Spring 2001 -- Vol. 18, No. 1

HONORIS CAUSA

Chandra X-ray Observatory Earns Editor's Award From Discover Magazine

The Chandra X-ray Observatory, NASA's newest and most powerful X-ray space telescope, has been selected as the winner of the Editor's Choice category of the 2000 Discover Magazine Awards for Technological Innovation.

The telescope's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS), one the telescope's primary X-ray cameras, was conceived and developed for NASA by Penn State and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the leadership of Gordon Garmire, Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State.  TRW, Inc., of Redondo Beach, California, served as the prime contractor for the telescope.

Chandra, along with the rest of the winners was listed in the July 2000 issue of Discover Magazine.  An awards ceremony was conducted at Epcot Center at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida.

"The successful launch, deployment, and on-orbit operations of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is a testament to the solid partnership between TRW, NASA, and the science community that has been enabling NASA's most important space science missions for the past 40 years," said Timothy Hannemann, executive vice president and general manager of TRW's Space and Electronics Group.  "The extraordinary images that Chandra is delivering daily speak loudly not only to the quality of the science instruments on board, but also to the engineering talents and dedication to mission success exhibited by every member of NASA's Chandra mission."

Chandra, named in honor of Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, was launched in July 1999 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia and deployed to a highly elliptical Earth orbit.

The Discover Awards for Technological Innovation, in their 11th year, are designed to acknowledge the creativity of men, women, corporations, and institutions who have reached superior levels of ingenuity.  Each year, Discover Magazine's editorial staff reviews thousands of new products and ideas presented in the scientific literature or nominated by leading technology-based companies and research institutions.  The editorial staff selects semifinalists in each of eight technology categories, then submits the nominations to an independent panel of experts.  The panel then selects the finalists and the winner in each area of technology.

The Editor's Choice category is reserved for innovations so unique or promising that they go beyond the magazine's established innovation categories by providing a marked advance in their field.  Chandra's powerful X-ray telescope can resolve distant images eight times sharper and detect X-ray sources 20 times fainter than any previous X-ray space telescope.

Mathematics Professor Honored with C.I. Noll Award for Teaching

Simon Tavener, associate professor of mathematics, has been selected as winner of the C.I. Noll Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Sponsored by the Eberly College of Science Student Council and Alumni Society, the award represents the highest honor for undergraduate teaching in the college.  The winner is chosen by a committee of students and faculty from nominees suggested by students, faculty, and alumni.  The award includes a monetary grant and the inscription of Tavener's name on a plaque alongside previous winners of the award.

"I have always tried my hardest to teach intelligently and well, and it is very gratifying to receive this recognition from my colleagues and students," said Tavener, who has been teaching mathematics at Penn State since 1987.

During his time at Penn State, Tavener has taught a broad range of mathematics courses for students in both science and nonscience majors.  His recent teaching responsibilities have included advanced calculus courses for science majors, a two-semester sequence on numerical analysis for computer-science and mathematics majors, and a similar one-semester course for a broad range of majors.  In addition, he has taught differential and integral calculus courses as well as courses focused on ordinary and partial equations.

"Professor Tavener is an outstanding teacher, dedicated both to the education of individual students and to the more general quest to improve mathematics education," said Gary Mullen, professor and head of the Department of Mathematics.  "He is a truly dedicated educator."

At Penn State, Tavener--who has taught 21 different courses, 20 at the undergraduate level--works hard to incorporate real-world problems for students.  According to Mullen, Tavener has made a "huge impact" in the area of calculus instruction, developing multiple sets of physical experiments that allow small-group instruction and an opportunity to obtain data that can be analyzed as part of the course work.  Student reviews regularly rate Tavener's methods as effective and engaging.

In addition, he has served as a team member of the General Electric Fund for Excellence in Learning and Teaching grant to develop a freshman calculus sequence designed specifically for engineering majors.

