Rice Unconventional Wisdom

Engineering Solutions graphic title
Major Scholarly Accomplishments 2008-09

Major Scholarly Accomplishments
George R. Brown School of Engineering, 2008-2009

Bioengineering

Kyriacos Athanasiou Thomas A. Edison Patent Award, American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Gold winner in the Wall Street Journal Innovation Awards competition

Michael Diehl 2009 Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the Houston Society for Engineering in Medicine and Biology (HSEMB)
2008 Research Excellence Award, W.M. Keck Foundation

Rebekah Drezek Adolph Lomb Medal awarded by the Optical Society of America for noteworthy contributions to optics before the age of 35
Elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
2008 Presidential Mentoring Award, Rice University
2008 Charles W. Duncan, Jr. Achievement Award for Outstanding Faculty, Rice University

Jane Grande-Allen 2008 Hamill Innovation Award, with Jun Lou
2009 Presidential Mentoring Award, Rice University

Oleg Igoshin NSF CAREER Award
Jianpeng Ma Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Tony Mikos 2009 Chemstations Lectureship Award, American Society for Engineering Education
Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., Excellence in Research Award, Baylor College of Medicine

Rebecca Richards-Kortum Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
2008 IEEE Vice President’s Recognition Award
Elected Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society
2008 IMPACT Award, Women’s Resource Center, Rice University

Ann Saterbak Elected Chair, Professional Interest Council II, American Society for Engineering Education

Junghae Suh 2008 Hamill Innovation Award, with Jonathan Silberg

Tomasz Tkaczyk 2008 IBB Medical Innovations Award, with Dr. Mary Dickinson

Jennifer West Elected Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Pedro Alvarez 2008 Malcolm Pirnie/Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors Frontier in Research Award
Fellow of the American Leadership Forum

Philip B. Bedient 2008 Diplomate - Water Resources Engineer, American Academy of Water Resources Engineers

Daniel Cohan NSF CAREER Award

Jamie Padgett Selected as one of 14 “best and brightest new faces” in engineering under the age of 30, by the National Engineers Week Foundation

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Ken Cox 2008 C.M. and Demaris Hudspeth Award for Student Life and Student Clubs, Rice University

Matteo Pasquali 2009 GSA Faculty Teaching/Mentoring Award, Rice University

Michael Wong 2008 IBB Medical Innovations Award, with Dr. Ching H. Tung

Computational and Applied Mathematics

William Symes Elected Fellow of SIAM: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

Richard Tapia HispanicBusiness, 100 Influentials 2008
Elected Fellow of SIAM: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Meritorious Service Award, Association of Rice Alumni

Wotao Yin 2009 Sloan Research Fellowship
NSF CAREER Award

Computer Science

Lydia Kavraki 2008 Hamill Innovation Award, with George Bennett
Elected Fellow, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

Luay Nakhleh Phi Beta Kappa 2009 Teaching Prize, Rice University

Eugene Ng 2009 Sloan Research Fellowship

Vivek Sarkar Elected Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery

Walid Taha NSF CAREER Award

Moshe Vardi 2008 Blaise Pascal Medal for Computer Science, European Academy of Sciences
Elected Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
2008 Association for Computing Machinery PODS Mendelzon Test-of-Time Award
2008 ACM SIGMOD Codd Innovation Award
2008 ACM Presidential Award
Editor-in-chief, Communications of the ACM

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Richard Baraniuk Berkman Award for Internet Innovation, Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society

C. Sidney Burrus 2009 Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal, awarded by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Joseph Cavallaro Best Paper Award at the IEEE System on Chip Conference, September 2008, with Yang Sun
Best Paper Award at the IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Systems, September 2008, with Yang Sun

Naomi Halas Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellow, Department of Defense
Research Excellence Award, University of Pennsylvania’s Nano/Bio Interface Center

Edward Knightly Elected Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Best Paper Award, ACM MobiCom 2008, with Justin Robinson

Junichiro Kono Andrew Heiskell Innovation in Study Abroad Award for NanoJapan Program, the Institute of International Education

Farinaz Koushanfar MIT Technology Review’s 2008 list of world’s 35 Top Young Innovators
2009 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award

Dan Mittleman Elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America

Kartik Mohanram NSF CAREER Award

Ashutosh Sabharwal 2009 Hershel M. Rich Invention Award, Rice Engineering Alumni

Lin Zhong Mark Weiser Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communication, March 2009, with Jiayang Liu, Zhen Wang, and Vanu Vasudevan 

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Pulickel Ajayan Elected honorary member of the Materials Research Society of India

Jun Lou Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigators Research Program Award
2008 Hamill Innovation Award, with Jane Grande-Allen

David McStravick Outstanding Faculty Associate at Baker College

Marcia O’Malley 2008 George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, Rice University

Pol Spanos Elected Foreign Member of the Academy of Europe

Boris Yakobson 2008 DOE Hydrogen Program R & D Award
2008 Nano 50 Award from Nanotech Briefs

Statistics

Dennis Cox 2008 Presidential Mentoring Award, Rice University

David Scott American Statistical Association Founders Award for Lifetime Achievement

Marina Vannucci Elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics

Dean’s Office

Janice Hewitt 2008 GSA Faculty Teaching/Mentoring Award, Rice University

IN MEMORIAM:

 William (Bill) Wilson (1944–2009), Electrical and Computer Engineering, 1972–2006