Stevens Honors Excellence in Research, Teaching During 2018-2019 Academic Year
Nine faculty members recognized during ceremonies
Nine distinguished Stevens faculty members were recognized with Stevens Institute of Technology’s annual faculty awards at a ceremony on May 21, and one member was awarded an honorary master's degree at the Graduate Commencement ceremonies on May 22.
“The faculty are the core of the university,” said Dr. Christophe Pierre, Stevens’ provost and chief academic officer. “At Stevens, we place enormous value on the quality of both research and teaching. That is why, every year, the university recognizes select members of the faculty for their exceptional teaching ability and their excellence in research.
“The faculty members who received these awards are truly are the cream of a distinguished crop.”
The Master of Engineering (Honoris Causa) degree was awarded at Commencement to Dr. Kishore Pochiraju, professor of mechanical engineering and associate dean for undergraduate studies in the School of Engineering and Science (SES). Dr. Pochiraju has been with Stevens since 1994. He founded the program on Innovation, Design and Entrepreneurship at Stevens – known as the IDEaS program – and served as its first director, from 2015 to 2017. Prior to that he was the director of the nationally acclaimed Design and Manufacturing Institute, from 2005 to 2015.
The Provost’s Early Career Award for Research Excellence, established in 2017 to recognize early excellence and potential for future preeminence in research, went to two recipients this year: Dr. Stephanie Lee, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science (SES) and Dr. Nick Parziale, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering (SES).
Dr. Lee’s research interests include materials for renewable energy applications, nanostructured materials, micronducting polymers and small molecules, metal-halide perovskites and crystal engineering. She is a recipient of the prestigious 2019 National Science Foundation CAREER award for her work on “Engineering Arrays of Organic Light Harvesting Crystals from Solution.”
Dr. Parziale’s research interests include hypersonic flows, laser differential interferometry, krypton tagging velocimetry and thermo-chemical energy conversion. He is the recipient of a 2016 Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award for his novel approach to experimental investigation of heretofore unexplored and fundamental features of high-speed flows.
Dr. Hongbin Li, from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (SES), received the Provost’s Award for Research Excellence, which honors a faculty member for innovative research that has made an impact on his or her field and has contributed to the excellence of Stevens as a research institution. Dr. Li’s research focus includes statistical signal processing, radars, sensor networks and wireless communications.
Dr. Anthony Pennino from the College of Arts and Letters received the Jess H. Davis Memorial Award for Research Excellence, given in memory of Jess Harrison Davis, who served as the fourth president of Stevens, from 1951 until 1972. The award is presented to a faculty member whose published research work is judged most outstanding. Dr. Pennino was selected for the monograph, Staging the Past in the Age of Thatcher: "The History We Haven’t Had," published in 2018. The work breaks ground in several areas of literature and theater studies.
Dr. Lindsey Cormack of the College of Arts and Letters received the the Harvey N. Davis Distinguished Teaching Assistant Professor Award, presented to a faculty member with exceptional teaching ability who has demonstrated great influence on students inside and outside the classroom. Dr. Cormack joined Stevens in 2014. Her research focus includes politics, political communication, public opinion, women in politics, the presidency and public policy.
The Alexander Crombie Humphreys Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor Award was presented to Dr. Eduardo Bonelli, Computer Science (SES). Dr. Bonelli joined Stevens in 2016 after serving as a tenured faculty member at Universidad Nacional de Quilmes in Buenos Aires. His research focuses on formal methods for programming languages and security including proof theoretical foundations, type systems, language-based security and formal verification.
The Henry Morton Distinguished Teaching Professor Award was presented to Dr. Kevin Lu of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (SES). Dr. Lu joined Stevens after serving as a chief scientist and executive director at Telcordia-Bellcore Applied Research and as senior principal scientist at Broadcom. His courses on the Internet of Things and digital system design and engineering design are highly popular.
The Provost’s Award for Excellence in Online Teaching, which recognizes outstanding contributions to online instruction and online educational program development, went to Dr. Kevin Ryan of the School of Business. He joined Stevens as a full-time teaching professor in 2001 after spending 23 years at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he worked in wireless communications, education and training, high-speed networking and local access. Dr. Ryan is a renowned and popular teacher. He also received the Alexander Crombie Humphreys Teaching Excellence Award twice, in 2005 and 2017.