He also has conducted several outreach efforts aimed at elementary and secondary-school students and coordinated the role of the W.G. Pritchard Fluid Mechanics Laboratory in the department's successful grant proposal for a program titled Vertical Integration of Research and Education in the Mathematical Sciences (VIGRE).  National Science Foundation funding for that program, worth more than $3 million, was five times larger than the next largest single grant ever awarded to the Department of Mathematics.

With Tavener's selection for this year's Noll Award, a member of the mathematics department has been so honored for three years in a row.

Previous recent recipients of the award, which was established in 1972, were Nigel Higson, distinguished professor of mathematics, in 1999, and Mary McCammon, professor emerita of mathematics, in 1998.

"I'm absolutely delighted that for three straight years a faculty member from the Department of Mathematics has been named winner of the C.I. Noll Award in the Eberly College of Science," Mullen said.  "High-quality instruction has long been a goal of our department and these awards help to confirm our belief that we do, indeed, have many truly outstanding instructors among our ranks."

Tavener earned his doctoral degree at the University of Oxford, England, in 1986.  He earned both his master's and bachelor's degrees at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1983 and 1982, respectively.  He is a member of the American Physical Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Higson Elected Fellow of Royal Society of Canada

Nigel Higson, distinguished professor of mathematics, has been elected as a Fellow to the Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada.

Fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada is considered Canada's senior academic accolade.

Higson, a dual British and Canadian citizen and a permanent resident of the United States, was one of 66 Fellows elected this year.  They were inducted to the society during a November ceremony in Ottawa, Canada.

"The work and research accomplished by each of of these distinguished men and women has had a profound impact on sciences and humanities in Canada," said William Leiss, president of the Royal Society of Canada.  "The Society is proud to welcome them as Fellows, and in so doing to recognize and salute their outstanding contribution to their disciplines."

Since its inception 118 years ago, the Royal Society of Canada has been regarded as a force for the enrichment, interpretation, and strengthening of Canada's intellectual heritage.

It differs from most scholarly and scientific societies in that it encompasses a broad range of disciplines--natural and applied sciences, medicine, social sciences, and humanities.

Its mandate is the promotion and development of learning and research in the arts and sciences.

For Higson, election to the Academy represents the latest in a list of honors--including the C.I. Noll Award in 1999, presented by the Eberly College of Science Student Council and Alumni Society in recognition of his excellence in teaching, and the Clay Mathematics Institute Prize Fellowship in 1999--that have recognized his well-rounded abilities in the classroom and as a researcher.  In addition to his teaching, Higson has served as Associate Department Chair and he is one of the three principal investigators for the VIGRE (Vertical Integration of Research and Education in the Mathematical Sciences) grant.

That grant, the largest ever received by the department  provides $3 million over a five-year period to improve mathematics instruction at all levels.

Higson joined the Penn State faculty as an assistant professor in 1989, was promoted to associate professor in 1990 and professor in 1994.  He was named distinguished professor of mathematics in January 2000.  He earned three degrees at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia--a bachelor's  in 1982, a master's in 1983, and a doctorate in 1986.  From 1986 to 1990, he also served as an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Rao Eearns U.S. Army Wilks Award

Calyampudi R. Rao, Holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Statistics and director of the Center for Multivariate Analysis, has been honored with the U.S. Army Wilks Award, which consists of a medal and an honorarium.

The award was estabished in 1981 in memory of Samuel Wilks, whose fundamental contributions to statistics greatly influenced the use of statistics in Army operations, and is given to individuals "for contributions to statistical methodologies in Army research, development, and testing."

Under grants from the Army Research Office, Rao and his collaborators at the Penn State Center for Multivariate Analysis have made valuable contributions in the areas of pattern recognition, signal processing, shape analysis, Kalman modeling in multi-target tracking, and construction of three-dimensional objects from flat pictures.

Rao has received numerous medals for his pioneering contributions to statistics, including the Wilks Medal from the American Statistical Association, the Guy Medal in Silver of the Royal Statistical Society of England, the Megnadh Saha Medal of the Indian National Science Academy, and the Mahalanobis Centenary Gold Medal of the Indian Science Congress.

