2011 SEAS Faculty Excellence Celebration

Oct 19 2011

APAM Professors Guillaume Bal, Katayun Barmak, Simon Billinge, Dirk Englund, Latha Venkatarman, and Chris Wiggins were honored at the SEAS annual celebration of faculty excellence on Wednesday, October 19, "acclaiming the awards, honors, and recognitions that SEAS faculty received during the past year."

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Katayun Barmak, The Philips Electronics Professor of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics

Barmak’s research aims to quantify and understand the differences in materials structure at the macro-, micro-, and nanoscales and to investigate the impact of these differences on the properties exhibited by the material. In 2009, she was one of the first materials scientists worldwide to successfully map polycrystalline structures on a nanoscale, finding as well that physical properties of some structures change at the nanoscale. Barmak works to discover, characterize, and develop materials for engineered systems that utilize nanotechnology such as data storage systems, photovoltaics, and fuel cells, and medical devices and drug delivery systems. New to Columbia Engineering this fall from Carnegie Mellon University, Barmak obtained her B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Cambridge and completed her M.S. and Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Philips Electronics Professorship endowment was established by Philips, the international electronics company headquartered in The Netherlands, in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics to honor the late Professor Gertrude Neumark, Howe Professor Emerita of Materials Science and Engineering, for her pioneering role as a woman engineer. Dr. Neumark, who was employed by Philips Laboratory for 25 years, was one of the world’s foremost experts of doping wide band-gap semiconductors and held a number of patents on wide band-gap semiconductor technology.

Best Paper
Editor Selection, Physical Review B for a viewpoint on
“Critical events, entropy, and the grain Boundary Character Distribution”

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Guillaume Bal, Professor of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics:

The Calderón Prize
Given by the Inverse Problems International Association for a researcher under the age of 40 who has made distinguished contributions to the field of inverse problems broadly defined

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Simon Billinge, Professor of Materials Science and of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics:

J. D. Hanawalt Prize
Awarded by the International Center for Diffraction Data for contributions to x-ray powder diffraction

Fulbright Research Scholar
To study spatially and temporally resolved local structure studies in advanced fundamental materials

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Dirk Englund, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and of Applied Physics

Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) - Department of Defense Nominee
For his pioneering contributions to the theory and experiment of photonic nanostructures for controllable light/matter interactions at the level of single photons and single emitters, and for his development of quantum optics in semiconductor chips for applications in quantum information processing, quantum metrology, and novel optoelectronic devices and systems for optical interconnects

Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship
In recognition of and to support his work in chip-based networks for quantum optics

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Latha Venkataraman, Assistant Professor of Applied Physics

Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship
In recognition of and to support her work in examining the interplay of physics, chemistry, and engineering at the nanometer scale and on probing, manipulation, and control of single molecules as active elements in electrical circuits

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Chris Wiggins, Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics

Named as one of Business Insider’s Silicon Alley 100: New York’s Coolest Tech People in 2010
Recognized for founding HackNY and efforts to foster engineering talent in New York City

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