Contact: Nancy Ostin, Director, IEEE-HKN
15 August 2023
PISCATAWAY, NJ – IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu IEEE-HKN’s Eminent Member Committee is pleased to announce this year’s elevation to Eminent Member status of three outstanding engineers whose creativity and scholarship have made great contributions toward the betterment of humankind, Ming Hsieh, Dr. Frank Chang, and Dr. Sandra Magnus. Elevation to Eminent Member status is HKN’s highest honor. Instituted in 1950, only 144 people have achieved this honor.
Ming Hsieh was nominated for his major technical contributions in biometrics and genetic testing solutions. He is responsible for inventing a unique fingerprint modeling technique, the Programmable Matching Accelerator (PMA) for high-speed fingerprint matching which revolutionized the automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) and dramatically reduced its computational complexity and implementation cost. More recently, Ming Hsieh has pioneered genetic testing solutions to provide clinicians with actionable and diagnostic information they can use to improve the overall quality of personalized patient care. He founded Fulgent, a pioneer in cancer research, companion diagnostics and works closely with the oncology community on personalized cancer treatments. Ming Hsieh received his BS’ 83 and MS’84 in Electrical Engineering from USC, and honorary doctorates from USC, West Virginia University, and the University of New Haven.
Dr. Frank Chang received this honor for being responsible for many breakthroughs in the cellular phone technology including the high linearity/efficiency GaAs Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors (HBT) and BiFET power amplifiers (PAs) which has been the most prevailing IC technology to dominate worldwide cell phone transmitter over the past three decades. In addition to providing his technology leadership to the wireless industry, Dr. Chang also has established a world-class high speed electronics research group at UCLA to educate next generation engineers and lead them to explore new synthetic terahertz components and circuits. Between 2015 and 2019, Dr. Chang took 4-year leave from UCLA to serve as the President of National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, where he established an international semiconductor school, implemented a new bio-electronic research center, inaugurated a bioICT research hospital, etc. to explore emerging technology convergence of advanced electrical engineering with biomedical engineering.
Dr. Sandra H. Magnus, an HKN Professional member of Gamma Theta since 2011, was awarded Eminent Member status for her contributions as the Deputy Director for Engineering within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. She serves as the DoD’s Chief Engineer for Advanced Capabilities. In this role, she is the lead for engineering policy, practice, and the DoD engineering workforce, as well as digital engineering and systems of systems engineering initiatives. She leads mission integration management, independent technical risk assessments, and program planning and execution. In addition, she served as a NASA Astronaut (1996-2012) completing Missions STS-112, STS-126, ISS 18, STS-119, & STS 135 on which she carried the HKN medal for her Chapter Gamma Theta.
Ming Hsieh and Dr. Frank Chang will be receiving their awards at HKN’s Student Leadership Conference in November at the University of Houston. Dr. Magnus will be receiving her award at the Educational Activities Award Ceremony in November in Washington, DC.
[expander_maker id=”1″ more=”Read more” less=”Read less”]More about IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu:
Founded as Eta Kappa Nu in 1904 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, then changed to IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN) following a merger with IEEE in 2010, IEEE-HKN is the academic honor society for those studying the IEEE fields of interest, including electrical and computer engineering.
IEEE-HKN annually inducts more than 3,000 students, faculty and professionals and has more than 200,000 alumni. The Society has chapters at more than 260 colleges and universities in the United States and around the world. Membership for students is by invitation only to those that possess outstanding academic achievement, character and attitude.
IEEE-HKN’s mission is to be the catalyst for the development of the “Complete Technical Professional.” Notable members include co-founder of Apple Inc. Steve Wozniak, “father of the Internet” Vint Cerf and co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation Gordon Moore.
For more information about IEEE-HKN, please visit www.hkn.org or call 732-465-5846.
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