Honors and Awards - 2012
December 2012
Professor Priscilla Cushman (physics) has been named a 2012 Fellow of the American Physical Society. She was cited for outstanding contributions in the design and execution of experiments probing beyond the Standard Model especially the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search and the precise measurement of the muon magnetic moment, and the development of photodetection and low radioactivity instrumentation to advance the capabilities of high energy physics experiments.
Professor Joe Konstan (computer science and engineering) has been appointed co-director of the University-wide Social Media and Business Analytics Collaborative (SOBACO), an interdisciplinary University of Minnesota research collaborative housed at the Carlson School of Management. It received funding from President Kaler and Provost Hanson with the aim of positioning the University of Minnesota at the knowledge frontier of the intersection between social media and business/societal problems.
Regents professor Lanny Schmidt (chemical engineering and materials science) has been awarded the Neal Amundson Reaction Engineering Award. This prestigious award in the field of chemical reaction engineering has only been awarded seven times. Three of the seven winners are from the University of Minnesota Chemical Engineering and Materials Science department; Neal Amundson, Rutherford Aris, and Lanny Schmidt.
Professor Jane Davidson (mechanical engineering) has received the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Frank Kreith Energy award for significant research on solar systems for residential buildings and solar thermo chemical cycles to produce fuels; for contributions as an exemplary educator in renewable energy; and for shaping solar energy research and policies at the national and international level.
November 2012
Professor Joe Konstan (computer science and engineering) has been elevated to the grade of Fellow by IEEE for his contributions to human-computer interaction and social media applications.
Several CSE faculty were named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). They are:
- Professor R. Lawrence Edwards (earth sciences) for landmark contributions to the field of quaternary geochronology and paleoclimatology particularly for developing high-precision 230Th dating and calibration of the radiocarbon chronology.
- Professor Kenneth Heller (physics) for distinguished contributions to the field of experimental high energy physics for investigations of spin dependent strong interactions and neutrinos, and to physics education research in the field of teaching problem-solving in college level introductory physics.
- Professor James Kakalios (physics) for distinguished contributions to the field of condensed matter and materials physics, particularly for experimental studies of amorphous semiconductors, and for innovative efforts in science communication.
- Professor Renata Wentzcovitch (chemical engineering and materials science) for pioneering contributions to theory and simulations of materials at high pressures and temperatures and applications of interdisciplinary impacts in geophysics.
- Professor David Kohlstedt (earth sciences) for distinguished contributions to the fields of experimental high-temperature rock mechanics and the physical chemistry of Earth materials.
The following School of Mathematics faculty were named members of the Inaugural Class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society: Professors Douglas Arnold, Maria-Carme Calderer, Dennis Hejhal, Albert Marden, Andrew Odlyzko, Peter Olver, Victor Reiner, Mikhail Safonov, Fadil Santosa, George Sell, and Dennis Stanton, and Emeritus Professors Don Aronson, Robert Ellis, and in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics.
Professors Saif Benjaafar (industrial systems and engineering) associate professor William Cooper (industrial systems and engineering) and Setareh Mardan (IndE '06) have been awarded the Harold W. Kuhn Award for best publication for 2012 in Naval Research Logistics for "Production-Inventory Systems with Imperfect Advance Demand Information and Updating."
Doctoral students Alireza Shokri and Bess Vlaisavljevich (chemistry) have received the 2012 Overend Award for Graduate Research in Physical Chemistry.
Associate professor Christy Haynes (chemistry) has been awarded the New Orleans Kavli Foundation Emerging Leader in Chemistry Lecture by the American Chemical Society Multidisciplinary Program Planning Group.
Professor Theresa Reineke (chemistry) received the Macro 2012 Lecture Award from the American Chemical Society Division on Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering.
Professor Chris Leighton (chemical engineering and materials science) was elected as a fellow of the American Physical Society. He was cited for his creative contributions to the fundamental understanding of the physics of magnetic materials, including complex oxides, highly spin-polarized ferromagnets, magnetic nanostructures, and interfacial magnetism.
Susmita Bhattacharyya (AeroE Ph.D. '12) was recently awarded the Bradford W. Parkinson Award for her thesis in the field of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS).
Professor Jane Davidson (mechanical engineering) has won the Frank Kreith Energy Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The award is granted for significant contributions to a secure energy future with particular emphasis on innovations in conservation and/or renewable energy.
Professor John Bischof (mechanical engineering) was awarded the Van C. Mow Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for significant contributions to the field of bioengineering.
