Choudhary

Professor Alok Choudhary is the new chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. From 1989 to 1996 he was on the electrical and computer engineering faculty at Syracuse University, where he received a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation. He has also received an IEEE Engineering Foundation Award and was among the first recipients of the Excellence in Research, Teaching, and Service Award from McCormick.

His research interests are in high-performance computing, data-intensive computing, scalable data mining, computer architecture, high-performance I/O systems and software and their applications, and scientific computing. Choudhary has published more than 300 papers as well as a book and several book chapters.

He was the founding director of the Center for Ultra-scale Computing and Information Security and is a member of the Center for Genetic Medicine at Northwestern. He was cofounder and vice president of technology of Accelchip Inc., which was eventually acquired by Xilinx.

Choudhary teaches marketing and technology industry management at the Kellogg School of Management and is the academic director of the Executive Program on Managing Customer Relationships for Profit in Kellogg’s Executive Education Program.

People and Progress

Chaired professorships

Justine Cassell, AT&T Research Professor

Katherine Faber, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science

Lincoln Lauhon, Morris E. Fine Junior Professor in Materials and Manufacturing

Paul Leonardi, Allen K. and Johnnie Cordell Breed Junior Professor of Design

Hani Mahmassani, William A. Patterson Distinguished Professor of Transportation

Marco Nie, Louis Berger Junior Professor

Don Norman, Allen K. and Johnnie Cordell Breed Senior Professor in Design


Faculty honors

Jan D. Achenbach, Walter P. Murphy Professor and Distinguished McCormick School Professor of the Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Sciences, and Applied Mathematics, received the 2005 National Medal of Science.

Vadim Backman, professor of biomedical engineering, presented a plenary lecture at the American Association for Cancer Research Conference.

Zdenek Bazant, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and professor of materials science and engineering, was elected an honorary member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Ted Belytschko, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Mechanical Engineering, presented plenary lectures at the European Congress on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences and Engineering (ECCOMAS) Thematic Conference on Modeling of Heterogeneous Materials with Applications in Construction and Biomedical Engineering in Prague and at the Army Solid Mechanics Conference in Baltimore.

Fabian Bustamante, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, was invited to serve on the advisory board of Neokast, a start-up company that focuses on supporting cooperative live video streaming.

Yan Chen, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, won the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research Young Investigator Award.

Robert Dick, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, won a 2007 Computerworld Horizon Award.

Peter Dinda, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, participated in the National Academy of Engineering’s U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, held in September at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington.

David Dunand, James N. and Margie M. Krebs Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, was elected a fellow of the ASM International.

Katherine Faber, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, received a Faculty Award from Northwestern’s Women’s Center as part of a celebration of the center’s 20th anniversary.

Bartosz Gryzbowski, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering, received a 2007 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.

Mark Hersam, professor of materials science and engineering, received the 2007 Young Alumni Achievement Award from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dean Ho, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering, was invited to be a visiting professor at Peking University.

Russ Joseph, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation.

Aggelos Katsaggelos, Ameritech Professor of Information Technology, gave distinguished lectures at Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in June.

Aleksandar Kuzmanovic, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received a Cisco University Research Program Grant.

Rob Linsenmeier, professor of biomedical engineering, received the 2007 Theo C. Pilkington Outstanding Educator Award from the Bioengineering Division of the American Society for Engineering Education.

Wing Kam Liu, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Mechanical Engineering, received the John von Neumann Medal from the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics and the Robert Henry Thurston Lecture Award from American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Kevin Lynch, associate professor of mechanical engineering, was named a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwestern and was selected to take part in the Defense Science Study Group.

Tobin Marks, professor of materials science and engineering and Vladimir N. Ipatieff Research Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, received the American Chemical Society Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry and the 2005 National Medal of Science.

Thomas Mason, professor of materials science and engineering, received the Edward C. Henry Award for best paper published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society in 2006.

Phil Messersmith, associate professor of biomedical engineering and of materials science and engineering, gave invited talks in Switzerland at the Symposium for Regenerative Medicine at the University Hospital Zurich, the Institute of Bioengineering, Ecole Polytechnic de Fédérale de Lausanne, the Centre Suisse d’Electronique et de Microtechnique in Neuchatel, the Robert Mathys Foundation in Bettlach, the EMPA Research Institute in St. Gallen, and the Ciba Lecture Series at Ciba Specialty Chemicals in Basel. He also participated in the Physics-Chemistry Kolloquium at the University of Mainz and Max-Planck Institute for Polymerforschung in Mainz, Germany.

Hooman Mohseni, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, is one of 24 rising stars in microsystems research to receive a Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Brian Moran, chair and professor of civil and environmental engineering and professor of mechanical engineering, was elected to the board of directors of the Society of Engineering Science.

Justin Notestein, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, received a 2007 Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation New Faculty Award.

Greg Olson, Wilson-Cook Professor of Engineering Design, presented a plenary lecture at the International Conference on Metal Coatings and Thin Films.

Monica Olvera de la Cruz, professor of materials science and engineering and of chemical and biological engineering, was appointed to the National Research Council Committee on Research Forefronts in the Physical and Life Sciences.

Aaron Packman, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and of mechanical engineering, presented a keynote lecture at the Sixth International Symposium on Ecohydraulics in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Neelesh Patankar, associate professor of mechanical engineering, presented a keynote lecture at the International Conference on Multiphase Flow in Leipzig, Germany.

John Rudnicki, professor of civil and environmental engineering and of mechanical engineering, presented a plenary lecture at the ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Modeling of Heterogeneous Materials with Applications in Construction and Biomedical Engineering in Prague.

David Seidman, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, presented a plenary lecture at the Israel Society for Microscopy meeting at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.

Surendra Shah, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was named one of the 10 most influential persons in the concrete industry by Concrete Construction. He also presented the Della Roy Lecture at the 109th Annual Meeting of the American Ceramic Society in Detroit.

Randy Snurr, professor of chemical and biological engineering, presented a plenary lecture at the Ninth International Conference on Fundamentals of Adsorption in Giardini Naxos, Sicily, Italy.

Allen Taflove, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, presented a keynote lecture at the Photonics North 2007 Symposium in Ottawa, Canada.

John Torkelson, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and of Materials Science and Engineering, was elected to the board of directors of the Engineering Properties and Structure Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers.