Faculty Honors

As a member of the newly appointed National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee, MAE Professor Forman Williams is helping to evaluate the the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center fire and building collapses and the Feb. 20, 2003, fire at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I. Williams, an expert in combustion and director of UCSD’s Center for Energy Research, is one of 10 building and fire experts to be appointed to the National Institute of Standards and Technology committee, which met for the first time in April.

Shu Chien (BioE) delivered the annual Walter B. Cannon Memorial Lecture at the Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego. Dr. Chien's lecture was entitled “Modulation of Gene Expression and Cellular Functions by Mechanical Forces: The Wisdom of the Body.”

CSE Professor Mihir Bellare and UC Davis Professor Philip Rogaway are this year’s recipients of the RSA Conference Award for Mathematics, given in recognition for innovation and ongoing contributions to the field of cryptography. The RSA Conference is cited as the world’s leading e-security event.

Thomas Bewley (MAE), is one of 26 recipients of the 2003 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator awards. He plans to investigate a new type of coating using fabric-like material to reduce drag and suppress noise in submarines and other undersea vehicles.

Jeff Hasty (BioE), an expert in gene regulation and genetic circuits, and Daniele Micciancio, a CSE cryptography expert , received 2003 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Sungho Jin (MAE) has been appointed Director of UCSD’s Materials Science and Engineering graduate education program, succeeding MAE Professor Vitali Nesterenko.

Sia Nemat-Nasser (MAE) received the ASME Adaptive Structures and Materials Systems Best
Paper Award for his paper titled “Micromechanics and Actuation of Ionic Polymer-Metal Composites”, which was published in the Journal of Applied Physics, September 2002.

Marc Meyers (MAE) received the 2003 TMS Structural Materials Division Distinguished Materials Scientist/Engineer Award from the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society. This award was given for his achievements in the field of mechanical behavior of materials.