Associate professor Kevin Dorfman (chemical engineering and materials science) was honored by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers with the Allan P. Colburn Award for Excellence in Publications by a Young Member of the Institute. The award is sponsored by E.I du Pont de Nemours & Company.
October 2012
Professor Efi Foufoula-Georgiou (civil engineering) has been named the new President-elect of the hydrology section of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
One of the University of Minnesota's most famous chemists, Isaak Maurits Kolthoff, received, posthumously, a 2012 Tekne Award and was inducted into the Minnesota Science & Technology Hall of Fame. The Tekne Award was created by the Minnesota High Tech Association to honor people whose achievements in science and technology have made lasting contributions to the state of Minnesota and to the world.
Two Department of Chemistry alums—Wayne Ranbom, Ph.D., and Ryan Smith, Ph.D.—have been honored with a 2012 Heroes of Chemistry award from the American Chemical Society. Both are chemists at Arkema Incorporated.
Professor Gary Balas (aerospace engineering and mechanics) was recently named a foreign member of the Hungarian Academy of Engineering.
Professor Allen Goldman (physics and astronomy) and professor Timothy Lodge (chemical engineering and materials science) are recipients of the 2012 award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate Education.
A symposium sponsored by the ASME Heat Transfer Division will be held in honor of regents professor Richard Goldstein (mechanical engineering) July 14-19, 2013 in Minneapolis. Goldstein is world renowned for his fundamental work in experimental fluid mechanics and heat transfer.
Professor Rajesh Rajamani and doctoral student Shan Hu (mechanical engineering) received the 50th Anniversary Editor's Choice College award of the journal Applied Physics Letters for their paper on flexible solid state supercapacitors. Only 50 papers out of more than 12,000 published between 2009-2012 were selected for this honor.
The University's STEM Education Center received an $8 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation to partner with 200 Twin Cities teachers to increase science and math learning through engineering for 15,000 students. Teaching professor Paul Imbertson (electrical and computer engineering) is one of four co-PIs who will be responsible for Professional Development activities with area teachers.
Doctoral student Anoop Cherian (computer science and engineering) received a Best Student Paper Award for his paper, “Robust Sparse Hashing” at the the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP).
Professor Arturo Schultz (civil engineering) has received the Martin P. Korn Award from the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute for a paper he co-authored titled "Experimental Investigation of the Web-Shear Strength of Deep Hollow-Core Units. "
Professor Chris Macosko (chemical engineering and materials science) received the Lifetime Achievement Award for his research in polymer processing at the International Conference on Advanced Molding Technology and Materials Processing.
Graduate student Daniel Showers (aerospace engineering and mechanics) recently received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Program Fellowship. This prestigious fellowship helps fund tuition and provides a stipend, enabling students to focus on their research and studies.
Tate Laboratory of Physics has been selected by the American Physical Society (APS) as a historically significant site for physics. This designation honors the pioneering work of the late Regents Professor Alfred O.C. Nier and his colleagues in the development and application of mass spectrometry, including the first-ever separation of the Uranium-235 isotope.
Professor Rhonda Franklin (electrical and computer engineering) was named one of five fellows representing the University of Minnesota in the 2012-13 CIC Academic Leadership Program (ALP). Established in 1989, this intensive experience develops the leadership and managerial skills of faculty who have demonstrated exceptional ability and academic promise.
Professor emeritus Roger Stuewer (physics) has been awarded the 2013 Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics.
September 2012
Professor Jaideep Srivastava and doctoral student Zoheb Borbora (computer science and engineering) received a best paper award for their paper "User Behavior Modelling Approach for Churn Prediction in Online Games" at IEEE Social Computing 2012. The Conference on Social Computing is the premier international forum for research on information and communication technologies that consider social context.
Associate professor Rhonda Franklin (electrical and computer engineering) has been appointed to a three-year term as Associate Editor for the IEEE Microwave Wireless Component Letters (MWCL), a journal of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society,
President Barack Obama will appoint professor Efi Foufoula-Georgiou (civil engineering) as a new member of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. Foufoula-Georgiou is one of only eight individuals nationwide who will be appointed to the board.
Professor Christopher Douglas (chemistry) has received a NSF CAREER award to support his research into new methodologies for chemical synthesis, particularly those relating to the activation and functionalization of carbon sigma bonds adjacent to carbonyls.