He also has received many awards, including the 2000 Emanuel and Carol Parzen Prize for Statistical Innovation.  In addition, he has been honored by the Government of India as the namesake for a National Award to be presented to the country's outstanding young statisticians.

Kendall Named a Fellow of American Vacuum Society

Bruce Kendall, professor emeritus of physics, has been named a Fellow of the American Vacuum Society.  He was honored "for contributions to basic vacuum technology, vacuum measurements, and mass spectroscopy."

His current research interests include ultra-high-vacuum hot- and cold-cathode gauges, residual-gas analyzers, dry vacuum pumps, simplified spinning rotor gauges, improved thermal-conductivity and viscosity gauges, and cold electron emitters.

During 40 years as a member of the American Vacuum Society, Kendall has, at different times, served as a trustee and as chair of the vacuum-technology division, history committee, and various recommended-practices subcommittees.  He is also a member of the society's education committee, which operates several training programs for high-school science teachers.  Initially established in 1953, the American Vacuum Society is a nonprofit organization that promotes communication, education, recommended practices, and research in the use of vacuums and other controlled environments.

Kendall joined the Penn State faculty as an associate professor in 1964 and was named professor in 1968.  He also has been honored as a Fellow of the American Physical Society.  He served as a visiting professor at the University of Queensland, Australia, in 1970 and as a visiting research affiliate at California Institute of Technology in 1983.

At Penn State, Kendall and his students have studied various aspects of the physics of low-pressure environments such as pumping processes, molecular flow in porous media, residual-gas analysis, electrical breakdown on spacecraft surfaces, and the trapping of microparticles in electrical fields.  Since his retirement in 1991, Kendall has maintained research activities with various groups at Penn State and remains active as a consultant.  He holds three patents and has authored or co-authored approximately 65 papers in refereed journals and presented approximately 70 papers at research conferences.

Prior to his arrival at Penn State, Kendall was director of new-product development and a senior research scientist for Nuclide Corporation from 1961 to 1964.  He earned his doctoral degree in physics from the University of Western Australia in 1960.

Eberly College of Science Honors Staff Members

Three staff members from the Eberly College of Science have been selected for awards in recognition of their contributions to the college.  Karen Brewster, has earned an Innovation Award.  Jeanne Armstrong and Theresa Peters, have been selected for individual Excellence Awards.

Brewster, who works for the Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry, initiated and led a focus group that developed a welcome packet for postdoctoral scholars.

The packet contains an information guide for non-U.S. residents and provides materials on topics such as health insurance and various types of visas.

That information has been posted on the World Wide Web at <http://www.science.psu.edu/hr/FOREIGN NATIONALGUIDELINES.htm> for access by postdoctoral scholars throughout the University.  In addition, Brewster has helped develop a system to streamline accounting procedures within the Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry.

Armstrong, who works in the Department of Mathematics, has been honored for her skills in communication, leadership, problem solving, and organization.  Her performance has improved the overall environment of the department for faculty members and students.

Peters, who works in the Department of Chemistry, has been honored for her administrative skills and leadership.  Her skills have helped focus faculty and staff dedication within the department in constructive and positive directions.

Each of the three honorees received a plaque and a monetary prize.

Along with those three honorees, several other staff members who were nominated for awards received either a Certificate of Innovation or a Certificate of Excellence.

They are as follows:

Certificate of Innovation: Bruce Bryerton, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Quality Circle on Postdoctoral Scholar Orientation Program, which includes the following members from numerous departments: Brewster; Ella Bashore, Dean's Office; Becky Halpenny, Department of Mathematics; Amy Howard, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Rosemary Manning, Department of Mathematics; Bronnie McLaughlin, Department of Biology; Mary Anne Raymond, Department of Mathematics; Anne Stover, Department of Physics; and Jeri Ann Zitek, Department of Physics.

Certificate of Excellence: Aileen Duncan, Department of Physics; Halpenny; Mardi Hockenberry, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Christine Selders, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics; Stover; and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Business Office, which includes the following members from various departments: Cathey Chaffee, Joyce Greslick, Connie Horner, and Melissa Kern.

Honoris Causa (part 1)

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