 Good evening. It's a special honor to recognize outstanding faculty accomplishments. The college welcomes and congratulates each of Purdue Engineering's 2020 honorees. These faculty are an integral part of the success of the College of Engineering, leaving their mark and continuing to answer the call in the world's toughest challenges like other generations of Boilermakers before. They're having an impact through research, teaching, advising, mentoring, engagement, and inspiring students who will magnify their influence, in turn making giant leaps of their own. The faculty we honor are among the extraordinary people of Purdue Engineering and bring great pride to the College of Engineering and the University. We thank you. Our program begins with recognition of our newly appointed or ratified named faculty members. These 12 highly accomplished faculty members are being recognized for eminence in a field of study and outstanding contributions to their disciplines. Antonio Bulbet is the newly named Edgar B. and Hedwig M. Olson Professor in Civil Engineering. Professor Bulbet is a leading authority in the area of rock mechanics and rock engineering, with major contributions in hydraulic fracturing and induced seismicity, seismic design of tunnels, risk evaluation and mitigation of geostructures, and the stability of lunar lava flows. His work has pointed the way to new solutions for increased safety and underground infrastructure design and construction and management. Robert J. Connor was recently named the Jack and K. Hakama Professor in Civil Engineering. Professor Connor's work focuses on design, research, and testing of bridges and related structures, structural health monitoring and evaluation, fatigue and fracture of steel structures, and bridge inspection and inspection reliability. The impact of his work has led to extensive design principles and code specifications that are used today by federal and state agencies. Melba M. Crawford now serves as the Nancy Uradil and Francis Basu Professor in Civil Engineering. Professor Crawford's research interests focus on development of advanced techniques for remote sensing data analysis and applications of these methods for agriculture and natural resource mapping and monitoring. Her work has been instrumental in the development of advanced sensing technologies and analysis methodology for wheeled and UAV platforms focused on high throughput phenotyping. William Bill A. Crossley was named the J. William Uric and Anastasia Vornaz head of aeronautics and astronautics. Professor Crossley's teaching and research interests are an aerospace systems design analysis and optimization with emphasis on problems that mix continuous and discreet variables, involve uncertainty, and have multiple objectives. His experienced community building and his systems vision were instrumental in fundamentally changing the aircraft design education and research environment in aeronautics and astronautics. Abiyajet Abhi V. Deshmuk holds the newly named Professorship Tomkins Chair of Systems. Professor Deshmuk has an exceptional record of fundamental research with expertise in distributed decision-making, mechanism design, and healthcare policy and has authored several landmark publications in the area of complex systems. He has significantly influenced the design community with his theoretical framework for distributed problem solving and made impactful contributions in distributed decision-making and design theory. Eckhard A. Grohl serves as the William E. and Florence E. Perry head of Mechanical Engineering. Professor Grohl's research consists of fundamental thermal sciences as applied to advanced energy conversion systems, components, and their working fluids. He has been recognized for significant contributions to the advancement of heat-pumping technology applications, market development, as well as dissemination activities with lasting international impact, and to the advancement of refrigeration. Makarand Mark Hashtag holds the newly named Dernland Family Head of Construction Engineering and Management. Professor Hashtag is a world-renowned expert in the area of construction engineering and management with specific expertise in disaster risk reduction, infrastructure management, cost control, project management decision-making, risk management, factory-built housing, contracts, warranties, modular construction, and strategic planning. He has provided expertise to numerous projects sponsored by the NSF, State Departments of Transportation, city agencies, and the Construction Industry Institute. AJP Malchi was recently named the R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Professor Malchi has an exemplary record of research, teaching, and entrepreneurship in nanomaterials, machining and surface engineering, and packaging integration of micro-electronic systems. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for innovations in nanomanufacturing with impact in multiple industry sectors in 2018. Particularly noteworthy advances are super-hard cubic boron nitride coatings for carbide cutting tools and specialty coatings for high-performance racing cars. Jan Olek has been named the James H. and Carol H. Kear Professor in Civil Engineering. Professor Olek's research focuses on the properties and behavior of concrete and asphalt in applications for transportation infrastructure. His work has resulted in design specifications for the Federal Highway Administration, standard specifications for concrete bridge decks in Indiana, section 500 of the Indiana Department of Transportation's standard specifications, and numerous other industry applications. Demetrius Perulus serves as the Michael and Catherine Burke head of electrical and computer engineering. Professor Perulus is a global leader in the field of reliable micro-electromechanical systems, MEMS, for radio frequency applications and sensors. His research findings have not only had a profound impact on the science of MEMS reliability, but have already led to several breakthrough technological solutions in the areas of high-temperature engine health monitoring and intelligent energy-saving radio electronics. Karthik Romani has been appointed the Donald W. Feddersen Distinguished Professor in Mechanical Engineering. Professor Romani is an international leader who has created new fundamental research at the convergence of traditional disciplines by making connections between human-computer interactions, machine and deep learning of geometric shapes, exploring new forms of robot-human machine interactions, as well as spatial, interactive, and wearable interfaces. He has innovated methods for representations of shapes for visual search, new manufacturing processes and machines, and new architectures for robots. Our last honoree is Young C. Shin, who now holds the distinction of the Donald A. and Nancy G. Roach Distinguished Professor of Advanced Manufacturing. Professor Shin is a leader in the area of laser-based manufacturing processes with applications to materials processing, utilizing high-power, intelligent monitoring and control, and advanced material removal processes. He has developed one of the most respected laser-based manufacturing programs in the United States and has made many critical contributions in laser-assisted machining, laser surface enhancement, laser additive manufacturing processes, laser shock peening, laser micromachining, laser welding, and laser-based nano-manufacturing. The recognition as distinguished and named professors confers prestige upon yourselves, your schools, and these faculties elevate all of Purdue Engineering with their accomplishments. The college is grateful for their commitment and talent and proud to have them here at Purdue as members of our faculty and our administrative leadership team. Now we turn our attention to honoring the 2020 College of Engineering Faculty Excellence Awards recipients. This year marks the 18th annual celebration. We'll start off our recognition with the Dean A. A. Potter Undergraduate Teaching Award, bestowed upon the most outstanding teacher in the College of Engineering. It honors exemplary undergraduate teaching in all phases of the college's program on the West Lafayette campus. This year's Dean A. A. Potter Award goes to Carl W. Waskren Jr., Professor Mechanical Engineering. Biggest strength Dr. Waskren has connected to students is he always starts off every lecture with some kind of pop culture fact that somehow relates to the topic we're covering. So I got to have them both thermodynamics one and fluid dynamics and he always found some cool way to sort of reel in the class, get their attention right from the get-go. He really does care a lot about his students and the cases that I'm involved in there's hundreds in these classrooms and he really does care about them learning. Professor Waskren's teaching influence extends way beyond Purdue University through his students, the TA's that he's worked with and the outstanding notes on thermodynamics, food mechanics and gas dynamics that he's made freely available to everyone on his webpage. I cannot recommend them highly enough. They are very, very good. He has about a 1,700 page textbook of just notes and he gives us out to the students for free and he's made it all entirely himself. This is all Dr. Waskren's work and it's got example problems with worked out solutions. It's got supplemental reading so if you read the textbook and you know you come back from class maybe you want a little more in-depth on a topic he's provided all that for you. We all do office hours. Every faculty member does that. He has a very unique way of doing them. He does them in the labs where the students are, not in his office. So I find that you know very dedicated to trying to be where the students want to learn and trying to help them learn. The testimonials to his teacher are just how many other students you know try to get this professor for all their classes. He holds exam review sessions and they were consistently the rooms were packed over capacity. You know kids are sitting in the stairwell just to hear this guy review. For motivating students with challenging mechanical engineering curriculum through resource material practice problem and application based learning models geared toward relevant modern examples and for helping to strengthen students backgrounds in science and technology the College of Engineering is proud to present the Dean A. A. Potter undergraduate teaching award to Carl R. Waskren Jr. Our next honor is the Early Career Teaching Award. This award was created to recognize exceptional undergraduate teaching by assistant professors and assistant professors of engineering practice and is awarded to Michael L. Mastar Jr., assistant professor, agronomy and environmental and ecological engineering. Michael and I have been working together for several years and we've collaborated quite extensively on developing graduate curricula. His biggest contribution in changing education here at Purdue is that he took over the soil