RECIPIENTS WILL BE RECOGNIZED AT THE IEEE EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES BOARD AWARDS EXPERIENCE
From left to right above: Dr. Krishnendu Chakrabarty, Dr. Steve E. Watkins, Dr. Hayden Kwok-Hay So, and Dr. Vineetha Menon.
Contact: Nancy Ostin, Director, IEEE-HKN
1 November 2021
PISCATAWAY, NJ – IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN), the honor society of IEEE, is thrilled to announce the recipients of the 2021 IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu Awards and Recognition program.
Dr. Krishnendu Chakrabarty, the John Cocke Distinguished Professor and Department Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University was named the recipient of IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu’s highest honor, IEEE-HKN Asad M. Madni Outstanding Technical Achievement and Excellence Award, for 2021. He was recognized “for impactful research contributions in micro-fluidic biochips, technology transfer, and student mentoring.”
Dr. Steve E. Watkins, 2018 IEEE-HKN President and Interim Chair & Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, Missouri University of Science & Technology, has received the 2021 IEEE-HKN Distinguished Service Award “for a career of outstanding contributions and sustained service to IEEE-HKN.”
Dr. Hayden Kwok-Hay So, Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Hong Kong, is the recipient of the 2021 C. Holmes MacDonald Outstanding Teaching Award “for innovation and dedication in improving undergraduate engineering education through project-led learning experience.”
Dr. Vineetha Menon, Assistant Professor, University of Alabama in Huntsville, received the Outstanding Young Professional Award “for exemplary contributions that uphold the core values of IEEE-HKN: through scholarship in multidisciplinary Big Data applications research, with impactful leadership, mentoring, and empowerment of women and minorities in STEM.”
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.
IEEE-HKN Wins Top Award in Publishing Excellence Competition
The honor society receives its first-ever APEX Grand Award
THE BRIDGE magazine brings home its 8th consecutive Award of Excellence
PISCATAWAY, NJ — IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN), the honor society of IEEE, is thrilled to announce it has won two awards in the 33rd Annual APEX Awards for Publication Excellence.
IEEE-HKN garnered its first-ever Grand Award in the competition for the “IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN) Identity Guidelines” and its eighth consecutive Award of Excellence for its magazine, THE BRIDGE.
The APEX Awards are based on excellence in graphic design, editorial content, and the ability to achieve overall communications excellence. The annual competition is open to corporate and nonprofit publishers, editors, writers, and designers who create print, web, electronic, and social media.
A total of 1,172 entries were received.
The organization noted: “Overall, this year’s entries displayed an exceptional level of quality. The APEX judges saw only the most promising publications that professional communicators could enter. From them, they had the truly difficult task of selecting the award-winning entries.”
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.”
Congratulations, 2019-2020 Outstanding Chapter Winners!
The IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN) Board of Governors is excited to announce the Outstanding Chapter Award winners for the 2019-2020 Academic year. Watch our video recognizing these Chapters.
The 21 Chapters recognized represent the top 15 percent of the Chapters worldwide. The Outstanding Chapter Award (OCA) recognizes excellence in IEEE-HKN Chapters for their activities. The award is based on the content and description of Chapter activities that are contained in the Annual Chapter Report, which summarizes the Chapter’s activities from the previous academic year.
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
Winners of 2020 IEEE-HKN Election Announced
New Members to Take Office 1 January 2021
Dr. James M. Conrad (top row left in photos below), current IEEE-USA President and Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, was elected 2021 President-Elect of the IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu Board of Governors.
- Christopher Sanderson (top row middle), Zeta Lambda Chapter, will serve a three-year term as Region 5-6 Governor. Sanderson currently serves as R5 Houston Section Chair and is the recipient of the 2020 IEEE Educational Activities Board Section Professional Development Award.
- Hulya Kirkici (top row right), Xi Chapter, will serve a three-year term as Governor at-Large. Dr. Kirkici is a Professor and the Department Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of South Alabama and a member of THE BRIDGE Editorial Board.
- Sean Haynes (bottom row left), Gamma Beta Chapter, will serve a three-year term as MGA Governor at-Large. Sean is a Software Engineer at Northrop Grumman Undersea Systems and was Program Chair for the 2020 IEEE-HKN Experience.
- Sandro Sartoni (bottom row center), Mu Nu Chapter, will serve a second term as Student Governor.
- Joseph Greene (bottom row right), Kappa Sigma Chapter, will serve a one-year term as Student Governor.