Faculty Awards & Honors

“Marsha D. McCormick Award for Excellence in Advising”

Professor Clifford Pollock receives the Marsha D. McCormick Award for excellence in advising first year students. Advising first year students takes on particular significance since this is the initiation period for young adults into a unique and intense learning community. At Cornell, this means knowing how to make referrals for academic issues, career and guidance counseling, and mental health assessment. Professor Pollock was able to customize each relationship, blend skills of interest, and guide and mentor each of his advisees. Professor Pollock received nominations from first year students, faculty and administration.

“José Martínez and Kevin Tang receive 2009 IBM Faculty Awards”

José Martínez and Kevin Tang have each received a 2009 IBM Faculty Award. The IBM Faculty Award program is a worldwide competition intended to "(1) foster collaboration between researchers at leading universities worldwide and those in IBM research, development and services organizations; and (2) promote courseware and curriculum innovation to stimulate growth in disciplines and geographies that are strategic to IBM."

José Martínez is associate professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, which he joined in 2002.

Kevin Tang joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell in 2007, where he is now an assistant professor. During the 2006-07 academic year, he was a junior fellow with the social and information sciences laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.

“Jefferson Science Fellow with the US Department of State”

Paul Kintner has been selected to become a Jefferson Science Fellow with the US Department of State in Washington, DC. Paul will take a sabbatical leave from Cornell during the academic year 2009-2010.

Each Fellow spends one year at the U.S. Department of State or the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for an on-site assignment in Washington, D.C. that may also involve extended stays at U.S. foreign embassies and/or missions. All JSF assignments will be designed in consultation with regional and/or functional bureaus within the U.S. Department of State/USAID. While in general JSF assignments will involve providing up-to-date expertise in the rapidly advancing STE arenas that routinely impact the policy decisions encountered by the U.S. Department of State/USAID, each Fellow will also be expected to become conversant with the functional operation of the U.S. Department of State/USAID. Following the fellowship year, the Jefferson Science Fellow will return to his/her academic career, but will remain available to the U.S. Department of State/USAID for short-term projects over the following five years.

Criteria for selection:

• Ability to articulate science and technology issues to the non-specialist/general public.
• Ability to rapidly and accurately understand scientific advancements outside their discipline area and to effectively integrate this knowledge into U.S. Department of State policy discussions.
• Open-mindedness and receptive attitudes toward public policy discussions at the U.S. Department of State/USAID.
• Stature, recognition and experience in the national and international scientific or engineering community.

He was appointed to the faculty in 1981. Kintner is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

“AFOSR MURI Award”

The award (1 million per year for 5 years) will be shared approximately equally between Cornell and Columbia (Columbia is the lead). The principal investigator is Rick Osgood at Columbia and Professor Spencer will lead the Cornell efforts. Other members on the Cornell team include: ECE faculty Sandip Tiwari, Edwin Kan, Farhan Rana as well as Paul McEuen in Physics.

The award centers on the exploitation of the material graphene for new device applications. Graphene or single monlayer, single crystal graphite has seen an explosion of interest worldwide. Columbia building on DARPA funding and Cornell building on NSF CCMR funding have large numbers of faculty interested in the properties and applications of these materials. In addition to the recent MURI funding, and the ongoing CCMR funding Cornell and Columbia are in the finals of a NSF STC competition centered on graphene research.

According to the Department of Defense (DoD), “The awards are the result of the fiscal 2009 competition that … AFOSR conducted under the DoD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program. The MURI program supports research by teams of investigators that intersect more than one traditional science and engineering discipline in order to accelerate both research progress and transition of research results to application. Most MURI efforts involve researchers from multiple academic institutions and academic departments. Based on the proposals selected in the fiscal 2009 competition, a total of 69 academic institutions are expected to participate in 41 research efforts.” [read more]

Professor Spenser (photo above) received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1981 and then joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“2009 Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Award.”

Delchamps was one of four [Carpenter Memorial Advising] awardees honored on May 23rd at a Trustee-Faculty dinner “which recognizes the winners of university-wide teaching and advising awards along with newly tenured faculty”. A committee of previous winners provided nominees for the award to President Skorton who in turn made the final selection based on Professor Delchamp’s “wonderful testimonials from students and colleagues about [his] advising”.

Cornell Trustee Stephen Ashley established the Carpenter Awards in honor of Kendall S. Carpenter, a professor of business management at Cornell from 1954 -1967. The Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Award recognizes an individual’s “sustained and distinguished contributions of professorial faculty and senior lecturers to undergraduate advising.”

Professor Delchamps has been on the faculty of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering since 1982. His research focuses on applying techniques from dynamical systems theory, game theory, and stochastic processes to the modeling, analysis, and design of natural and artificial complex multi-agent systems.  Such systems arise in variety of application areas ranging from biology to telecommunication networking to economics.

