Debbie Sweet, a junior Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) major working in the lab of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Associate Professor Mohamad Al-Sheikhly, was a winner in the National Goldwater Scholarship Competition. The Goldwater Scholarship is the premiere undergraduate award granted to mathematics, natural sciences and engineering students interested in research careers. The program aims to provide the world with an ample selection of qualified scholars and researchers.

Andrew Parker, an undergraduate double major in Civil Engineering (CE) and Physics, has been awarded a Churchill Scholarship to study at Cambridge University. Mr. Parker is the first University of Maryland student to win a Churchill Scholarship. He is a member of the Clark School's chapter of Engineers Without Borders.

Catherine McGhan, an Aerospace Engineering (AE) student and Minta Martin Fellow, has received a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship that will begin in the fall. She plans to remain at the Clark School to pursue her Ph.D.

Timothy Andrew Wasserman, an undergraduate AE student advised by David Akin (Associate Professor and Space Systems Laboratory Director, AE), won second place in the AIAA student competition in April for his presentation and paper, "Gestural Control of an Assistant Rover by an Astronaut for Planetary Exploration." Ian Cohen, also an undergraduate in AE, took third place in the same competition with his paper and presentation, "Applied Autonomous Gyro Calibration." Cohen's advisor on the project was Rob Sanner (Associate Professor, AE).

ECE graduate students Kuldeep Amarnath and Marcel Pruessner received the Best Student Paper Award at the 17th Indium Phosphide and Related Materials (IPRM) Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in May. IPRM is one of the leading conferences on Indium Phosphide (InP) materials and devices. The winning paper is titled "Indium Phosphide Based MEMS End-Coupled Optical Waveguide Switches." Other co-authors on the paper were Madhumita Datta (Research Associate, ECE), Subramaniam Kanakaraju (Faculty Research Assistant, ECE) and Associate Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE and the Institute for Systems Research [ISR]). Amarnath is advised by Ping-Tong Ho (ECE) and Pruessner is advised by Reza Ghodssi.

ISR graduate student Daniel Fitzgerald has won a 2005-2006 scholarship from the Metropolitan Washington Chapter of the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation, Inc (ARCS). He is working with Associate Professor Jeffrey Herrmann (Mechanical Engineering and ISR), Associate Professor Linda Schmidt (ME and ISR) and ISR-affiliated Associate Professor Peter Sandborn (ME) on the Design for Environment process for Black & Decker. This work first began under an NSF PREMISE grant.

Brian Morgan, an ECE graduate student advised by Assistant Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE and ISR) and based in the MEMS Sensors and Actuators Laboratory, also has won a 2005-2006 Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation, Inc (ARCS) Scholarship. Morgan won the scholarship the previous year as well. Morgan's research focuses on novel three-dimensional silicon MEMS microfabrication technology with an emphasis on electrostatic actuators.

ECE undergraduate Amir Ali Ahmadi has won two prizes for his paper titled, "Adjustable Time Delays for Optical Clock Recovery Systems." He received the Undergraduate First Prize in the 2005 annual paper competition of the DC Council of Engineers and Architect Societies (DCCEAS), as well as the Washington Society of Engineers' 2005 Young Engineer Prize. Amir and his teammate, ECE undergraduate Elric Von Eden, won first runner up honors in the 2004 Maryland Engineering Research Internship Teams (MERIT) Fair in the Research Internships in Telecommunications Engineering (RITE) category. Their advisor was Thomas Murphy, assistant professor in ECE.

ECE graduate student Reza Salem won the best poster award in the Baltimore/Washington-area IEEE Laser and Electro-Optics Society (LEOS) graduate student poster competition held March 23. His poster was titled, "Polarization Insensitive Optical Clock Recovery at 80 Gb/s Using a Silicon Photodiode." Winners were chosen by an independent panel of judges from government, industry and academia. This work is described in detail in Salem's paper of the same title, which was recently submitted to Photonics Technology Letters. Salem is advised by Assistant Professor Thomas Murphy (ECE).

Tony Li, a May 2005 B.S. candidate in Electrical Engineering, has received the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). The DoD awards the NSDEG Fellowship annually to individuals who have demonstrated ability and special aptitude for advanced training in science and engineering. In addition to receiving the NSDEG Fellowship, Li has been accepted to Stanford University's M.S./Ph.D. program in Electrical Engineering. Li currently has a 3.974 GPA, and has been a participant in the MERIT program under Assistant Professor Pamela Abshire (ECE and ISR).

ECE graduate students Alireza Modafe and Nima Ghalichechian, and Associate Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE and ISR), are the recipients of the 2004 MEMS and NEMS (MN) Technical Group Graduate Award for their presentation titled "BCB-Based Linear Micromotor Supported on Microball Bearings: Design Concepts, Characterization, and Fabrication Development." Candidates were judged based on the originality of their research and the quality of their presentation. The MN Technical Committee found the ECE students' presentation to be the best among all MN student papers submitted at the American Vacuum Society (AVS) 51st International Symposium last November in Anaheim, Calif.

Two papers submitted by ECE graduate students have been selected as winners of the 2005 Student Paper Contest sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Acoustic, Speech, and Signal Processing. A paper titled "Moving Object Segmentation and Dynamic Scene Reconstruction Using Two Frames," authored by Amit Agrawal and Professor Rama Chellappa (ECE and Computer Science), was selected as the winner in the "Image and Multidimensional Signal Processing" category. "Security of Feature Extraction in Image Hashing," authored by Ashwin Swaminathan, Yinian Mao, and Assistant Professor Min Wu (ECE), was selected as the winner in the "Multimedia Signal Processing" category.