science classes and completely revamped their labs. The thing that makes Dr. Mastar stand out to me is that he's funny, he's entertaining but also just through the syllabus class the first class he was able to convey how passionate and excited he was to teach the course that it was really infectious for I think all of the students. Michael's teaching style involves a lot of energy and a lot of creativity. He's able to engage with students and talk to them about a much broader audience for technical communication and that makes for a more interesting discussion and how they think about things and he engages with them to help them develop different perspectives. Through Dr. Mastar's class it's really affected how I view the world now so whenever I'm on campus walking around I'll look at an area and I'll be like oh this is like the A and B layer I'll see tire tracks and I'll say oh the dirt's compacted now aggregated and my friends will be like Erica why are you so excited about dirt you're like no it's soil let me let me continue. Michael brings a joy to teaching that I haven't seen in anybody else and that he is very very generous with his time and his energy and helping other people work through challenges whether they're in curriculum or in individual students he has always made time to help and I think that has that has meant a lot to a lot of different students and to a lot of different faculty. For innovative coursework in urban ecosystem services and soil science harnessing various active learning techniques such as a hybridized version of lab lecture format to enrich the student experience and to enhance engagement and critical thinking skills the College of Engineering is proud to present the early career teaching award to Michael L. Mastar Jr. We move now to the Graduate Student Mentorship Award. This award recognizes a faculty member in the College of Engineering for Excellence in the Mentoring of Graduate Students. This year's award is presented to Araju M. Artakani Associate Professor Mechanical Engineering. During the interaction with Professor Artakani what I find is she is a really dedicated person on research not only I think not only bother research mentorship she actually perform a really good student teacher a functional relationship she always advocate support and respect students we have a big eclectic group and she does a brilliant job of managing all of us and being supportive of all of us she took great efforts to guide my project and help me on my research she also carefully helps us to develop long-term career plans I remember she made documents for the group listing her advice like how to make plans and keep track on research and resources to improve writing presentation and job interview from her I not only learned how to conduct impactful research but also developed management skills to prepare my future career she definitely is one of the most impactful person in my early career she deeply care about the student's career for me as example I already graduated for three years she's still constantly asking me what is my research status is what I want to do in the future and providing if there's any way she can provide the support she'll she always being there to give me the support and encouragement I consider myself fortunate to have her as my advisor and I'm sure that everyone in our group shares the same opinion I also want to thank her for being a great friend to me and always being supportive I want to say thank you professor Articani and congratulations for invaluable contributions to her graduate students research writing and communication skills affording them the skill set to become great researchers with long-term career opportunities and a built-in professional network the college of engineering is proud to present the graduate student mentorship award to Ereju M. Articani our program continues with the online education award recognizing a faculty member or lecturer in the college of engineering for excellence in course development and pedagogy of an online education course this award goes to james d jones associate professor of mechanical engineering professor jones's course was different from other courses in that we we get to see him on the screen when we watched um any particular tutorial video he wasn't there for the entire time but he gave like a verbal explanation what was going to be covered so it didn't feel any different than if I went to a lecture room he recorded over 200 segments of all of his online lectures we recorded them to make him more fluent more interesting more interactive with the students so which was by a large extent a monumental effort all of his videos were super to the point they covered exactly what we needed to be learning in a concise order and they made a lot of sense they had great subtitles they were categorized into different areas that um we could like search through and find the video we needed if I had to go back and look over something again it was incredibly helpful to do that it's really helped me um also be encouraged because the way he explained things made a lot of sense to me and it made me enjoy the content um I'm studying industrial engineering and so statics the class that I took isn't necessarily part of my major but I really really enjoyed understanding Professor Jones is very uh committed to mechanical engineering education as well as a person that provides a truly uh an exceptional educational experience for our students I've modeled my teaching after his teaching because I