Dr. Chiu-sen Wang, a visiting scholar in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Professor and Dean Emeritus, College of Public Health at National Taiwan University, was presented with the 50th Anniversary Award of the Society of Powder Technology in a ceremony at Makuhari New City, Japan. The award was given in recognition of his distinguished achievements and outstanding contributions to the promotion of international cooperation in powder technology, a field with many industrial applications For the past two years, Dr. Wang has been working with Professor S. K. Friedlander and his group at UCLA on understanding nanoparticle deposition in the human respiratory tract.

Joint civil and environmental engineering professor and vice chair, and mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Jiun-Shyan "J.S." Chen has been elected a Fellow of the International Association for Computational Mechanics, which has 32 affiliated scientific organizations in the field of Computational Mechanics in 45 countries. The Fellows of IACM are elected worldwide biannually. Chen was elected along with eight other researchers from around the world.

Computer science, medicine, and biomedical engineering professor Joe DiStefano has been elected by the board of directors of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) as a 2005 BMES Senior Fellow.

Bioengineering professor Warren Grundfest has been selected as President of the International Brain Mapping and Intraoperative Surgical Planning Society, a highly interdisciplinary group of neurosurgeons, neuroscientists, radiologists, electrical engineers, bioengineers, geneticists, biochemists, and other scientists and physicians dedicated to the use of brain mapping techniques for procedure guidance and therapy.

Civil and environmental engineering professor Jiann-Wen "Woody" Ju has been appointed as the editor of the International Journal of Damage Mechanics (IJDM). The IJDM is referenced by all major citation indices and scholarly search databases. Established in 1990, and Ju has served as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the IJDM since its inception.

Chemical and biomolecular engineering professor and vice chair James Liao has been chosen to receive the 2006 Merck Award in Metabolic Engineering at the Metabolic Engineering Conference held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The award is given every other year to recognize an outstanding contributor to the field of Metabolic Engineering. Previous awardees include Greg Stephanopoulos of MIT.

Computer science and engineering professor Rafail Ostrovsky has been awarded a 2006 IBM Faculty Award in recognition of his achievements.

Electrical engineering assistant professor Mihaela van der Schaar has been chosen as a 2006 Okawa Foundation Award recipient for her work on "Proactive Cross-layer Design for Non-collaborative Multi-User Wireless Multimedia Resource Management using game-theory." The Okawa Foundation Award recognizes achievements in telecommunications research. Van der Schaar was also recently awarded the IEEE Circuits and Systems Best Paper Award together with her colleagues Beatrice Pesquet-Popescu and Deepok Srinivas Turaga for the paper, "Complexity Scalable Motion Compensated Wavelet Video Encoding.”

Computer science professor Judea Pearl has been awarded the inaugural "Purpose Prize" (jointly with American University's Akbar Ahmed) by Civic Ventures, a San Francisco think tank that sponsors the prize as a reward to American individuals or teams who have worked to solve society's problems. The prize acknowledges recipients for using their midlife experience in creative and innovative ways. Professors Pearl and Ahmed were honored for their work in promoting Muslim-Jewish understanding and encouraging peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Civil and environmental engineering professor Jonathan Stewart has been awarded the 2006 Shamsher Prakash Research Award for ground failures related to strength loss from liquefaction of sands, and cyclic softening of clays. The award is given to engineers, scientists and researchers under 40 years of age, and candidates are chosen from all over the world. Nominations are reviewed by a judging committee of international experts from Canada, Greece, Japan, and United States.

Electrical engineering professor Kang Wang has co-authored a handbook on nanotechnology with UC Riverside professor Alexander Balandin. The book, five volumes and approximately, 2,500 pages in length, is called “The Handbook of Semiconductors Nanostructures and Nanodevices,” and is published by American Scientific Publishers.

Electrical engineering professor Chan J. Joshi has been chosen to receive the prestigious 2006 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for his “insight and leadership in applying plasma concepts to high energy electron and positron acceleration, and for his creative exploration of related aspects of plasma physics." The prize, awarded annually to recognize outstanding contributions to the field of plasma physics, was established in 1975 by the Maxwell Technologies, Inc., in honor of the Scottish physicist, James Clerk Maxwell and is currently sponsored by General Atomics.

Chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Jane Chang has been selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering's Frontiers of Engineering program. The event brings together engineers ages 30 to 45 who are performing cutting-edge engineering research and technical work in a variety of disciplines. Participants from industry, academia, and government are nominated by fellow engineers or organizations.

The Water Technology Research (WaTeR) Center, led by chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Yoram Cohen, and the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research at Ben-Gurion University have received a grant from the Sol Leshin Program to promote research collaboration and exchange of research scholars between the two institutions.

Bioengineering chair Timothy Deming has been chosen to deliver a speech at the Frontiers of Engineering Symposium in September 2006. The event brings together engineers ages 30 to 45 who are performing cutting-edge engineering research and technical work in a variety of disciplines. Participants from industry, academia, and government are nominated by fellow engineers or organizations.

Electrical engineering professor Harold Fetterman, with his colleagues Bill Steier and Larry Dalton, has been awarded the 2006 IEEE LEOS William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award for his seminal work with polymer photonic devices and materials. Over the past decade, this group has revolutionized the field of polymer photonics and established a technology base that is on the brink of commercialization. Awarded annually, the Streifer award is the highest award to be given by the Lasers and Electro-optics Society of IEEE.

Eric Shen, a lecturer in civil and environmental engineering on transportation engineering courses, was recently appointed by the Transportation Research Board (a division of the National Research Council), as a member of the Critical Transportation Infrastructure Protection Committee (ABE40). The Committee develops research topics and provides advices on policies relating to threats posed by potential physical, chemical, biological, and cyber attacks on critical transportation infrastructure in the United States.

Mechanical and aerospace engineering/civil and environmental engineering lecturer Ted Shugar received a Non Senate Faculty Professional Development Award from UCLA.

Computer science professor Demetri Terzopoulos has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. The society is dedicated to the promotion of exceptional learning, research and accomplishments in the arts, humanities and sciences. Election to Fellowship in the Society is the highest academic accolade available to scientists and scholars in that nation.

Abeer Alwan, professor of electrical engineering, has received a prestigious Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship. She is one of only two engineers selected for the fellowship, which is awarded to 50 chosen academics.

Yoram Cohen, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, has been elected as vice-chair of the Separations Division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He will succeed as the chair of the Division in 2008.

Thomas Hahn, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, was designated as a Centennial Fellow of the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Penn State University at the recent Centennial Celebration in June. The designation recognizes his distinguished achievements throughout his career.

Yu Huang, professor of materials science and engineering, has been chosen to receive a “Nano 50” Innovator Award. The Nano 50™ Awards, presented by Nanotech Briefs magazine, recognize the top 50 technologies, products, and innovators that have significantly impacted, or are expected to impact, the state of the art in nanotechnology.

Leonard Kleinrock, professor of computer science, delivered a lecture on the future of the Internet at the University of Trento, Italy, in June.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Journal of Heat Transfer has awarded Dean Vijay K. Dhir and mechanical engineering graduate researcher Abhijit Mukherjee a 2006 Best Paper Award for their “Study of Lateral Merger of Vapor Bubbles during Nucleate Pool Boiling,” published in Volume 126 of the Journal. The award recognizes significant contributions to the technology and science of heat transfer.

The 2006 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Physical Design, a conference on VLSI design automation, granted a Best Paper Award to assistant professor of electrical engineering Lei He, graduate researcher Jinjun Xiong, and IBM Research Lab research collaborator Vladimir Zolotov, for their paper "Robust Extraction of Spatial Correlation."

Computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock gave the keynote presentation at Infocom 2006 in Barcelona in April, Infocom’s 25th anniversary. Infocom is one of the leading computer communications conferences.

Computer science professor Richard R. Muntz has been awarded the 2006 Association for Computing Machinery SIGMETRICS Achievement Award in recognition of his pioneering contributions to performance modeling. Sigmetrics fosters research in performance analysis techniques as well as the innovative use of current methods and tools.

Mechanical and aerospace engineering lecturer Shih-Hsi Tong received a Professional Development Award for Non-Senate Faculty Members from the Office of the Chancellor, Faculty Diversity. The award offers funding to assist with professional development projects such as curriculum development, books, software, or other items.

Materials science and engineering professor King-Ning Tu has received a 2007 Electronic, Magnetic and Photonic Materials Division Distinguished Scientist Award. The award recognizes individuals whose continuous service activities facilitate the Society’s capability to serve its members and their supporting organizations. The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) is a rare professional organization that encompasses the entire range of materials and engineering, from minerals processing and primary metals production to basic research and the advanced applications of materials.

Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Ann Karagozian recently finished chairing an Air Force Scientific Advisory Board study on “Persistence at Near Space Altitudes,” presented as a briefing to the Secretary and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, as well as leadership in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, DARPA, and the National Reconnaissance Office. Karagozian also is in the process of completing her chairmanship of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board study on “Technology Options for Improved Air Vehicle Fuel Efficiency,” presented to the Undersecretary of the Air Force and the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Science and Technology. She gave an invited talk at an NSF Workshop on “Research Frontiers for Combustion in the Hydrogen Economy” in Washington, D. C., in March.

Microsoft Research has named five new members of its highly prestigious Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship Program, among them assistant professor of computer science Eddie Kohler. Kohler hopes to make computer systems easier to program. His work aims to create a more understandable, robust and secure foundation for systems programming. Five winners were chosen from a pool of more than 100 individuals representing universities in North America. Each fellow will each receive a $200,000 (U.S.) cash award over a two-year period to assist in his research. The recipients are also given the opportunity to collaborate with some of the top researchers working in their area of interest at Microsoft Research.

Jia-Ming Liu, professor of electrical engineering, has been chosen to receive a prestigious 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, among the most coveted honors accorded to scholars, artists and writers. The Fellowship, awarded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, is conferred for “unusually distinguished achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.” Liu will use his Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct research on three-dimensional intracellular laser nanoscopy – using lasers to see structures inside a cell with a resolution on the scale of only nanometers. To read more, click here.

Computer science professor Deborah Estrin has been chosen as the recipient of the first Association for Computing Machinery’s Athena Lecturer Award. Estrin was nominated for this award by SIGMOBILE, who selected just two nominees from a list of 14 top women in the field of computer science. Each year the ACM will honor one preeminent woman computer scientist as the Athena Lecturer, and invite the honoree to give a one-hour talk at an ACM conference. Estrin’s talk will be given this coming September.

Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Chih-Ming Ho has been elected to the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. The society inducts former postdoctoral fellows and junior or visiting faculty at Johns Hopkins who have gained marked distinction in their fields of physical, biological, medical, social or engineering sciences or in the humanities and for whom at least five years have elapsed since their last Hopkins affiliation. The Society of Scholars was created on the recommendation of former President Milton S. Eisenhower and approved by the university board of trustees in 1967.

Chemical and biomolecular engineering professor James Liao was awarded 2006 W.N. Lacey Lectureship in Chemical Engineering by California Institute of Technology and delivered two lectures in February 2006 on “Information Transfer in Biological Networks” and “Towards Prediction and Design of Cellular Dynamics.”

Chemical and biomolecular engineering professor James Liao has been awarded an “Honorary Epistar Chair Professorship” for 2006 by the College of Engineering at National Tsing Hua University in Hsin-chu, Taiwan. Liao also delivered a keynote address at The Second International Conference on Biologically Inspired Approaches to Advanced Information Technology at Osaka University, in Osaka, Japan.