Professor Andreas Stein (chemistry) is principal investigator on a new $850,000 grant from the Department of Energy on computation-guided synthetic strategies for nanocomposite electrode structures designed to probe critical size effects on charge storage and transport.
Associate professor Christy Haynes (chemistry) has been named one of Popular Science magazine’s “Brilliant 10,” an honor that recognizes an elite group of young scientists whose research is expected to dramatically impact their fields.
Assistant professor David Flannigan (chemical engineering and materials science) has received a 2012 Love of Learning Award from the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.
Professor Jane Davidson (mechanical engineering) will receive the Frank Kreith Energy Award for 2012 at the ASME 2012 International Mechanical Engineering Congress in Houston, Texas, November 9-15. The award honors an individual for significant contributions to a secure energy future through innovations in conservation and/or renewable energy technology.
August 2012
Regents professor Lawrence Que Jr. (chemistry) will receive the Bailar Medal in honor of his outstanding contributions to inorganic chemistry and will deliver the 2012 Bailar Lecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Graduate students Yu Wang, Hu Zhang and professor Zongxuan Sun (mechanical engineering) won the best paper award at the 2012 International Conference on Advanced Vehicle Technology and Integration in Changchun, China.
Ph.D. candidate Jianxin Fang and professor Sachin Sapatnekar (electrical and computer engineering) have been awarded Best Poster of the 2012 IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium for “Understanding the Impact of Transistor- Level BTI Variability.”
Professors Jian-Ping Wang and Mihailo Jovanovic (electrical and computer engineering), professor John Gulliver (civil engineering), and assistant professor Peter Seller (aerospace engineering and mechanics) have been appointed as resident fellows within the Institute on the Environment (IonE) at the University of Minnesota. IonE's resident fellows program provides support for creative faculty members from a range of backgrounds with the objective of generating a new cadre of world-class environmental leaders and problem solvers.
Professor Joe Zasadzinski (chemical engineering and materials science) received the 2013 Avanti Award of the Biophysical Society for his "careful, quantitative application of physical principles of self-assembly, directed assembly and bio-mimicry to create well-controlled lipid structures for biomedical applications." The award is given annually to an investigator for outstanding contributions to our understanding of lipid biophysics.
Professor Bill Arnold (civil engineering) has been selected to receive the 2012 Malcolm Pirnie/AEESP Frontier in Research Award. AEESP, the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, issues the award “to honor an individual who has advanced the environmental engineering and science field through recognized research leadership and pioneering efforts in a new and innovative research area."
Assistant professor John Carlsson (industrial and systems engineering) has won a 2012 DARPA Young Faculty Award for his research in strategically allocating resources in a geographic environment. DARPA has awarded grants since 2006 to promising academic scientists, engineers and mathematicians to foster strategic innovation.
Professor Rajesh Rajamani (mechanical engineering) has been elected a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers ( ASME).
Assistant professor John Gunnar Carlsson (industrial and systems engineering) has received a research grant from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to study online and decentralized algorithms for geographic resource allocation problems.
July 2012
Professor and department head Vipin Kumar (computer science and engineering) has been selected to receive the ACM SIGKDD 2012 Innovation Award, which is the highest award for technical excellence in the field of Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD). It is conferred on one individual or one group of collaborators whose outstanding technical innovations in the KDD field have had a lasting impact in advancing the theory and practice of the field.
Professor Bin He (biomedical engineering) was named director of the Institute for Engineering in Medicine (IEM) and begins his 5-year appointment on August 15. The Institute for Engineering in Medicine is an interdisciplinary collaboration aimed at strengthening research between engineering and medicine at the University of Minnesota.
Three professorships have been named in the Department of Mechanical Engineering: Professor John Bischof is the Janet and Carl Kuhmeyer Chair in Mechanical Engineering; Professor Steven Girshick is the Kenneth T. Whitby Professor of Mechanical Engineering; and Professor Terrence Simon is the Ernst G. Eckert Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
Professor Willard Miller (mathematics) and his former doctoral student Sarah Post have been awarded the Journal of Physics "A Best Paper Prize 2012" in recognition of their paper titled, "Coupling constant metamorphosis and Nth-order symmetries in classical and quantum mechanics." The paper was chosen for its novelty, achievement, potential impact, and presentation.
Associate professor Kevin Dorfman (chemical engineering and materials science) is the recipient of the Allen P. Colburn Award for Excellence in Publications by a Young Member of the Institute. The award is the highest honor given to a member of AICHE under the age of 36 for "significant contributions to chemical engineering through publications."
