EECS assistant professor wins EUREKA award
The National Institutes of Health recently awarded a EUREKA (Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration) award to Mehmet Fatih Yanik, the Robert J. Shillman Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
The EUREKA program funds exceptionally innovative research that, if successful, will have an unusually high impact and targets investigators who are testing novel, unconventional hypotheses or are pursuing major methodological or technical challenges. Yanik's award is worth more than $1.2 million over four years.
Palacios named ONR Young Investigator
The Navy's Department of Naval Research (ONR) has named Tomás Palacios, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, as one of its 15 new Young Investigators.
The ONR program is designed to attract young scientists and engineers who show exceptional promise for outstanding research and teaching careers. Palacios was selected from a group of 193 applicants for the honor, which includes a three-year research grant worth up to $510,000.
Palacios' work under the program will be on "Multi-Terahertz Nitride Transistors: Probing the Ultimate Limit of Deeply-Scaled Device Technology."Â The project aims to understand the limits of high-frequency electronics and to demonstrate record transistors that can revolutionize wireless communications, Terahertz imaging and sensing.
Taylor named N.E. track and field coach of the year
MIT coach Halston Taylor was named the New England Women's Track and Field Coach of the Year by the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. Taylor had previously received the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Women's Track & Field Coach of the Year award earlier this year.
Graduate student wins leadership award
Department of Mechanical Engineering graduate student Steven Peters recently received the 2009 Student Leadership Award from the Jenzabar Foundation in the category of "campus ministry programs that reach outside campus boundaries." Peters was recognized for his work with the Lutheran Episcopal Ministry at MIT, where he has raised students' awareness of the connection between their faith and the environment, and for helping churches in the Boston area renovate their facilities and enact other changes in order to conserve energy and lower their heating bills.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on June 10, 2009 (download PDF).