Computer science professor Judea Pearl has received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to pursue research in "probabilistic networks for automated reasoning.”

Computer science professor Stefano Soatto and the UCLA Vision Lab are the recipients of a 2006 MURI Award titled “Learning to Recognize for Visual Surveillance” together with researchers at Caltech (Perona), Berkeley (Malik), MIT (Freeman), UIUC (Forsyth) and UCI (Welling). The project is funded for $5M over 5 years and will study visual recognition – the problem of determining the identity of objects and object categories from images. Soatto also has been awarded a grant from AFOSR, titled “Dynamic Vision for Control” to study vision as a sensor for control systems to interact with unknown, uncertain and dynamic environments.

Chemical engineering professor Yoram Cohen has been elected as Vice-Chair of the AIChE Separations Division. He also has been invited to be a keynote speaker on “High Recovery RO Desalination of Brackish Water” at the 4th Eastern Mediterranean Chemical Engineering Conference in Israel.

Ralph M. Parsons Professor of Chemical Engineering Sheldon Friedlander delivered the keynote address on “Aerosol Science and Technology: An Enabling Discipline” at the meeting of the Asian Aerosol Conference in Bombay, India. Friedlander also gave the lead talk on “Modern Developments in Nanoparticle Aerosol Science and Technology” at a workshop preceding the conference at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay.

The December 2005 issue of the IEEE Control Systems Magazine featured computer science professor Boris Kogan and his current research. (January 2006)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has named computer science and engineering professor Demetri Terzopoulos as the recipient of an Academy Award for Technical Achievement. The award, which Terzopoulos shares with colleagues at both Pixar and Microsoft, was given for his "pioneering work in physically accurate techniques to simulate realistic cloth for motion pictures." (January 2006)

Electrical engineering professor Frank Chang has been selected as the 2006 recipient of the IEEE David Sarnoff Award for “development of HBT power amplifiers leading to their commercialization in wireless communications.” (December 2005)

The American Nuclear Society Thermal Hydraulics Division presented its 2005 Technical Achievement Award to Dean Vijay K. Dhir for “his outstanding contributions to phase change heat and mass transfer, two phase flow and thermal hydraulics of nuclear systems through the study of hydrodynamic theory of the peak heat flux in boiling, two phase flow in porous media and coolability of heat generating porous beds, the quenching of Zircaloy clad rod bundles, the modeling of reflood heat transfer phase of the large LOCA design base accident, the stratification in sodium cooled fast reactors, and the modeling of nucleate boiling and developing numerical analyses to describe the complex processes occurring at the surface.” (December 2005)

Computer science professor Gerald Estrin has received the Israeli Software Industry Pioneer Award, presented by the Israeli high-tech industry “in recognition of the entrepreneurship, leadership, hard work and outstanding achievements put forth in creating the first computer in Israel.” This award also recognizes his integral role in the establishment of the Israeli high-tech industry and the strengthening of Israel’s economy, security, and scientific capabilities. (December 2005)

Electrical engineering professor Bahram Jalali and Ozdal Boyraz (at UC Irvine) have been named among Scientific American’s prestigious annual “Scientific American 50” list for their innovative work with silicon lasers. The list recognizes key science and technology contributions. (December 2005)

Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Ann Karagozian has been selected to chair a new, high level study for the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board on "Technology Options for Improved Air Vehicle Fuel Efficiency." The study was commissioned by the White House and Department of Defense through the Acting Secretary of the Air Force, Pete Geren, and the Under Secretary of the Air Force, Ronald Sega. (December 2005)

Electrical engineering professor Yahya Rahmat-Samii has received a NASA Inventions and Contributions Board Award for “Fan Beam Patterns Radiated from a Parabolic Reflector Antenna.” Awards are given in recognition of contributions to the National Space Program, and to the mission of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (December 2005)

Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Jeff Shamma and computer science professor Lixia Zhang have been elected Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Shamma “for contributions to feedback control and systems theory” and Zhang “for contributions to the architecture and signaling protocols in packet switched networks.” (December 2005)

Chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Panagiotis Christofides and UC Davis chemical engineering and materials science professor Nael El-Farra (BS '98, PhD '04) have published a new book entitled Control of Nonlinear and Hybrid Process Systems that presents general, practical methods for the synthesis of nonlinear feedback control systems for chemical processes described by nonlinear and hybrid systems. (November 2005)

Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Nasr Ghoniem has been selected as one of five members of the International Advisory Oversight Committee for the European Project "PERFECT: for Prediction of Irradiation Damage Effects on Reactor Components. PERFECT is developing predictive tools for reactor pressure vessels and internal structures. (November 2005)

Computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock has been awarded the prestigious Computer and Communications Prize from Nippon Electronics Corporation, along with co-winners Robert E. Kahn and Lawrence G. Roberts. The award recognizes pioneers in the fields of computing and communications technologies.
Kleinrock also has been awarded an honoris causa degree of “Honorary Laurea Specialistica in Ingegneria Telematica” from the Politecnico di Torino. This is the first such honorary degree awarded in this specialty of Internet technology. (November 2005)

Electrical engineering professor Fernando Paganini recently became a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Membership requires at least ten years in professional practice and significant performance over a period of at least five of those years. (November 2005)

Civil and environmental engineering professor Michael Stenstrom has been awarded the 2005 Water Quality Award from the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board for his study, "Alternative Approaches to Stormwater Quality Control." The Water Quality Awards honor individuals, organizations, businesses and public agencies that have worked tirelessly and successfully to protect or restore water quality in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties. (November 2005)

Materials science and engineering professor Alan Ardell has been selected to receive the Albert Sauveur Achievement Award for 2005 "for pioneering experimental and theoretical research on the roles of elasticity and volume fraction in the kinetics of coarsening and microstructures of dispersed phases in two and three dimensional systems." (October 2005)

Mechanical and aerospace professor Vijay Gupta has been elected a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The Fellow grade recognizes exceptional engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession. (October 2005)

Mechanical and aerospace department chair H. Thomas Hahn has been elected President of the International Committee on Composite Materials(ICCM) for a two-year term. ICCM is an international, non-governmental, not-for-profit, scientific and engineering organization dedicated to composite materials. (October 2005)

Associate dean and electrical engineering professor Greg Pottie and electrical engineering professor William Kaiser have recently published a new book on sensor networks, Principles of Embedded Networked Systems Design. The textbook is intended for senior undergraduate design classes and introductory graduate classes, as well as working engineers who want to become familiar with sensor networks. (October 2005)

Materials science professor King-Ning Tu has been honored with the 2005 Applied Materials Lecture Award at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. (October 2005)

Computer science professor Junghoo (John) Cho and electrical engineering professor Mihaela van der Schaar have been awarded 2005 IBM Faculty Awards. The award is an annual grant given to select faculty members based on the quality and the importance of their work to areas of interest to IBM. (September 2005)

The Fusion Power Associates Board of Directors has selected mechanical and aerospace engineering adjunct assistant professor Neil Morley to receive the 2005 Excellence in Fusion Engineering Award, presented to individuals in the early part of their careers who have shown both technical accomplishment and potential for becoming exceptionally influential leaders in the fusion field. (September 2005)

Civil and environmental engineering professor J. S. Chen is among three recipients elected as Fellows of the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics for his contributions in “nonlinear finite element and meshfree methods, stabilized meshfree methods, and recently in multi-scale materials modeling.” The Fellows of US Association for Computational Mechanics are elected once every two years. (August 2005)

The 2005 American Control Conference in June honored the life and contributions of computer science professor Boris Kogan with a special session, honoring him as “one of the premier controls researchers of the former Soviet Union.” (August 2005)