Professor Arturo Schultz (civil engineering) has been named a fellow of The Masonry Society (TMS). Fellow membership is one of the highest awards that can be bestowed on a Society member and is granted only rarely for exceptional service by individuals who have been a member for more than 10 years.
Professor Ramesh Harjani (electrical and computer engineering) was selected as the next IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) TPC Chair beginning in September, 2012.
June 2012
Paul Morin, director of the Polar Geospatial Center has been appointed the US representative to SCAGI by the Polar Research Board at the National Academies. SCAGI is the geospatial committee within the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SCAR) that is the managing body of Antarctica under the Antarctic Treaty.
Professor Massoud Amin (electrical and computer engineering) has been elected to the office of president of the International Association for Management of Technology (IAMOT) for a two-year term.
Professor Emad Ebbini (electrical and computer engineering) is a recipient of the 2012 Minnesota Futures grant award recognizing his work on the Dual-mode Ultrasound Array System for Noninvasive, Image-guided Targeted Drug Delivery In Vivo. The Minnesota Futures Grant Program is designed to promote research and scholarship beyond existing initiatives through fostering opportunities for researchers to cross disciplinary and professional boundaries. Associate professor Efie Kokkoli (chemical engineering and materials science) is a co-investigator on this research team.
Assistant professor Russell Holmes (chemical engineering and materials science) is the 2012 recipient of the Bradley Stoughton award for Young Teachers recognizing his excellence in teaching materials science and engineering by a young teacher under the age of 35.
Professor J. Ilja Siepmann (chemistry) has been appointed as a Merck Professor of Chemistry for a five-year term starting, July 1, 2012. This is one of five departmental professorships that recognize and reward the Department of Chemistry's most distinguished faculty.
The University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering student organization Innovative Engineers has received international recognition for their wind energy project in Nicaragua. The group’s work is included in Sustainia100, a guide to 100 of the top global solutions in sustainability, which was unveiled at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
May 2012
Professor Keshab Parhi (electrical and computer engineering) has received the 2012 IEE Circuits and Systems Society Charles A. Desoer Technical Achievement Award for his contributions to VLSI architectures and design methodologies for digital signal processing and communications circuits and systems.
Kristina Wagstrom (civil engineering) has been awarded a prestigious AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship. She is currently finishing a post-doc in Civil Engineering, working on air dispersion modeling as part of an IREE-funded project by assistant professors Jason Hill (biosystems and bioproducts engineering) and Julian Marshall (civil engineering), on air pollution impacts of biofuel production and consumption.
Assistant professor Julian Marshall (civil engineering) has received a 2012 GPS Alliance Global Spotlight major grant for his research on urbanization and exposure to air pollution. The award supports targeted research and other scholarly initiatives related to the 2012-12 Global spotlight regional areas of Latin America and the Carribbean and issues related to the Impact of Urbanization.
April 2012
Professor Ned Mohan (electrical and computer engineering) is the recipient of the IEE PES Ramakumar Family Renewable Energy Excellence Award for 2012 recognizing his contributions in the field of developing, utilizing, and integrating renewable energy resources in the national and global energy scenarios.
Professor Allen Goldman (physics) has received a 2012 Award for Outstanding Contributions to Postbaccalaureate, Graduate and Professional Education and as admitted to the Academy of Distinguished Teachers.
Professor Serge Rudaz (physics) has received the Horace T. Morse Alumni Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education.
Professor Steve Campbell (electrical and computer engineering) has received the George W. Taylor Award for Distinguished Service for 2012.
Professor Jian-Ping Wang (electrical and computer engineering) was selected as a University of Minnesota Distinguished McKnight Professor for his work in magnetic materials and spintronic devices for Information Storage and Computing and Molecular Diagnostics.
Professor Dan Frisbie (chemical engineering and materials science) was selected as a University of Minnesota Distinguished McKnight Professor for his work in the creation of new semiconductor materials and processes that result in flexible electronic circuits.
Professor John Riedl (computer science and engineering) has been named a 2012 Distinguished McKnight University professor.
Professor Marc Hillmyer (chemistry) has been named a 2012 Poly Fellow of the American Chemical Society's Division of Polymer Chemistry, Inc.
Professor William Tolman (chemistry) has received the 2012 Charles E. Bowers Faculty Teaching Award.