“Professor Haas receives an invitation to join the IEEE ComSoc Distinguish Lecturers Tour (DLT) ”

Prof. Zygmunt J. Haas was invited to deliver a series of lectures in the Scandinavian countries as part of the IEEE ComSoc Distinguish Lecturers Tour (DLT) program. In this tour, Dr. Haas will present the work conducted in his Wireless Networks Lab at 7 academic and industrial institutions in Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. The tour is planned to take place in a 2-week period, starting end of May and ending beginning of June.

“The American Physical Society (APS) Council elects David Hammer to the Executive Board ”

The American Physical Society (APS) Council has elected Prof. David Hammer to the APS Executive Board for a two-year term. The Council is the body that makes decisions for the Society membership that are not within the powers granted to the President of the APS or the Executive Officer, and the Executive Board is responsible for planning many of the actions taken by the Council. Prof. Hammer is currently serving a four-year term as the Plasma Physics Division's "Councillor."

Prof. Hammer is the J. Carlton Ward Professor of Nuclear Energy Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has been on the Cornell faculty since 1977.

“2009 IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer”

Professor Lang Tong named as an 2009 IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer. Professor Tong conducts research in the general areas of statistical signal processing, wireless communications, network and information theory. His lecture topics include distributed sensing and inference, roles of signal processing in secure and anonymous networking, and opportunistic spectrum access for cognitive radios.

The IEEE Signal Processing Society's Distinguished Lecturer Program provides means and financial support for IEEE chapters to have access to individuals who are well known educators and authors in the fields of signal processing.

“Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award”

ECE's Edward Suh is one of the 39 scientists and engineers from across the nation to receive the Young Investigator Program Award from Air Force office of Scientific Research AFOSR.

The objective of Young Investigator Program is to foster creative basic research in science and engineering, enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators, and increase opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the Air Force mission and the related challenges in science and engineering.

According to AFOSR officials, competition for the YIP award is intense. This year AFOSR received 210 proposals in response to the AFOSR broad agency announcement solicitation in major areas of interest to the Air Force. The areas of interest include: aerospace, chemical and material sciences; physics and electronics; and mathematics, information and life sciences. AFOSR officials select proposals based on the evaluation criteria listed in the broad agency announcement.

Edward will study heterogeneous multicore platform through diversity and redundancy for enhancing the security of future systems.

“International Ionospheric Effects Symposium First Prize”

Paul Kintner wins first prize for a paper, entitled Simulating Inosphere-Induced Scintillation for Testing GPS Receiver Phase Tracking Loops, which was submitted at the 125th International Ionospheric Effects Symposium (IES) in Washington, DC on May 13-15th. Approximately 125 papers were submitted.

To view the paper, visit: http://www.ies2008.com/IES2008-A106.txt. To learn more about IES, please visit the following url: http://www.ies2008.com/.

“DARPA 2008 Young Faculty Awards”

Three ECE assistant professors, Ehsan Afshari, Sunil Bhave, and Farhan Rana, have been identified by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to receive DARPA 2008 Young Faculty Awards. DARPA made awards to 39 "rising stars in university microsystems research" who are on the faculty of 27 universities located in 17 different states. The DARPA Young Faculty Award program is designed to seek out ideas from non-tenured faculty in order to identify the next generation of researchers working in microsystems technology [Full Story].

“2008 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering”

The 2008 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering will be presented to Emeritus professor James Thorp for his career work at Cornell in the "development and application of microprocessor controllers in electric power systems. These devices make synchronized measurements to monitor and protect components throughout the power grid, playing a key role in diminishing the frequency and impact of blackouts." He is sharing the award with Prof. Arun Phadke of Virginia Tech. The award will be presented on April 17 in Philadelphia.

Related articles:

"Two Virginia Tech electrical engineers named among the greatest in science, engineering, and technology in the world"
-Virginia Tech News

The 2008 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering (Announcement)
- Franklin Institute Website

“Fellow of Optical Society of America”

Michal Lipson was elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) by the Board of Directors at their September 2007 meeting. Prof. Lipson is recognized for outstanding contributions to the field of silicon nanophotonics, including the development of high-bandwidth modulators and low-power nonlinear optical devices. OSA members who have served with distinction in the advancement of optics may be proposed for election to the class of Fellow. This honor is reserved to no more than 10% of the total membership.

“Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Award”

Cornell Engineering Magazine
Summer 2007
Pg 32

"... John Belina has recently been awarded the university’s Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Award. The $5,000 award recognizes “sustained and distinguished contributions of professorial faculty and senior lecturers to undergraduate advising.” Previously, he was named the 2006–2009 Rosenblatt Endowed Faculty Fellow for his sustained contributions to students outside the classroom and to the life of the residential communities.
'Advising is one of the most important things at Cornell because [the university] is very decentralized,' says Belina..."

“Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers”

Professor Zygmunt J. Haas was elected Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2007 for "contributions to wireless and mobile ad-hoc networks".

The grade of Fellow recognizes unusual distinction in the profession and is conferred by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The accomplishments honored shall have contributed importantly to the advancement or application of engineering, science and technology, bringing the realization of significant value to society.

The IEEE Fellows are an elite group from around the globe. The IEEE looks to the Fellows for guidance and leadership as the world of electrical and electronic technology continues to evolve.

“ECE Professor Goes to Washington...”

In an effort to explain an alarming event which resulted in the disruption of global positioning signals (GPS) “around the world”, professor Paul Kintner joined other researchers at a conference in Washington DC. Although Kintner and his grad-student Alessandro Cerruti predicted an event like this is likely to occur (see award-winning student paper), the effect, said professor Kintner, was “more profound and widespread than we thought possible”.

- April 8, 2007 Washington Post [read more]

“Professor Johnson is the Featured Guest on NPR's Science Friday Show – May 18, 2007”

“… can number crunching determine whether art is authentic? We'll talk with a scientist (Professor Richard Johnson) who says that a technique called 'stylometry' may be able to distill the essence of an artist's technique down to a set of geometric data points. He met this week with representatives of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Can the technique determine whether a purported 'van Gogh' was really painted by the master? We'll run the numbers….”

-- NPR’s Science Friday, [read more, listen to the show!]. An archive of the show will be stored on Science Friday's website after it airs on the radio.

National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation: Science Friday® is a science talk show that can be heard each Friday afternoon, 2-4 p.m. on selected NPR stations.

Science of art:
Scientists say ‘stylometric’ analysis could tell if a version of a Van Gogh sunflower painting bought by a Japanese insurance company (left) is a forgery. At right is an authentic painting from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
-- AP

Related article:

Is that painting real? Ask a mathematician.
Engineers use a mathematical process dubbed 'stylometry' to set apart real Van Gogh paintings from forgeries.
-- By Elizabeth Svoboda | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

"On May 14, teams of engineers that Mr. Johnson recruited will meet with art students and curators at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to announce what they think sets real Van Gogh paintings apart from forgeries. By analyzing a database of 101 paintings by the artist and his known imitators, the scientists have arrived at what they say are key elements of Van Gogh's 'visual signature,' which can be distilled into numbers. This, they say, will give art experts an important new tool to assess works like 'Vase With Fifteen Sunflowers.' They can compare how closely a disputed painting's visual signature matches the baseline "signature" derived from the database."[read more]

“Global Indus Technovators Award”

The Indian Business Club at MIT has awarded 10 young (under-40) innovators and entrepreneurs of South Asian origin Global Indus Technovators Awards. The ten were recognized for their outstanding contributions to biotechnology, information technology and grassroots technology, among others. Rajit Manohar received an award in the information technology area for his work on asynchronous FPGAs.

“IEEE Micro Top Picks”

“IBM Faculty Award”

“IBM Faculty Award”

“IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award”

Professor Sandip Tiwari (ECE) was named the 2007 recipient of the IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award with the accompanying citation: "For pioneering contributions to nano-crystal memories and to quantum effect devices". The Brunetti Award recognizes outstanding contributions to the advancement of information storage with emphasis on technical contributions in computer data storage device technology.

Visit the IEEE website for more information about the Cledo Brunetti Award, award recipients, and Sandip Tiwari.

“2006 IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award”

“Best Paper Award”

“Lang Tong Elected Fellow of the IEEE”

“Lang Tong and M. Dong Receive Best Paper Award fr”

“NSBE Educator of the Year Award”

“Career Communications Group "50 Most Important Bla”

“Kevin Kornegay Honored”

“Provost's Ronay and Richard Menschel Award”

“IEEE Micro, "Top Picks"”

Quoted from IEEE Micro: "Jose F. Martinez, in recognition of the inclusion of 'Speculative Synchronization: Programmability and Performance for Parallel Codes' in the 2003 Micro Top Picks special issue on the most industry relevant and significant papers of the year in computer architecture. Congratulations on your contributions to our field. P.B., Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Micro."

“2003-04 Affinito-Stewart Award”

“Best Student Paper Award”

“Candidate for Best Paper Award”

“Best Paper”

“Best Student Paper Award for 2003”

“2004 Plasma Science and Applications Award”

“2004 Lockheed Martin University Research Grants Pr”

“American Physical Society Fellow”

“IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal”

“Highly Commended Paper Award”

“Vice-Chair of the Division of Plasma Physics of th”

“Distinguished Educator Award”

“Chicago Museum of Science and Industry Information”

“IBM Faculty Award”

“Fulbright Grant”

“NSF Award”