think he's one of the best he genuinely cares about his students and you can tell because this course itself is so well put together and there's definitely a lot of attention to detail that um it's like he really just wants his students to succeed for enthusiasm in enhancing student learning through advanced principles such as engineering estimates and online course education via video express providing segmented lectures coast-to-coast asynchronous viewing concept mapping and on-screen demonstrations the college of engineering is proud to present the online education award to james d jones our next set of faculty members are being recognized for their early career research excellence with the early career research award our first honoree in this category is chi wan li assistant professor welden school of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering uh professor li is unique contributions to research are the uh synthesis and fabrication of flexible electronics the process basically involves making an electronic circuit which includes chemistry engineering electrical engineering principles on a silicon wafer lifting that circuit off the wafer and then putting it into a flexible form such as this so I've been very fortunate to interact with professor li a lot over the past two years really and in that time he's taken my research program that's based more on materials and really allowed us to start tailor those materials in very specific applications uh with me uh he did some really foundational work in water soluble or transient electronic devices as temporary implants for treating internal wounds and various disease states uh at purdue he's now blazing his own trails at the interface between biomedical and mechanical engineering these contributions elevate the research being conducted at purdue university by showing there is a pathway not only for discovery and fundamental science and engineering but also a pathway for translating these new discoveries and methodologies into something that is used by the consumer or by the patient as he goes out and talks to the patients and the folks in the clinic to figure out what their needs are and instead of just building the best widget possible he builds the device that allows them to accomplish their goal and he does so in a low cost high throughput manner professor lee exemplifies a young research faculty at a major research institution such as purdue university by not only the way he does the research and his concern for patients and translating his technologies to practical use but also in the way he educates students who will carry on these ideas and help develop a new industry for the introduction of leading edge technologies such as wearable biomedical devices battery free wireless sensors and silicon nano needle patches resulting in widespread applications that push the boundaries of next generation engineering research and education the college of engineering is proud to present the early career research award to chi wan lee our second honoree is partha p mooker g associate professor mechanical engineering he has been developing in the muscle skill methods uh you know for a very long time on fuel cells and recently on batteries uh so he's definitely a leading expert on computational fluid mechanics uh also he's a really his signature work is to couple different physics like mechanics energy heat together uh into the transport process uh we worked on uh looking at dendrites uh in magnesium this was a fairly controversial topic but that did not scare partha way and he really stepped up to the challenge because his work is an interdisciplinary i know that he works with uh many uh colleagues on the campus from other background other departments like chemical engineering aerospace engineering uh or even chemistry so uh i see him as a core piece uh or essential piece of that kind of collaboration i really think that he's he's one of the most uh innovative creative researchers working on energy storage in his generation and i'm very glad to have had the opportunity to collaborate with him i'm totally uh confident that the partha is still on up curve in his career and he's uh incorporating even more uh interesting elements into his research want to take this opportunity to thank uh partha for being a fantastic collaborator real great inspiration and someone who i can always approach and bounce an idea off and uh someone who inspires me in my research group in many ways i think he's a fantastic scientist and a researcher and we've just truly enjoyed collaborating with him on all sorts of projects for expanding the frontiers of electrochemical energy storage and conversion research through scientific ingenuity and engineering insight in mesoscale physics and stochastics the college of engineering is proud to present the early career research award to partha p mooker g next we award the impact on industry award created to recognize research excellence that has had a significant translational impact on industry in the past five years we present farsheed sadegi cummins distinguished professor mechanical engineering with this honor professor sadegi has been a leader in the area of tribology and he has pioneered the research for about 30 years or so in the area his models on bearings nowadays are felt by name in the community in automotive community and tribology community and several industry in automotive and bearing industry they declare that they rely on his models to advance r&d he's had a really good understanding