Professor Ulrike Tschimer (bioproducts and biosystems engineering) has received the 2011-12 Horace T. Morse Alumni Award for outstanding contributions to undergraduate education.
Professor Victor Barocas (biomedical engineering) has received the George W. Taylor Award for Distinguished Research.
Professor Allen Goldman (physics) has received a 2012 Awards for Outstanding Contributions to Postbaccalaureate, Graduate and Professional Education. As part of this award Goldman was admitted to the Academy of Distinguished Teachers.
Professor Serge Rudaz (physics) has received the Horace T. Morse-University of Minnesota Alumni Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education. Rudaz will be inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers as part of the award.
Assistant professor Rusen Yang (mechanical engineering) and assistant professor Zongxuan Sun (mechanical engineering) have received the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation. Yang will study piezoelectric nanomaterials for harvesting otherwise wasted mechanical energy and producing renewable electricity. Sun will work on control of mechatronic automotive propulsion systems.
Professor Andrew Odlyzko (mathematics) has been elected a fellow of the Internal Association for Cryptologic Research for his technical contributions and distinguished service to the cryptologic community.
Graduate student Katherine Volzing (chemical engineering and materials science) was awarded the 2012 Louise T. Dosdall Fellowship, which is awarded to women doctoral students in the natural or physical sciences and engineering.
March 2012
Doctoral student Binh Lieu (electrical and computer engineering) has received a fellowship from the European collaborative dissemination of aeronautical research and applications (E-CAero) initiative to attend the E-CAero Spring School on Fast Methods in Scientific Computing in Montestigliano, Italy
Professor Massoud Amin (electrical and computer engineering) was named to the "Networked Grid 100: The Movers and Shakers of the Smart Grid in 2012" by GreenTechMedia
Doctoral student James Faghmous (computer science and engineering) has been selected to receive a 2012 President's Student Leadership and Service Award (PSLSA) for services rendered as co-founder and CEO of MuslimBuddy, Inc., a Minneapolis-based startup nonprofit.
Professor Shashi Shekhar (computer science and engineering) has been appointed to the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council in consultation with the National Science Foundation for a three-year term.
Graduate student Jaya Kawale (computer science and engineering) received the best graduate poster award at MinneWIC 2012 for the poster titled "A Graph Based Approach to Find Teleconnections in Climate Data" by Jaya Kawale, Vipin Kumar, Stefan Liess and Michael Steinbach.
Three professors from the Department of Chemistry—George Barany, Philippe Buhlmann, and Marc Hillmyer—were honored at the University Innovations 2012 celebration event, sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Research, which recognizes researchers whose work has been patented, licensed to a company, or used to form a start-up company. Barany was honored for his patent, Detection of Nucleic Acid Sequence Differences Using the Ligase Detection Reaction with Addressable Arrays. Buhlmann was honored for his license, Chemical Sensors Based on Fluorous Sensing Membranes. Hillmyer was honored for his license, Fabrication of Robust Nanoporous Polymer Films with Cocontinuous Structures.
Professor Timothy Lodge (chemistry) has received the 2011-12 Postbaccalaureate, Graduate, and Professional Education Award. He is one of eight professors from throughout the entire university system to receive this award.
Assistant professor Matteo Cococcioni (chemical engineering and materials science) has received a National Science Foundation's CAREER award, which is conferred to junior faculty members to recognize and support outstanding research activities and their integration with excellent educational programs.
Associate professor Ryan Elliott (aerospace engineering and mechanics) has been named a Russell J. Penrose Fellow beginning July 1, 2012. Ryan's appointment is for three years.
Professor Graham Candler (aerospace engineering and mechanics) has been named the Russell J. Penrose Professor beginning July 1, 2012. The professorship is for five years and seeks to “obtain and retain distinguished faculty who are outstanding in their teaching and research capabilities."
February 2012
Professor Allison Hubel (mechanical engineering) was inducted as a Fellow in the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, recognizing her contributions in advancing our understanding of damage during freezing, development of preservation technology and the practice of biopreservation.
Professor Theresa Reineke (chemistry) has received a 2012 Outstanding New Investigators Award from the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy.
Professor Valerie Pierre (chemistry) has received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to support her research to develop and promulgate novel luminescent sensors for the study of alkali ions in neurons.
Assistant professor Anar Akhmedov (mathematics) has received a Sloan Research Fellowship for 2012.
Professor Graham Candler (aerospace engineering and mechanics) has received the 2012 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Fluid Dynamics Award for the development of advanced computational methodologies to predict flow stability and transition to turbulence in complex configurations.
