Faculty and Staff Archives

by Steve Frandzel

The annual Celebrate Excellence Breakfast on September 20 acknowledged the collective achievements of the College of Engineering over the last 12 months and looked ahead to what’s sure to be another academic year filled with renewed promise and success. The College introduced new hires, recognized faculty and staff who earned promotions, and honored outstanding achievement with its Celebrate Excellence awards. This year’s award recipients are:

Adam Higgins: Austin Paul Engineering Faculty Award, which recognizes faculty who “develop student relationships in which they lead, encourage, and stimulate students in the pursuit of creative and innovative engineering ideas.”

Jens Odegaard: Classified Employee Award, which recognizes “exceptional performance and service.”

Elisha Brackett,: Professional Faculty Award, which recognizes “outstanding performance by a faculty member whose contribution and service is not defined within the traditional categories of teaching, research, or extension.”

Kagan Tumer: The Research Award, which recognizes “sustained, unusually significant and meritorious achievement in research and scholarship.”

Sinisa Todorovic: The Research Collaboration Award, which recognizes a member of the engineering faculty for “sustained, unusually significant and meritorious achievement in collaborative research and scholarship.”

Arun Natarajan: The Engelbrecht Young Faculty Award, which recognizes “outstanding young faculty” in the College of Engineering.

Skip Rochefort: Alumni Professor Award, which recognizes “excellence in teaching and service to students.”

Benjamin Brewster: Loyd Carter Award, which recognizes faculty for “outstanding and inspirational teaching,” as voted by members of the junior and senior class in the College of Engineering.

Katarina Morowsky: Graduate Teaching Assistant Award, which recognizes efforts “beyond the level normally expected of a GTA.”

Yang Xu and Nitish Kumar: Graduate Research Assistant Award, which recognizes contributions “beyond the level normally expected of a GRA.”

Tanner Fiez: Burgess/Tektronix Award, which recognizes an “outstanding senior in the College of Engineering,” as judged by a variety of activities beyond just academic performance.

By Steve Frandzel

College of Engineering faculty won six of the 21 annual Oregon State University Day Faculty Senate Awards—and $30,000 in accompanying funding. The awards, handed out at a dinner ceremony by OSU President Ed Ray, recognize the best work and achievement of OSU faculty. Congratulations to all of the winners!

Christopher Hagen, assistant professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering and Director of the OSU Energy Systems Laboratory at the OSU Cascades Campus won two awards: the Faculty Innovator Award ($10,000), which recognizes a faculty member whose extraordinarily high-impact innovations from research are translated into transformative results that help promote economic development and social progress; and the Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring Award ($2,000), which recognizes and encourages outstanding mentoring of postdoctoral appointees by OSU faculty members.

The Industry Partnering Award ($10,000), which recognizes a faculty member who achieves extraordinarily high impact innovations through research collaborations with industry, went to Karl Haapala, associate professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering.

Kendra Sharp, Richard and Gretchen Evans Professor in Humanitarian Engineering in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, was awarded the International Service Award ($1,000) in recognition of her exemplary, on-going contributions to the internationalization of the university by enhancing student, faculty, and staff awareness and participation in international education, research, and related activities.

The Student Learning and Success Teamwork Award ($5,000) went to the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering Capstone Design Team of Javier Calvo-Amodio, Robin Feuerbacher, Chris Hoyle, John Parmigiani, Tracy Ann Robinson, and Nancy Squires. The award recognizes departments or interdisciplinary groups at OSU that have demonstrated exceptional teamwork in creating and sustaining an exemplary teaching and learning environment to advance the university’s strategic goal of student success and excellence.

Cindy Grimm, an associate professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, was awarded the Dar Reese Excellence in Advising Award ($1,000) for outstanding advising of undergraduate students by a member of the OSU faculty, as well as demonstrated success in teaching, research and service.

To see a list of all 2016 award recipients, visit http://oregonstate.edu/events/universityday/award-recipients-amp-nomination-process

By Krista Klinkhammer

Global Summit of Women — Left to right: Liz Jachens, Kendra Sharp, Dick Evans, Gretchen Evans, Phylicia Cicilio, and Susan Elliott.

Three engineering graduate students and Kendra Sharp, professor of mechanical engineering, recently accompanied Richard ’69 and Gretchen ’69 Evans to the 2016 Global Summit of Women in Warsaw, Poland. They were among 1,000 women from 75 countries, and many government and industry leaders, including CEOs and former heads of state.

The three graduate students in attendance were recipients of Evans Family Fellowships for field work related to their graduate programs:

Liz Jachens, MS student in Water Resources Engineering, received a fellowship for fieldwork in East Africa to develop a School 2 School initiative between U.S. and African schools as part of the Trans Africa Hydro Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO.org) project. The team is working to install weather stations spaced every 30 km across Africa.
Susan Elliott, MS student in Water Resources Engineering, received a fellowship for fieldwork in Ethiopia working with the International Water Management Institute.
Phylicia Cicilio, Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering, received a fellowship for fieldwork in rural Alaska to acquire and analyze data on the integration of diesel microgrids with renewable energy and energy storage.

Richard Evans moderated a plenary panel called Closing the Digital & Technology Gender Gap, and presented on the success of drawing females to engineering through the Humanitarian Engineering program at Oregon State. The percentage of female engineers in humanitarian engineering coursework offered at Oregon State or funded by scholarships or fellowships through the program is nearing 70 percent.

“This type of experience is so critical to enabling our female students to truly envision themselves as future leaders who can aspire for the top roles in their organizations,” said Sharp, who is also the Richard and Gretchen Evans Professor in Humanitarian Engineering.

The students were able to attend due to the Evans’ generosity, and appreciated the opportunity to learn from women in leadership positions all over the globe. “I hope to be back in a few years to network and represent myself as a young woman in the industry,” said Jachens.

By Steve Frandzel

Brian Wood, professor of environmental engineering has been awarded a fellowship by the London Mathematical Society (LMS), the United Kingdom’s leading learned society for mathematics. As part of the fellowship, Wood will reside in Oxford and deliver a series of six lectures at prestigious universities including Oxford University, Cambridge University, Imperial College, and University College.

The fellowship and lectures represent a unique opportunity to bring visibility to Oregon State and help foster potential collaboration. Wood will also conduct collaborative research with Helen Byrne, University Lecturer in Computational Biology at the Mathematical Institute of Oxford. The topic of both the research and the lectures will be upscaling in complex, hierarchical biological systems, such as tissues and organs.

The primary aim of the visit is to establish new partnerships between Wood and members of the Mathematical Institute at Oxford who have common interests in the development and application of tissue homogenization in biology and medicine (creating tissue samples that are equal in composition).

Wood’s primary research interests include the description of mass, momentum, and energy transport in natural and engineered multiscale systems. He also specializes in subsurface hydrology; bioremediation and biochemical processes; water and wastewater treatment; and sustainable design and engineering.

The LMS publishes journals and books, provides grants to support mathematics, and organizes scientific meetings and lectures.

Congratulations to David Hurwitz, an assistant professor in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering, for receiving the prestigious ASCE ExCEEd (Excellence in Civil Engineering Education) New Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award. Hurwitz was selected from a large pool of highly talented candidates and will be presented with a plaque during the ASEE Annual Conference in June in Indianapolis, IN. Continue reading →

Ingenium

College of Engineering Blog

Category Archives: Faculty and Staff

College of Engineering honors excellence at annual breakfast

College of Engineering Faculty Take Home Six 2016 University Day Honors

Graduate students attend Global Summit of Women

Brian Wood Awarded Overseas Fellowship

Hurwitz receives competitive civil engineering education award

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