of what industry needed and he was able to translate that into graduate student appropriate research projects just the amount of trust people had in farsheed a lot of the deals that he worked out were handshake deals originally and the contracts would come later but people just they just after working with farsheed for extended periods of time they knew that they could trust him to get the job done he's always there and he wants to get the things done he's always motivating his students to work to the industry project but to bring the industry project up to the next level every single major bearing company in the world has or is a sponsor of our lab and that itself summarizes what the contribution what he has done to the bearing industry as a whole i personally benefited a lot from farsheed because i was an assistant professor early on i had some experience but not a lot of experience and farsheed was a professor at that time you know somebody who knew the ropes and he just helped guide me early in my career and i i'm very appreciative of that for pioneering efforts in tribology resulting in sustained technology transferred to global industry partners in the fields of bearings automotive aerospace heavy and light duty industry and for bringing together a consortium of competitors in the advancement of rolling element machinery the college of engineering is proud to present the impact on industry award to farsheed sadegi we continue with the research award recognizing faculty members in the college of engineering for an exceptional recent research contribution that has had significant impact on the discipline and or society this award goes to david j love nick tribovich professor electrical and computer engineering i think his main contribution really is comes from in this area of what's called multiple input multiple output communication systems these are systems where at the transmitter we have more than one antenna and at the receiver we may have more than one antenna as well these are called mimo systems and as it turns out there are methods that people can use today to vastly increase the capacity of a communication link using techniques from mimo systems and david has made a name for himself he's worked in the area of wireless communications and contributed significantly to the fourth generation and most recently fifth generation standards that are being implemented today today uh specifically some of the multi antenna standards and codes that are being used bear his imprint well this idea of of limited feedback precoding that was pioneered in love's original work um is really found in billions of devices today you can really see pointing back all of this academic and industrial research that's been done based upon that original work and has really revolutionized the fact that you have two g three g four g five g now phones with multi megabit capacity in them really goes back to that work that's a revolution for sure but he tends to make everything better i mean everything that we do together is better and it's better by more than times two because of his presence uh the students succeed better the students do better work problems we pick are better our opportunities to fund these problems are better i can't really say anything negative about it it's just been a huge productivity multiplier to have worked with professor love over these years for groundbreaking research on the design analysis and development of mi mo systems adapting to channel conditions revolutionizing 4g and 5g wireless systems and for leading to a new area of research known as limited feedback communication the college of engineering is proud to present the research award to david j love our next honor is the dean ht yang leadership and service award created last year to recognize excellence in faculty leadership through service that has a significant positive impact within Purdue engineering the award is presented to john d fricker professor liles school of civil engineering john presided over the curriculum overhaul where we developed a lot of new courses for the undergraduates really he's taken the most in-depth look at our curriculum since the early 1970s examining not only the courses that are available to compose a graduation pathway but also looking at new innovative ideas for coursework such as one credit units that could change the way new students begin to perceive civil engineering real the queen essential faculty member who takes service to his students to his profession university and the community as one of the primary missions and and he does that very selfless away john is a very thoughtful person and always has the interests of the school at heart uh he's ran our committee our undergraduate committee for more than 10 years professor freaker cares about the students deeply and the professor freaker cares about a civil engineering is in general he he knows the the real assets is on the people it's the future of civil engineering it's on next generation which is the students at purdue i think john's multiple dimensions of service really exemplify an impression of what a really means to be a faculty member he works very well as a mentor and has been a personal mentor to me on multiple fronts over many years particularly in efforts that i've made to pursue curriculum innovation he's very dedicated to considering the interests of the entire population of the school across faculty staff and students and trying to think about how we can enhance our program effectively and he