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Rocha
CS professor elected to National Academy of Inventors The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) has named Professor Lijun Yin to its 2021 class of senior members. Yin, a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science, has been a pioneer in the field of three- and four-dimensional modeling, specifically of the human face. He has created and released a series of facial-scan databases that have been used by Hollywood filmmakers, video-game creators and more. “It is my honor to be elected as a senior member of NAI,” Yin says. “I hope our work will increase the visibility of Binghamton University, as well as aid the research community and society as a whole.” Three faculty members from Watson College are NAI fellows: Distinguished Professors Bahgat Sammakia (also Binghamton University’s vice president for research), Kanad Ghose and Jessica Fridrich.
Yin
Named professorship honors SSIE pioneer In fall 2021, thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, Binghamton University will inaugurate the George Klir Professor in Systems Science. The professorship, in honor of Klir’s groundbreaking work in the field of complex systems, is the first named professorship at Watson College, and will be part of the Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering. The first to fill the role will be former Klir student Luis Rocha, PhD ’97. “I am particularly excited by opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration with such areas as health, biology, psychology and others, leveraging strengths in the department and Watson College,” Rocha says. After leaving Binghamton, Rocha served as a permanent staff scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1998 to 2004. He spent 16 years at Indiana University, most recently as a professor of informatics and the director of the NSF-NRT Interdisciplinary Training Program in Complex Networks and Systems. Klir
Five grads say farewell at virtual Commencements Because of COVID-19 restrictions, graduation looked quite different for the classes of 2020 and 2021, but grads still had their say.
Erika Solano Diaz, who earned her MS in biomedical engineering, praised Watson College’s diversity as “culturally dissimilar, perceptive minds with different barriers to overcome, reaching out to each other to achieve a common goal.” For the 2021 Commencement, three students offered remarks in the program.
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WATSON REVIEW
Marleen Moise, who received her BS in industrial and systems engineering and minored in theatre (dance), urged graduates to be bold: “You can only learn from your mistakes, not from perfection.”
Moise
Pawliczak
Imaane Carolina, a BS grad in ISE, said adapting to the pandemic made students similar to chameleons, because “we change our colors along the way to adjust to new environments.” Byron Stewart-Drysdale talked about how friends helped him earn his MS in mechanical engineering: “Just knowing you have amazing people in your corner … makes a world of difference.”
Carolina
Solano Diaz
Stewart-Drysdale
JONATHAN COHEN
At the 2020 Commencement, held in December, Emma Pawliczak said following her “gut feeling” about Binghamton and earning her BS in mechanical engineering was “one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.” She returned in fall 2020 to pursue her master’s degree.
