January 15, 2004

Faculty honors

Luis A. Nunes Amaral, associate professor of chemical engineering, was one of 83 of the nation’s top young engineers selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s ninth annual Frontiers of Engineering symposium.

The event brought together engineers performing leading-edge research and technical work in diverse fields. Participants explored topics in environmental engineering, nanotechnology, counterterrorism technologies and infrastructure protection and biomolecular computing.

Amaral’s research interests cover a number of areas in the field of complex systems. They include problems in complex networks in nature, the extraction of medical information from physiologic signals, the growth of economic and social organizations, and return fluctuations in asset markets.

Guillermo A. Ameer, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, has been named to the 2003 list of the world’s top 100 young innovators by Technology Review magazine.

The TR100 are selected for “innovative work in technology that has a profound impact on today’s world.”

Ameer’s research integrates the principles of biomaterials tissue engineering and biotechnology in order to investigate and develop novel approaches to assess, replace and regenerate tissue function.

Robert Fourer, professor of industrial engineering and management sciences, has received the Beale-Orchard-Hays Prize for Excellence in Computational Mathematical Programming.

The triennial prize, awarded at the Mathematical Programming Society’s recent symposium in Copenhagen, was for the paper, Optimization on the NEOS Server (www.siam.org/siamnews/07-02/neos.pdf).

Fourer shares the prize with co-authors at Argonne National Laboratory: senior computer scientist Jorge Moré, Enrico Fermi Scholar Todd Munson; and NEOS administrator Elizabeth Dolan. All are active in the Optimization Technology Center jointly sponsored by Argonne and Northwestern.

Fourer’s research centers on the principles and design of software systems for large-scale optimization. NEOS (for Network-Enabled Optimization System) is now the premier source of information on the Web for users of optimization software.

Abe Peck, professor and chair of the magazine program at the Medill School of Journalism and director of magazine programs for the Media Management Center, has been named Educator of the Year for 2003 by the magazine division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Peck, the Theodore R. Sills and Annie Laurie Sills Professor, is a consultant to Advanstar Communications (U.S., England and Hong Kong) and other magazine companies.