Faculty Accolades ANOTHER TR35 INNOVATOR NAMED AT THE VITERBI SCHOOL Nanophotonics expert Michelle Povinelli has been recognized by MIT Technology Review magazine as one of the world’s top 35 innovators under the age of 35. The annual TR35 list is an elite group of accomplished young Michelle Povinelli leaders who exemplify the spirit of innovation. Their work—spanning medicine, computing, communications, nanotechnology and more—is changing our world. An assistant professor of the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, Povinelli was recognized for her work on nano-photonic mechanics, studying ultra-small structures that can be used to manipulate light signals. “Advances in nano-fabrication techniques make it possible to pattern materials on a scale smaller than the wavelength of light,” said Povinelli. “I want to harness this capability to make nano-photonic devices for optical communications, solar energy and materials.” Her work is integral to developing faster communications systems and improving technology to capture solar energy. Povinelli joined the Viterbi School in fall 2008. She received her Ph.D. in physics in 2004 from MIT and completed her postdoctoral work at Stanford University. She currently holds the Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) Junior Gabilan Chair and has received many awards, including an Army Young Investigator Award and a Presidential Early Career Award. She is the third Viterbi professor to be named to the TR35 in the last two years; Andrea Armani and Ellis Meng were named to the 2009 class. Other previous winners include such worldchanging innovators as Jerry Yang of Yahoo, Google co-founder Larry Page, and Linus Torvalds of Linux fame.
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VITERBI PROFESSORIAL AWARDS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
Murali Annavaram
Andrea Armani
Iraj Ershaghi
Murali Annavaram of the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) joins the school’s roster of distinguished National Science Foundation CAREER Award winners. This funding will allow his team to answer fundamental challenges to processor reliability. Andrea Armani has won a Presidential Early Career Award, the U.S. government’s highest honor for scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. Armani, of the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science (ChE/ MS) and the Fluor Early Career Chair in Engineering, also won a 2010 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award for her work in developing ”ultrasensitive nanolasers for epigenetics investigations.” Iraj Ershaghi, the Omar B. Milligan Chair of Petroleum Engineering (ChE/MS), has received the John Franklin Carll Award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers. A highly sought media expert following the Deepwater Horizon explosion and Gulf oil spill this spring, Ershaghi was selected for his work in petroleum development and recovery. Petros Ioannou of EE was elected a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in recognition of his work in control and transportation systems. A pioneer in “adaptive cruise control” systems, Ioannou also received the IET Heaviside Medal for Achievement in Control.
Petros Ioannou
Michael Kassner
Michael Kassner, Shri Narayanan, and Viktor Prasanna were elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Kassner, of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, was named for leadership and research in the mechanical behavior of materials. Narayanan, who holds the Viterbi Professorship in Engineering, was cited for his contributions to “human communication science and technologies and their applications to engineering systems development.” Prasanna, the Charles Lee Powell Chair in Engineering (EE), was honored for his work in the field of parallel and distributed computing. Shri Narayanan, of EE and the Department of Computer Science (CS) with appointments also in linguistics and psychology, received the 2010 Distinguished Faculty Service Award for his service to the Senate-Provost University Research Committee over the last five years. Other recent awards include an IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award and an Interspeech Emotion Challenge Award, presented at the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association. Bhaskar Krishnamachari of EE and CS has been named this year’s recipient of the Frederick Emmons Terman Award by the American Society of Engineering Education. ASEE and the award’s sponsor, the Hewlett-Packard Co., selected Krishnamachari for his early overall contributions, including his textbook Networking Wireless Sensors (Cambridge University Press, 2005).