Phil Messersmith

Phil Messersmith, associate professor of biomedical engineering, has received a MERIT (Method to Extend Research in Time) Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He will receive up to $3.6 million over the next 10 years.

People and Progress

New faculty

José Andrade, assistant professor, civil and environmental engineering (specialty: geotechnics)

Matthew Grayson, assistant professor, electrical engineering and computer science (specialty: solid-state nanoelectronics)

Dean Ho, assistant professor, mechanical engineering (specialty: bionanotechnology/neural engineering)

Wendy Murray, assistant professor, biomedical engineering (specialty: biomechanics)

Yu (Marco) Nie, assistant professor, civil and environmental engineering (specialty: transportation)

Justin Notestein, assistant professor, chemical and biological engineering (specialty: molecular engineering/catalysis)

Christopher Wolverton, professor, materials science and engineering (specialty: computational materials science)

Faculty honors

Jan Achenbach, Walter P. Murphy Professor and Distinguished McCormick School Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering, presented the plenary lectures at the International Conference on Computational and Experimental Engineering and Sciences and the Mechanical Waves in Solids.

Luis Amaral, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering, has been named a Distinguished Young Scholar in Medical Research by the W.M. Keck Foundation.

Guillermo Ameer, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, has received part of a $3.5 million Illinois state grant that will fund three stem cell research projects. Ameer also has received a 2006 National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Zdeněk P. Bažant, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has received an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, and was honored in a special issue of the International Journal of Fracture. Bazant presented plenary keynote lectures at the 16th European Conference on Fracture; the European Conference on Computational Modeling of Concrete Structures (EURO-C); the Seventh International Conference on Creep, Shrinkage, and Durability of Concrete and Concrete Structures; the National Concrete Convention; and the Structural Engineering Convention of India. He also delivered the Mindlin Lecture at the Quadrennial U.S. National Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.

Randy Berry, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, presented the keynote lecture at the Second Annual Workshop on Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks.

L. Cate Brinson, chair and Jerome B. Cohen Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has received a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Linda Broadbelt, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering, has been awarded the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award.

Fabian Bustamante, Yan Chen, and Aleksandar Kuzmanovic, assistant professors of electrical engineering and computer science, and Peter Dinda, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, have won a Microsoft Trustworthy Computing 2006 Award.

Wei Chen, professor of mechanical engineering, has received the Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award of the Society of Automotive Engineers International.

Isaac Daniel, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, is the recipient of the M.M. Frocht Mechanics Educator of the Year Award of the Society for Experimental Mechanics.

Mark Daskin, professor of industrial engineering and management sciences, has been inducted into the Edelman Academy. Daskin has been offered a visiting appointment at the University of Kent Business School and elected a fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers.

Charles Dowding, professor of civil and environmental engineering, has received the Distinguished Alumni Award of the University of Illinois Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Ken Forbus, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has joined the new NSF-funded Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center.

Bartosz Grzybowski, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, has been named a 2006 Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. He also received the American Chemical Society Division of Colloids and Interfaces Unilever Award.

Dongning Guo, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, has been elected a member of the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the National University of Singapore.

Lawrence Henschen, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, has been included in Who's Who among America's Teachers.

Mark Hersam, professor of materials science and engineering, was honored at the White House as a recipient of the 2005 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. This year Hersam also received the American Vacuum Society Peter Mark Memorial Award and the Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium Faculty Research Award.

Seyed Iravani, associate professor of industrial engineering and management sciences, has won the IIE Operations Research Division Teaching Excellence Award.

A.K. Katsaggelos, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, presented a plenary lecture at IEEE WirelessComm and the opening keynote lecture at the 2005 Pacific-Rim Conference on Multimedia.

David Kelso, associate professor of biomedical engineering, has received a four-year, $4.9 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the new Center for Innovation in Global Health Technologies.

Chung-Chieh Lee, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, has been named SBC Research Professor.

Debiao Li, professor of biomedical engineering, has been elected a fellow of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

Thomas Mason, professor of materials science and engineering, has won the 2006 Ceramic Educational Council Outstanding Educator Award.

Phil Messersmith, associate professor of biomedical engineering and of materials science and engineering, has received the National Institutes of Health MERIT Award.

Hooman Mohseni, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, has received an NSF CAREER Award.

Jorge Nocedal, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of industrial engineering and management sciences, has been appointed to the editorial board of SIAM Review.

Don Norman, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, presented the keynote lecture at the International Symposium on Intelligent Environments and the Allan D. Shocker Lecture to the New Product Design and Business Development Program at the University of Minnesota.

Greg Olson, professor of materials science and engineering, has been named ASM International's Edward DeMille Campbell Memorial Lecturer for 2006.

Monica Olvera de la Cruz, professor of materials science and engineering, has been elected to the Solid State Science Committee of the National Research Council.

John Rudnicki, professor of civil and environmental engineering and mechanical engineering, has been awarded the Maurice A. Biot Medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Rodney Ruoff, professor of mechanical engineering, has been named editor of a special issue of Composites Science & Technology.

Peter Scheuermann, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, served as vice general chair of the International Conference on Management of Data of the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Management of Data.

Mary Silber, professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics, has been elected vice chair of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Activity Group on Dynamical Systems.

Karen Smilowitz, assistant professor of industrial engineering and management sciences, has been appointed Junior William A. Patterson Professor in Transportation.

Peter Voorhees, chair and professor of materials sciences and engineering, provided testimony to the U.S. Senate's Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Science and Space.

Jay Walsh, senior associate dean and professor of biomedical engineering, has received the 2006 William B. Mark Award from the American Society for Lasers in Surgery and Medicine.

Ying Wu, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, has been appointed to the editorial board of Machine Vision and Applications.