All four accepted their awards at IEEE-HKN’s Awards and Recognition Ceremony held 9 October 2021 and also will be recognized at the IEEE Educational Activities Board Awards Experience to be broadcast at 9 a.m. (ET) Thursday, 11 November 2021.

The 2021 IEEE-HKN Awards program was extremely competitive, having received a total of 70 nominations. In fact, the nominees for the Outstanding Young Professional Award were so strong that the subcommittee also named two honorable mentions for the award, the first honorable mentions ever conferred for this award. The honorable mentions are Dr. Amy K. Jones, Engineering Supervisor – Operator Station Module and Systems for John Deere, Construction and Forestry Division; and Dr. Achuta, Assistant Professor, UCLA Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Madni Award winner Dr. Chakrabarty has a sustained record of research contributions, student mentoring, and exemplary technical leadership. He was elevated to the IEEE Fellow for contributions to design-for-test (DfT) of core-based SOCs. Subsequently, he pioneered the design of microfluidic biochips, including first optimization methods to manipulate nanoliter droplets. He was elevated to ACM Fellow and AAAS Fellow for these breakthroughs.

According to his nominator, Dr. Chakrabarty is recognized as a thought leader in bridging experimental microfluidics and biochemistry with algorithms and chip design. He is acclaimed as the “father” of design optimization for microfluidic biochips, according to his nomination.

Dr. Watkins, the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award, has been involved with Eta Kappa Nu and later IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu throughout his professional life. He was inducted as an undergraduate in 1982 through the Gamma Theta Chapter at Missouri S&T (then University of Missouri-Rolla), and was selected as HKN’s Alton B. Zerby Outstanding Student for 1983. He is the longest-serving faculty advisor in the Gamma Theta Chapter’s 69-year history.

Dr. Watkins was IEEE-HKN President in 2018, and currently serves as co-Editor-in-Chief of its flagship publication THE BRIDGE, for which he spearheaded the transition from print to electronic format. THE BRIDGE has won eight consecutive Apex Awards of Excellence under his supervision.

Outstanding Teaching Award recipient, Dr. So, contributed immensely to engineering curriculum design at the University of Hong Kong through his project-led learning pedagogy, according to his nomination. He redesigned the introduction to electrical & electronic engineering course for all first year engineering students at the University of Hong Kong (HKU).  The new course emphasized heavily the design thinking processing.

Outstanding Young Professional award recipient, Dr. Menon strives to constantly expand the horizons of Big Data analytics research at the University of Alabama in Hunstville through impactful multidisciplinary applications. Dr. Menon and her Big Data analytics lab collaborated with Dr. Jerome Baudry (UAH), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and others on a COVID-19 drug discovery project. This collaborative project garnered international attention for its use of AI techniques to accelerate the drug discovery process using supercomputers for rapid healthcare response.

Click here for more information on the IEEE-HKN Awards Program.

IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN) is the honor society of IEEE. It consists of more than 200,000 professionals and university students worldwide in the IEEE fields of interest.

The “IEEE-HKN Identity Guidelines” are increasing recognition of the organization’s brand and has given the society’s 268 university-based Chapters a ready-to-use resource for developing promotional pieces, social media templates, letterhead, business cards, and the like.  Some 14 templates were developed in addition to a step-by-step guide on how and where to use them. The rules around the use of the society’s logo, colors and other brand elements also were explained.

The templates are widely used as evidenced by the social media posts Chapters have created and in the reports they submit to headquarters, said Nancy Ostin, IEEE-HKN Director.

The project was conceived and completed by Katelyn Brinker, Co-Chair of the IEEE-HKN Public Relations and Communications Committee; Stacey Bersani, IEEE-HKN Program Manager, and Caitlin Leshiner, owner and creative director of Tumbleweeds Creative Studio.

“This comprehensive resource has been embraced by our Chapters, and the organization as a whole and has helped all of these many parts come together under a single banner and have a shared reference point,” said Ronald Jensen, 2021 IEEE-HKN President. “I thank and applaud Katelyn, Stacey and Caitlin for their dedication to producing a terrific product.”

IEEE-HKN’s electronic magazine, THE BRIDGE, received its eighth consecutive Award of Excellence in the competition. The latest winning entry was for the writing of a series of articles that appeared in the October 2020 issue, entitled “THE BRIDGE: The Future of Renewable Energy.”

The issue was guest edited by Dr. Roderick Jackson, Laboratory Program Manager for Buildings Research at The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Ostin served as Managing Editor and Bersani served as Assistant Managing Editor.

The series discussed the future of energy generation, transmission and consumption and the paradigm shift needed to achieve clean, reliable, resilient, and affordable energy. Jackson enlisted leading researchers at NREL to write the articles.

“This article series is a valued outreach from innovators in engineering to the next generation of engineers.  Our student readers are exposed to key perspectives on timely technologies and to exciting career opportunities,” said Dr. Steve E. Watkins and Dr. Sahra Sedigh Sarvestani, Co-Editors-in-Chief for THE BRIDGE, who lead the volunteer editorial board. “Excellence in professional communications through the magazine reflects the high ideals and impact of HKN.”

For the purposes of this award, emphasis is on service activities to the department, school, community and Chapter. Equally important is promoting the goals of IEEE-HKN by inducting as many eligible undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty in the IEEE designated technical fields of interest as possible and by participating in IEEE-HKN student Chapter projects.

Each recipient Chapter was recognized at the 2021 IEEE-HKN Graduation Celebration. They also will receive an engraved plaque.

Congratulations to the honorees and thank you all for your service to IEEE-HKN, your university and your community.

The 2019-2020 Outstanding Chapter Award recipients are:

Alpha                                    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Beta                                       Purdue University

Beta Epsilon                        University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Beta Eta                                North Carolina State University

Beta Theta                           Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Delta Omega                       University of Hawaii at Manoa

Epsilon Delta                      Tufts University

Epsilon Eta                          Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Epsilon Omicron                University of Delaware

Iota Gamma                        University of California, Los Angeles

Kappa Psi                             University of California, San Diego

Lambda Tau                        University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez

Mu                                         University of California, Berkeley

Mu Alpha                             UCSI University

Mu Beta                                Arab Academy for Science & Technology – Alexandria

Mu Nu                                  Politecnico Di Torino

Mu Rho                                Valparaiso University

Mu Tau                                Waseda University

Nu                                          Iowa State University

Sigma                                    Carnegie-Mellon University

Zeta Delta                             University of Texas at El Paso