College of Engineering faculty and staff members were honored April 25 at a special reception and ceremony at the Seamans Center for the Engineering Arts and Sciences.
The following staff members were recognized for five years of service with the College of Engineering:
Andres Araneda, IIHR--Hydroscience & Engineering (IIHR)
Juan "Ezequiel" Martin, IIHR
Hyun Yoon, IIHR
Ten Years of Service:
Rajankumar Bhatt, Center for Computer-Aided Design (CCAD)
Kim Lebeck, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Timothy Brown, National Advanced Driving Simulator (NADS)
Dawn Marshall, NADS
Chris Schwarz, NADS
Stephen Cable, NADS
David Heitbrink, NADS
Carmen Langel, IIHR
Jeff Gordon, NADS
Corey Kreutz, NADS
Andrew Veit, NADS
Melissa Eckrich, IIHR
Fifteen Years of Service:
Troy Lyons, IIHR
Dan Mentzer, Engineering Computer Services
Chris Coretsopolulos, Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
Shawn Allen, NADS
Laura Myers, IIHR
Twenty-Year Awards:
Steve Struckman, Engineering Machine Shop
Jane Dorman, Outreach Admissions Scholarships and Inclusion Services
Thirty Years:
Mark Wilson, IIHR
Thirty-five Years:
Jim Cramer, Engineering Computer Services
There were two recipients of the 2017 Faculty Excellence Award for Service -- Jacob Odgaard, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Paul Hanley, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. They were honored for their joint effort to redesign and revitalize Civil and Environmental Engineering's Senior Project Design class to make it more rigorous, professional, and applicable to real-world design project standards.
The Faculty Excellence Award for Research was presented to Thomas Schnell, professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and director of the Operator Performance Laboratory at the UI Center for Computer-Aided Design. Schnell was recognized for establishing himself as a national and international leader in the community of human factors and information management in aviation. Through the Operator Performance Laboratory, which he establshed, he has brought in more than $19 million in direct federal, state, and industry funding as a principal investigator. He has executed 245 research projects and his work has resulted in a total of 40 peer-reviewed journal articles, 91 conference proceeding articles, 30 technical reports, two book chapters, and 19 posters or presentations. His research has helped save lives of pilots and passengers by helping to prevent "controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) incidents. His lab also developed a Synthetic Vision System (SVS) aircraft cockpit instrument suite, commercialized under the Dynon SkyView brand and is now flying in thousands of aircraft cockpits.
The Faculty Excellence Award went to Christopher Stoakes, lecturer in civil and environmental engineering. Stoakes catalyzed a remarkable transformation in the department's structure program, laboratory facilities, and course offerings. Within five years, he transformed the undergraduate curriculum to a more modern, hands on, and relevant curriculum. He also has taken the lead on modernizing equipment and developing new, more relevant lab courses in soil mechanics and civil engineering materials. Perhaps the best indicator of teaching excellence comes from students themselves. Stoakes dedication to teaching has been recognized by graduating seniors on three different occasions during his five years as a lecturer in the department.
There were two recipients of the Staff Excellence Award for Research this year.
Zhaoyuan Wang, associate research scientist at IIHR, is responsible for ongoing development for CFDShip-Iowa, a numerical code developed by IIHR and the primary code used by the US Navy for evaluation of ship design to evaluate maneuverability and stability, among other factors. He led development for versions 5.5 and 6.2 of the code. Wang has been co-investigator under Professor Fred Stern on five funded grants and contracts, with the two most recent projects bringing in $2 million in funding.
Ashley McDonard has been project manager at NADS for MyCarDoesWhat, a $17 million national campaign to educate drivers about the advanced driver assistance technologies and other safety features in their vehicles. McDonald has been instrumental in all phases of the campaign, starting with developing and conducting the first year National Consumer Survey fo Driving Safety Technologies to assess driver knowledge, which found significant gaps in driver awareness of all safety features sampled. She was the lead author of a 2016 article published in the Transportation Research Record about the survey.The
The 2017 Mary Sheedy Staff Excellence Award was presented to Teresa Gaffey, director of finance and business operations at IIHR. She is responsible for overseeing over $20 million in grants and contracts representing over 120 discrete research projects from over 50 different sponsors.