Dr. Min Wu, assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), has been selected as an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator. The award will support her research in "Digital Fingerprinting for Multimedia Security and Forensics." It is a three-year, $300,000 award. The program is designed to attract young scientists and engineers who show exceptional promise for doing creative research and teaching. Dr. Wu is one of only 28 investigators selected for awards nationwide, and one of only two from its Mathematical Computer and Information Sciences Division. The competition for this award is fierce; ONR estimates that only 10 percent of the proposals submitted result in an award.

Two professors have received National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards. Assistant Professor Sennur Ulukus (ECE) has won for her research, "A Network Information Theoretic Approach to Wireless Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks." The research will investigate the capacity regions and capacity-achieving transmit/receive coding/decoding schemes of basic network structures. It will develop principles of communicating correlated and common data. John Fisher, assistant professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE), received the award for research on the fundamental properties of biomaterials, specifically how cells communicate with one another in a synthetic setting. Dr. Fisher's lab works on the use of biomaterials for tissue engineering, including the regeneration of bone, muscle and cartilage.

Chair and Professor of Mechanical Engineering (ME) Avram Bar-Cohen was appointed as a Distinguished University Professor in recognition of his work in the thermal management of electronic systems. Distinguished University Professors are selected from faculty who have been recognized nationally and internationally for the importance of their scholarly and/or creative achievements and who have demonstrated the breadth of interest characteristically encompassed by the traditional role of scholar, teacher, and public servant.

Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE) served as the prime architect and proposer of a new journal approved by IEEE titled IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. It will provide a unified locus for archival research on the fundamental contributions and the mathematics behind information forensics, information security, surveillance, and systems applications that incorporate these features. The journal will launch in 2006. Liu has also been elected as Vice President-Publications of the IEEE Signal Processing Society for the 2006-2008 term Dr. Liu also received the Pool & Kent Teaching Award for Senior Faculty at the May 2005 Clark School commencement ceremony.

Associate Professor Elisabeth Smela (ME) was awarded the E. Robert Kent Outstanding Teaching Award for Junior Faculty. Smela, an associate professor, received the award for her commitment to education through teaching, course development, curriculum innovation, and mentoring.  She has developed three new courses, including a two-part MEMS course, and a graduate course in active polymers.

Associate Professor Hubert Montas (Biological Resources Engineering [BRE]) received the Northeast Agricultural and Biological Engineering Conference 2004 Young Engineer of the Year Award. The award is given for outstanding contributions to the advancement of the Agricultural/Biological Engineering profession.

Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE) has been named a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, "for contributions to computational modeling and cortical physiology of the mammalian auditory system." Recently Shamma was awarded a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to study "Spectro-Temporal Plasticity in the Primary Auditory Cortex."

Dr. Victor Granatstein (ECE) was appointed Sackler Professor of Special Standing at Tel Aviv University. He also received a Fulbright Senior Specialist Award for education and research activities at Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute for Science during December 2004 and January 2005.

Professor Arthur Johnson (BRE) was appointed as Secretary of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) and was elected President of the International Society for Respiratory Protection, 2004-2006. Additionally, Johnson was elected to the grade of Fellow in the Biomedical Engineering Society, in recognition of his service to the society. Johnson served as Interim Executive Director of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering from June 2004 to January 2005.

Professor and Chair Fred Wheaton (BRE) was elected to the grade of Fellow in the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE). The award was made at the International ASAE Conference in Ottawa, Canada, in August 2004 in recognition of Dr. Wheaton's contributions to aquacultural engineering and his leadership in National ASAE.

The industry publication Airline Business Report has been covering for the past year Professor Michael Ball's (Institute for Systems Research [ISR] and Robert H. Smith School of Business) work on auctioning airport landing rights. The most recent story covered the National Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research's (NEXTOR) February simulation exercise for airline and government officials. ISR administered this exercise, which was held here in College Park. NEXTOR is co-directed by Professor Ball.

Associate Professor Hugh A. Bruck (ME) was granted a Fulbright Scholar award by the Council for the International Exchange for Scholars in the 2005-2006 academic year. Professor Bruck will pursue research and teaching activities with colleagues at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Associate Professor Bongtae Han (ME) won the Gold Award in Analysis and Simulation at the 1st Annual Samsung Technical Conference sponsored by Samsung on November 9, 2004. Han was also recently appointed to a one-year term as a Technical Advisor of the Packaging Center at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology.

Professor Emeritus David Holloway (ME) was elected to the prestigious status of SAE Fellow by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE International). Fellow status is bestowed to recognize and honor SAE members who have made a significant impact on transportation technology through research, innovation or creative leadership.

IEEE has appointed Professor Virgil Gligor (ECE) as an Editorial Board member of IEEE Transactions on Computers, a monthly scholarly journal with a wide distribution to researchers, developers, technical managers, and educators in the computer field. It is one of the oldest computer engineering journals currently in publication. The recent appointment marks Gligor's third current editorial board membership. Gligor also serves on the editorial boards of ACM Transactions on Information Systems Security and IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.

Professor Anthony Ephremides (ECE and ISR) was one of eight speakers from around the world at the inauguration ceremony of the enlarged LG Labs in Seoul, South Korea. Dr. Ephremides also received an award from the Naval Research Laboratory for his paper, "Performance Evaluation of Random Access in Wireless Networks with Multiple Destinations."

Professor Agis Iliadis (Electrical Engineering [EE]) and his student Hasina Ali (ECE) have won the 2004 R.F. Bunshah Award for Best Paper at the International Conference on Metallurgical Coatings and Thin Films Conference. The annual award is presented to the author(s) of the best paper in each symposium at the next year's conference. Selection for the award is based upon the quality and originality of the technical presentation and the quality of the submitted manuscript. The conference is sponsored by the AVS Science and Techonology Society.

Clark School faculty members were honored with Invention of the Year awards from the University's Office of Technology Commercialization. In the Information Science category, K. J. Ray Liu, (ECE and ISR), former ISR Postdoctoral Research Associate Weifeng Su and ISR alum Zoltan Safar, M.S. '01 and Ph.D. '03, won for their invention "Coding Techniques for Maximum Achievable Diversity in Space, Time and Frequency for Broadband Wireless Communications." In the Physical Science category, Benjamin Shapiro (Aerospace Engineering and ISR), Pamela Abshire (ECE and ISR) and Elisabeth Smela (ME) won for their invention "Cell-Sensor Based Pathogen Detection."