSF offered the Presidential Young Investigator (PYI) program, whose awards were won by 8 of our department's (then) assistant professors. This full sweep of CAREER awards by our new assistant professors is most likely not matched by any other department of EE or ECE in the country, and it speaks volumes about the incredibly high quality and promise of our young faculty. Information on the NSF CAREER program can be found on this page. 4. I am also delighted to announce that Assistant Professor Radha Poovendran has won a prestigious Young Investigator Program (YIP) award from the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Radha's winning proposal was titled ÒSelf-Organizing Randomization Protocols for Routing and Security of Broadband Wireless Networks. Only 26 of these awards were given out this year, making them extremely competitive. Information on the ONR YIP program can be found in this Word document as well as on this Web page. I would like to congratulate Radha on this wonderful new award and also congratulate him on his "grand slam" status of now having won an NSF CAREER award, an Army Research Office (ARO) YIP award, and now the ONR YIP award. It is extremely rare for anyone to win this "triple crown." CONGRATULATIONS Radha!!! WELL DONE!!! (Now get some sleep!) 5. One of our undergraduate students, Naureen Banani, has received an Intel/SRC Master's Scholarship which provides two years support for graduate study. These are also very competitive, and only 10 were awarded across the US this year. Way to go, Naureen! 6. Four of our students have received Honorable Mentions in the NSF Graduate Fellowship competition. These were: Michael Beauchamp and Nels Jewell-Larsen, both graduate students who received their BSEE degrees from our department, Jonathan Malkin, a graduate student whose BS is from Yale, and Shalaka Bruskute, an undergraduate in our BSEE program. Competition for these graduate fellowships is extremely tough, and getting Honorable Mentions is very praiseworthy. Great job, folks!!!! As you can see, it has been an exciting few weeks in between quarters, with our department gaining still more recognition of our outstanding students and faculty. Enjoy the fantastic weather, and have a great Spring Quarter ... --Bruce Robert Bruce Darling, Ph.D., P.E. |