9/10/2013 Mark Pajor, ECE ILLINOIS
Written by Mark Pajor, ECE ILLINOIS
Every year the ECE Alumni Board of Directors can choose just a few of the department’s many highly-accomplished alumni to recognize with the Distinguished Alumni Award, the Young Alumni Award, and the Marcia Peterman Award. The winners of these awards have distinguished themselves and their Alma Mater through the impact of their outstanding work and leadership.
Distinguished Alumni Award
The Distinguished Alumni Award honors ECE alumni who have made professional and technical contributions that bring distinction to themselves, the department, and the university.
Supriyo Datta (MSEE ’77, PhD ’79) will be recognized for “outstanding contributions in research and education in the fields of nanotechnology, quantum transport, and electronic devices.”
Datta is the Thomas Duncan Distinguished Professor at Purdue University. His research focuses on nanotechnology and explores current flow in nanoscale electronic devices. His group pioneered the description of quantum transport far from equilibrium, described in his books Electronic Transport in Mesoscopic Systems and Quantum Transport: Atom to Transistor. His approach has been widely adopted in the field of nanoelectronics.
Levent Gürel (MSEE ’88, PhD ’91) will be recognized for “contributions to parallel computing, fast solvers, and accurate solutions of the world’s largest real-life problems in computational electromagnetics.”
Gürel is the founder and director of the Computational Electromagnetics Research Center at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. His research areas include computational electromagnetics, parallel computing, and fast algorithms for scattering and radiation. Gürel has received multidisciplinary acclaim for his leadership in solving the largest integral-equation problem in computational electromagnetics, breaking the world record by solving a 550 million by 550 million dense matrix equation.
Daniel F. Hang (BSEE ’41, MSEE '49) will be recognized for “contributions to the economical and safe use of nuclear power.”
Hang is a professor emeritus in electrical engineering and nuclear engineering at Illinois. Much of his research focuses on a comparative analysis of power sources, with particular attention on nuclear energy. He has published papers, presented at conferences, and worked on committees that concentrate on performance of and safety standards for the use of nuclear energy.
Eric Klinker (BS ’91) will be recognized for “pioneering efficient, massive data-sharing protocols accounting for nearly 40% of internet traffic daily, and for leading the industry in ways to move information that scales efficiently and with minimal impact on servers and the network.”
Klinker is the president and CEO of BitTorrent, an internet technology company based in San Francisco. BitTorrent’s data-streaming protocols account for 40% of all internet traffic. As CEO, Klinker has played an essential role in BitTorrent’s leadership in the paradigm shift in internet communication from centralized, point-to-point communication, to peer-to-peer file sharing that does not require large central infrastructure for distribution.
Sunil Kumar (PhD 96) will be recognized for “leadership in the education of the next generation of business leaders, and for research on the analysis of business performance.”
Kumar is the dean and George Pratt Shultz Professor of Operations Management at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He researches manufacturing and service systems and operations research and management. He has demonstrated leadership in designing and implementing MBA programs and has led innovations in educational methods and technologies.
Edward Macoicz (BS ’50) will be recognized for “exemplary vision and leadership in the residential appliance industry.”
Macoicz is a former manager of design and production at Hotpoint-Milwaukee. He holds 26 patents, many of which are in practical heating components, playing a key role in the production of household appliances including electric ranges and ovens, dishwashers, garbage compactors, and water heaters for real-world use in homes.
Young Alumni Achievement Award
The Young Alumni Achievement Award recognizes alumni less than 40 years old who have made outstanding professional contributions to their field.
Ashutosh Garg (MS ’00, PhD ’03) will be recognized for “fundamental contributions to machine learning and its applications to web-scale personalized search and ranking, and for bold entrepreneurship.”
Garg is the co-founder and CTO of BloomReach, a cloud marketing platform. Since founding BloomReach in 2009, Garg has grown the company from a single product and a single client to more than 50 clients and three products, which together generate revenue for BloomReach to power its growth into a multi-billion dollar company that helps websites market the right products to the right customers by increasing the relevancy of search results.
Marcia Peterman Award
The Marcia Peterman Award was established by the ECE Alumni Association to honor the memory of Marcia Peterman, longtime secretary to the association. This award is presented annually to a former ECE Alumni Board member for dedicated service as a member of the board.
Vishwani Agrawal (PhD ’71) will be recognized for “devoted and loyal service to the University of Illinois and the Alumni Association.”
Agrawal is the James J. Danaher Professor of ECE at Auburn University, Alabama. He served on the ECE Alumni Board of Directors from 1999-2005, during which he regularly attended meetings and meticulously evaluated award candidates. His areas of expertise include VLSI testing, low-power design, and microwave antennas.
ECE will celebrate these alumni during the 44th annual ECE Alumni Awards Banquet at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center on Friday, September 13.