University of Minnesota president and professor Eric Kaler (chemical engineering and materials science) has been named a fellow of the Neutron Scattering Society of America (NSSA) for his contributions to the science of soft matter and mentoring of young scientists in scattering science.
Graduate student Ke-Jun Chen (physics) has received the Stanwood Johnston Fellowship for 2012-2013. He is currently working on Multi-Dimensional Simulations of Pair-Instability Supernovae with his adviser Professor Alexander Heger.
Doctoral candidate Colleen Witzenburg (mechanical engineering), working with Professor Victor Barocas, has been awarded a Louise T. Dosdall Fellowship.
College of Science and Engineering associate dean Mostafa Kaveh (electrical and computer engineering) has been selected to receive the MFESTS’ Charles W. Britzius Distinguished Engineer Award.
Professor Timothy Lodge (chemistry) has been chosen for the 2012 Minnesota Award of the Minnesota Section of the American Chemical Society for for his scientific achievements in polymer science research.
Professor Andreas Stein (chemistry) was identified as one of the world's top 100 materials scientists for 2011. Of the 100 scientists listed in the Thomson Reuters data, Stein was 27th. Scientists made the list based on who achieved the highest citation impact scores for papers published since January 2000. The average citation impact in materials science for that period was 6.93: Stein's was 63.51.
Assistant professor Joshua Feinberg (earth sciences) and assistant professor Daniel Keefe (computer science and engineering) are among six recipients University-wide of the 2012-14 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship, a program designed to advance the careers of the University's most promising junior faculty. Read the full news release on "Two CSE faculty named McKnight Land-Grant Professors."
January 2012
Professors Wojciech Lipinski, Jane Davidson and Thomas Chase (mechanical engineering) along with Professor Sossina Haile at the California Institute of Technology, and their industrial partner Abengoa Solar, Inc., have been awarded a DOE Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy grant "Solar fuels via partial redox cycles with heat recovery."
Professor Doug Arnold (mathematics) has been elected a foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Arnold joins a select group of prominent mathematicians including many Fields medalists and Abel Prize winners.
Professor Michael Tsapatsis (chemical engineering and materials science) was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) by the AAAS Council.
Assistant professor Rui Kuang (computer science and engineering) has received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. Kuang's grant is titled "Predicting and Mining Phenome-genome Association across Species."
Professor Shaul Hanany (physics) was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society for developing novel techniques for, and making important measurements of, the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation and its polarization, particularly on balloon borne instruments.
Graduate student Sai Madhukar Reddy (chemical engineering and materials science) working with associate professor Beth Stadler (electrical and computer engineering) won a Best Poster Award at the Magnetism and Magnetic Materials (MMM) conference. Madhukar's poster was entitled "Towards Epitaxial Fe1-xGax / GaAs Structures via Electrochemistry for Spintronics Applications" and describes his work demonstrating an ability to electrochemically deposit epitaxial Fe-Ga thin films on GaAs substrates.
Professor Mo Li (electrical and computer engineering) was selected by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for a Young Investigator award. His research is titled “Exploiting Repulsive and Attractive Optical Forces in Advanced Nanophotonic Systems.”
Professor Tom Luo (electrical and computer engineering) has been appointed Editor-In-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, the premier publication of the field.
Professor Nicholas Sidiropoulos (electrical and computer engineering) and professor Zhi-Quan (Tom) Luo (electrical and computer engineering, and McMasters University professor Timothy Davidson were selected for a 2011 Best Paper Award by the IEEE Signal Processing Society for “Transmit beamforming for physical-layer multicasting.
Professor Steve Koester (electrical and computer engineering) and Yogish C. Kudva's (electrical and computer engineering research assistant) “Graphene-Based Wireless Glucose Sensing for the Artificial Pancreas” has been selected for funding by the "Decade of Discovery: A University of Minnesota/ Mayo Clinic Partnership to Conquer Diabetes" with an approved total budget of $500,000.
Professors Sergey Bobkov and Alexander Voronov (mathematics) were both named Simons Fellows in Mathematics for 2012-13 by the Simons Foundation.
Doctoral student Gridsada Phanomchoeng and professor Rajesh Rajamani's paper on "Real-Time Automotive Slip Angle Estimation with Nonlinear Observer" presented at the 2011 American Control Conference was selected for the ASME Automotive and Transportation Systems Committee Best Paper Award.