Recent achievements by members of the MIT community.
John Howard Dellinger Medal
The International Union of Radio Science recently honored Alan E. Rogers, associate director of MIT's Haystack Observatory, with the John Howard Dellinger Medal. Rogers was cited for "his outstanding contributions to instrumentation in radio astronomy and its use to make fundamental discoveries about interstellar masers, superluminal expansion of quasars, deuterium abundance in the galaxy, and plate tectonics."
MIT junior's project wins philanthropy award
Tish Scolnik, a junior in mechanical engineering, was recently named a winner of the three-week Global Engagement Summit (GES) Project Challenge for young social entrepreneurs hosted by GlobalGiving, a nonprofit online marketplace that connects people to philanthropic causes.
Scolnik co-founded the Kilimanjaro Association of the Spinally Injured, one of five projects recognized for excellence at the GES. The project works to educate, mobilize and empower Tanzania's disabled population. Since the competition, Tish has continued her efforts to promote the aims of this project, raising more than $9,000 from 106 donors through GlobalGiving.com.
WHOI founders receive excellence award
The founders of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Program at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have been selected by their peers as the 2008 recipients of the American Geophysical Union's Excellence in Geophysical Education Award.
The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (GFD) Program is an intensive, 10-week summer fellowship that brings together researchers from all over the world to debate how water and other fluids move in the ocean, on planets and stars, and in the atmosphere.
Co-founded in 1959 by Willem Malkus, a professor emeritus at MIT, the program sought to introduce graduate students to basic principles in a new field called geophysical fluid dynamics.
CEE student receives School of Engineering's teaching award
Civil and Environmental Engineering Department head Professor Patrick Jaillet recently presented David Gonzalez-Rodriguez with the School of Engineering's Graduate Student Extraordinary Teaching and Mentoring Award for 2008.
In his letter to the dean nominating Gonzalez-Rodriguez for the award, Jaillet said, "The department's internal nomination process was competitive, but David emerged as the clear winner, with nominations from students and from faculty members Ole Madsen and Roman Stocker that were simply exceptional and represent endorsement of the highest level. David not only received extraordinarily high praise as an undergraduate TA, but also as a mentor of fellow graduate students."
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 10, 2008 (download PDF).