pursues his duties with great dedication and preparation that i think is reflective of what we seek in a faculty colleague in that way i believe he truly is representative of the yang faculty award for superb dedication to modernizing the lial school of civil engineering's undergraduate curriculum to offer students greater flexibility diversity and integration of technical areas and enhancing the preparation of ce graduates for today's career environment the college of engineering is proud to present the dean ht yang leadership and service award to john d fricker we now move to the engagement awards presented to either an individual faculty member team or both for excellence in engagement with external stakeholders local regional or international this year's engagement award goes to inez professor lial school of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering professor gavin dirajou from civil and i nominated professor why for the engagement award because of her amazing contributions uh to two nsf projects for the reu project professor hawah took the visiting undergraduate students and aligned them with faculty and graduate students from prerue for the ret project she made the connection between these visiting teachers and faculty graduate students from the different uh the two different universities so i think the teachers gain insights to how research labs operate here at prerue they gained insights onto how several different disciplines um looked at the ideas of sustainability in regards to to electronics she brought her considerable skill set to bear in engaging with not only the community but industry advisors and mentors um the reu students from around the country high school teachers and then indirectly to all the the students impacted by the work of the high school teachers simply put without inez there would be no ret program for this at prerue without inez it would not have continued without inez it would not be as successful as it is so from that perspective she is the lynchpin of the entire program she's somebody that that cares deeply about the students um it is technically brilliant and and very active and and also cares about the broader impacts that we have around society um within the area schools and i think that those things are manifest and why she got this award for providing unique professional development opportunities for stem learning to area teachers focused on content knowledge lab skills and data analysis techniques and for fostering undergraduate student research of environmental challenges in the green economy and building interest in engineering graduate studies the college of engineering is proud to present the engagement award to inez wa our final award this evening is the engagement team award this year we recognize darsie m bullock liles family professor liles school of civil engineering and iman f habib thomas a page professor liles school of civil engineering so the collaboration between j trp and indot really is a hundred year relationship uh where representatives from the state of indiana have essentially relied on prerue to help them advance transportation and problem solve and even though i know that um neither dr bullock or dr habib were here a hundred years ago when this all started they've just picked up this baton brilliantly said over the last five years they've done hundred and fifty research projects and these research projects have essentially pushed the envelope on on producing better practices our partnership started with the j trp several years ago we crossed paths and during that time i was introduced to professor habib and professor bullock we started a conversation about the use of uavs or drones in public safety and particularly in crashing crash scene mapping one of the things i've appreciated most about my interactions with the j trp team is the fact that it is so inclusive it's really amazing how they bring in representatives from indot as well as their students their graduate students uh and their faculty and staff and everybody is engaged as part of this process we were able to implement a lot of the best practice and procedures available to law enforcement and then share those uh experiences with other agencies so that they don't have to experience those same problems that we faced in the beginning of our project i'm really happy to have them as colleagues this is one of the things that i enjoy being part of this institute and enjoy being part of it as a head is to have a much better understanding of all the wonderful things that our colleagues do in this case including professors bullock and habib for the joint transportation research programs widespread impact on transportation infrastructure systems throughout the state of indiana providing multidisciplinary focus and increased communication for best practices in areas of work zone safety and unmanned aerial systems for standardized processing of crash and crime scenes the college of engineering is proud to present the engagement team award to darcy m bullock liles family professor liles school of civil engineering and iman f habib thomas a page professor liles school of civil engineering to all of our faculty you represent the very best Purdue engineering is delighted to celebrate and honor your scholarship and your achievements in the classroom the lab the field in our state and around the world this concludes our awards presentation we'd like to thank all of the honorees for their commitment to the college of engineering and Purdue University