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Faculty honors

Berkeley Engineering nanotechnology expert Paul Alivisatos wins Wolf Prize in Chemistry

01/12/12 Nanowerk — Paul Alivisatos, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley professor of materials science and engineering, and the Larry and Diane Bock Professor of Nanotechnology, has won the prestigious Wolf Foundation Prize in Chemistry for 2012. Alivisatos is an internationally recognized authority on nanochemistry and a pioneer in the synthesis of semiconductor quantum dots and multi-shaped artificial nanostructures.

Luke Lee awarded Gates Foundation grant

12/16/11 — Berkeley Bioengineering Professor Luke Lee has been selected to receive a Point-of-Care Diagnostics grant through Grand Challenges in Global Health, an initiative created by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project goal is to develop a microfluidic Universal Sample Preparation (USP) module that is relevant for parallel diagnostics of infectious diseases. The grant will provide $1.47 million in research funding over three years.

Berkeley Engineering professor Lisa Pruitt wins A. Richard Newton Educator Award

10/12/11 Marketwire — The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology announced today the 2011 A. Richard Newton Educator Award, which recognizes teaching practices, techniques or innovative and new education approaches that attract girls and women to math, computing, and engineering. The first winner of the new award is Lisa Pruitt, professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley. Lisa Pruitt is deeply committed to ensuring the technological prowess of our society and economy, and works tirelessly and enthusiastically to invite and inspire a full spectrum of participants to pursue engineering endeavors.

ATIC and UAEU appoint Berkeley Engineering’s Bernhard Boser to inaugural ATIC Professorship for Semiconductor Research

06/29/11 Al Bawaba — ATIC and United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) have today announced the appointment of Professor Bernhard E. Boser from the University of California, Berkeley to the newly created ATIC Professorship for Semiconductor Research. Extending Abu Dhabi's collaboration with internationally recognized academic institutions, the first incumbent of the ATIC Professorship for Semiconductor Research, Prof. Boser joins UAEU from the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley.

Environmental engineering professor Kara Nelson receives grant for sanitation research

05/02/11 The Daily Californian — UC Berkeley professor of environmental engineering Kara Nelson has been awarded a five-year $100,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for her unconventional research in sanitation and human waste management. Nelson said she will use the grant money to treat human waste at the point where it is being produced, in an effort to eliminate the amount of contact humans have with fecal pathogens.

C.J. Chang-Hasnain, laser engineering luminary, receives 2011 IEEE David Sarnoff Award

02/22/11 IEEE — UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences Constance Chang-Hasnain, an engineer whose groundbreaking contributions to the physics and design of Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) have shaped their use in modern technology, is being honored by IEEE with the 2011 IEEE David Sarnoff Award. IEEE is the world's largest professional association advancing technology for humanity.

Bioengineering faculty members Amy Herr and Sanjay Kumar receive NSF CAREER Awards

02/14/11 — Berkeley Bioengineering Assistant Professors Amy Herr and Sanjay Kumar have received 2011 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program awards. CAREER awards are given to young researchers in science and engineering who have also translated their work into significant educational activities. Herr is a leading researcher in microscale biomarker detection technology, and Kumar is a pioneer in molecular cell dynamics and the mechanobiology of the cytoskeleton.

Charles A. Desoer receives IEEE Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award

02/09/11 IEEE — IEEE, the world's largest association for the advancement of technology, has awarded the Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award to the late Charles A. Desoer, professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer sciences, for crucial conceptual research contributions to the behavior and the use of electrical circuits and systems.

Teachers at the top of their game

10/05/10 — Berkeley faculty know their material. Yet to teach it so that students not only understand but find inspiration and wonder in it, takes special talent and dedication. In April, civil and environmental engineering professor Juan Pestana-Nascimento and associate professor Dan Klein of electrical engineering and computer sciences joined two other faculty members elsewhere on campus in receiving the Berkeley 2010 Distinguished Teaching Award. In the award's 51-year history, only 236 faculty have received it, among the thousands who have taught Berkeley courses.

UC Berkeley professor James Demmel receives 2010 IEEE Computer Society Sidney Fernbach Award

10/01/10 PRWeb — James Demmel, UC Berkeley professor of mathematics and of computer sciences, has been named the recipient of the 2010 IEEE Computer Society Sidney Fernbach Award for his contributions to high-performance linear algebra software. The software he has helped develop is used by hundreds of sites worldwide, including all U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories, NASA research laboratories, many universities, and companies in the aerospace, environmental, pharmaceutical and other industries.

Carey is winner of 2010 HP Innovation Research Program Award

06/07/10 — Professor Van P. Carey of UC Berkeley's Mechanical Engineering Department is among a select group of professors worldwide that have been selected to receive awards as part of Hewlett Packard's 2010 Innovation Research Program. The award will provide $100K for the 2010-2011 academic year in support of Carey's research. The project led by Professor Carey teams him with HP's Sustainable IT Ecosystem Lab in an effort to develop compact and accurate models of the energy use in data centers.

Pisano awarded Columbia University 2009 Egleston Medal for Distinguished Engineering Achievement

06/03/10 — Albert P. Pisano, Professor and Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering and currently serving as Acting Dean of the College of Engineering at Berkeley, has been unanimously elected to receive Columbia University's 2009 Egleston Medal for Distinguished Engineering Achievement. Pisano was elected to receive the award for his "extraordinary pioneering work in the field of micro-electromechanical systems."