Freshman Ravi Ramkissoon of Trinidad is the winner of the President's Medal for Higher Secondary Education for 1996. As a student at St. Mary's College in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, he headed the list of national scholarship winners based on the 1996 GCE Advanced Level examinations and took home the Open Science Scholarship.
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Dr. Arnold E. Demain, professor of industrial microbiology, has been elected to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Leon in Leon, Spain, "in recognition of his many academic and professional achievements."
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An MIT student team took first place at the Association for Computing Machinery's Northeast Regional Programming Contest in November. Sophomore Svetoslav Tzvetkov, junior and team captain Scott Smith, and graduate student Justin Legakis (all in electrical engineering and computer science) correctly solved five of seven problems in the time allowed. Harvard and UMass-Amherst tied for second place by solving four problems correctly.
The MIT team will now advance to the March finals in San Jose, where they will compete for a $15,000 first-prize scholarship. At last year's finals, which included 40 teams from all over the world, MIT finished fifth. Assistant Professor Bonnie Berger of mathematics, Frans Kaashoek (Jamieson Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering), Professor Tom Leighton of mathematics and graduate student Amit Sahai of EECS (a member of UC-Berkeley's winning team last year) all serve as coaches for the team.
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Dr. Harry L. Tuller, Sumitomo Electric Industries Professor of Ceramics and Electronic Materials in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has been awarded the prestigious Humboldt Research Award. Given in recognition of accomplishments in both research and teaching, the award allows international scholars to perform advanced research at various German institutes to promote scientific cooperation between Germany and the country of the recipient. Professor Tuller, who is also the director of the Crystal Physics and Optical Electronics Laboratory, will be visiting the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, pursuing investigations concerning nanostructured electroceramics.
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Professor Andreas Mortensen of materials science and engineering has received the Pechiney Prize, a "Grand Prix" in metallurgy awarded annually by the French Academy of Sciences. Professor Mortensen's reasearch is on the processing, microstructure and mechanical properties of advanced metallic materials, particularly metal matrix composites.
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Three US engineers, including Professor Charles C. Ladd of civil and environmental engineering, were recently awarded the Thomas A Middlebrooks Award by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The ASCE made the award at its annual convention in Washington in November in recognition of a paper authored by the three entitled "Reliability Applied to Slope Stability Analysis" (Journal of Geotech-nical Engineering, December 1994). Professor Ladd, an ASCE member who holds the AB from Bowdoin College and the SB, SM and ScD from MIT, has also earned ASCE's Huber Prize, Croes Medal, Norman Medal and honorary membership.
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The mayor of Genoa, Italy has conferred the Christopher Columbus Award in International Communication on David Forney, the Bernard M. Gordon Adjunct Professor in electrical engineering and computer science. The award is given every seven years in the field of communication theory.
Dr. Arnold E. Demain, professor of industrial microbiology, has been
elected to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Leon in
Leon, Spain, "in recognition of his many academic and professional
achievements."
----------
An MIT student team took first place at the Association for Computing
Machinery's Northeast Regional Programming Contest in November.
Sophomore Svetoslav Tzvetkov, junior and team captain Scott Smith, and
graduate student Justin Legakis (all in electrical engineering and
computer science) correctly solved five of seven problems in the time
allowed. Harvard and UMass-Amherst tied for second place by solving
four problems correctly.
The MIT team will now advance to the March finals in San Jose,
where they will compete for a $15,000 first-prize scholarship. At last
year's finals, which included 40 teams from all over the world, MIT
finished fifth. Assistant Professor Bonnie Berger of mathematics, Frans
Kaashoek (Jamieson Associate Professor of Computer Science and
Engineering), Professor Tom Leighton of mathematics and graduate student
Amit Sahai of EECS (a member of UC-Berkeley's winning team last year)
all serve as coaches for the team.
----------
Dr. Harry L. Tuller, Sumitomo Electric Industries Professor of
Ceramics and Electronic Materials in the Department of Materials Science
and Engineering, has been awarded the prestigious Humboldt Research
Award. Given in recognition of accomplishments in both research and
teaching, the award allows international scholars to perform advanced
research at various German institutes to promote scientific cooperation
between Germany and the country of the recipient. Professor Tuller, who
is also the director of the Crystal Physics and Optical Electronics
Laboratory, will be visiting the Max Planck Institute for Solid State
Research in Stuttgart, pursuing investigations concerning nanostructured
electroceramics.
----------
Professor Andreas Mortensen of materials science and engineering has
received the Pechiney Prize, a "Grand Prix" in metallurgy awarded
annually by the French Academy of Sciences. Professor Mortensen's
reasearch is on the processing, microstructure and mechanical properties
of advanced metallic materials, particularly metal matrix composites.
----------
Three US engineers, including Professor Charles C. Ladd of civil and
environmental engineering, were recently awarded the Thomas A
Middlebrooks Award by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The ASCE
made the award at its annual convention in Washington in November in
recognition of a paper authored by the three entitled "Reliability
Applied to Slope Stability Analysis" (Journal of Geotech-nical
Engineering, December 1994). Professor Ladd, an ASCE member who holds
the AB from Bowdoin College and the SB, SM and ScD from MIT, has also
earned ASCE's Huber Prize, Croes Medal, Norman Medal and honorary
membership.
----------
The mayor of Genoa, Italy has conferred the Christopher Columbus
Award in International Communication on David Forney, the Bernard M.
Gordon Adjunct Professor in electrical engineering and computer science.
The award is given every seven years in the field of communication
theory.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on December 4, 1996.
