Joseph Coughlin, acting co-director of the Center for Transportation and Logistics and founder of the MIT AgeLab, has been honored with a Telly Award, among the most sought-after awards in the TV, commercial and business education video industry, for his research and presentation of "One in Four: Strategic Business Innovation for a Global, Aging Market." Produced for EDS, a founding sponsor of the MIT AgeLab, and produced by WatchIT, "One in Four" explores what it means for businesses to operate in a world where one in four people is an older adult.
Vincent Chan, director of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, won the Professor of Telecommunications award from the Massachusetts Telecom Council. Chan is also the Joan and Irwin Jacob Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Aeronautics. The organization promotes Massachusetts as an international center for telecommunications. The MTC also inducted Desh Deshpande into the Telecom Hall of Fame in recognition of his role in building two pioneering networking companies, as well as his philanthropy and contributions to the overall telecommunications community. A gift from Deshpande and his wife Jaishree established the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation within MIT's School of Engineering.
Robert Langer, the Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, has won the John Fritz Medal of the American Association of Engineering Societies. One of the highest awards in the engineering profession, it was establsihed in 1902 and is given each year for scientific or industrial achievement in any field of pure or applied science. Some previous MIT winners include Hoyt Hottel (1994), Ralph Landau (1987), Claude Shannon (1983) and Warren Lewis (1966).
Joan Walker (S.M. 1994, Ph.D.), a research affiliate who is co-teaching subject 1.202 (Demand Modeling) this semester, has been awarded the 2001 Eric Pas Dissertation Prize from the International Association of Travel Behaviour Research. Walker was recognized for integrating developments in the social sciences with transportation behavior analysis in the modeling approach used in her thesis, "Extended Discrete Choice Models: Integrated Framework, Flexible Error Structures and Latent Variables."
Professor of Architecture Jan Wampler won honorable mention in the 2003 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Education Honor Award program for the project, "Building Communities." In this project, Wampler has incorporated the work of building community housing--in Turkey, Honduras, Pakistan and India--into his graduate course, "International Workshops/Space Between." Wampler and students create housing designs that bring communities together: for instance, in Turkey after the 1999 earthquake and Honduras following Hurricane Mitch. The AIA jury was impressed with several aspects of Wampler's projects, calling his curriculum ideas a "phenomenal approach" that is "valuable but translatable" and that "can teach a sense of value broadly." Wampler is on sabbatical, teaching at the University of California at Berkeley this semester.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 9, 2003.
