PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 22, No. 4, Aug. 15, 2002

achievements A report on honors, awards, appointments and other outstanding achievements of faculty and staff members.

agricultural, consumer and environmental sciences
Rodney W. Johnson, a professor of animal sciences, has won the 2002 Animal Growth and Development Award. The award, sponsored by Roche Vitamins Inc., was presented July 21 during the annual meeting of the American Society of Animal Science.

The award citation notes that Johnson "has made unique and cutting-edge contributions to animal science by showing that the immune system regulates the biology of animal growth and development."

The award recognizes basic or applied research excellence in any phase of growth or development of animals.

J. Kent Mitchell, professor emeritus of agricultural engineering, has been named the 2002 winner of the Hancor Soil and Water Engineering Award. The award, one of the most prestigious given by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers, is given in recognition of noteworthy contributions to the advancement of soil and water engineering and was presented at a luncheon July 31.

Mitchell was selected for his distinguished accomplishments as a dedicated teacher and researcher in the areas of erosion mechanisms, erosion control and water-quality monitoring. He is recognized as an international expert in erosion processes and control in monitoring field studies in water quality.

Marvin R. Paulsen, professor of agricultural engineering and associate head of the department, was named a fellow of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers and was inducted at a ceremony July 30 during the society's annual meeting. Paulsen was recognized for his dedication and exceptional service to students and colleagues in the agricultural engineering profession and for his exceptional research accomplishments.

Paulsen has provided leadership in the development of pioneering research and has contributed vastly to the body of knowledge regarding grain quality, grain-quality measurements, and the effects of drying, handling and transport on quality changes. The results of his research have greatly benefited grain handlers, processors, equipment manufacturers, importers and exporters, agri-business firms, and agricultural producers around the world. In addition to research, he has continued as the Graduate Program director and as a teacher of undergraduate and graduate courses in the department.

Only about 2 percent of active members of the society have achieved the grade of fellow.

broadcasting
WILL meteorologist Ed Kieser has been awarded two Seals of Approval, one for radio and one for television, from the American Meteorological Society in recognition of the quality of his broadcasts.

The seal is awarded by the society to broadcast meteorologists who meet established criteria for scientific competence and effective communication skills in their weather presentations.

Kieser, who has worked as a meteorologist at WILL for 15 years, said he finally made getting the seals a priority. "The application process takes a lot of time and I was always busy doing the weather and putting on tornado shows," he said. "I’d never applied before."

"I’ve always thought my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in meteorology were my most important credentials as a meteorologist," Kieser said. "But I wanted to receive the AMS seals because of the respect they command in the field of weather broadcasting."

Kieser’s weather forecasts can be heard on WILL-AM 580 and on WILL-TV’s "Your Weather" weeknights at 9:58 p.m.

education
Georgia Garcia, professor of curriculum and instruction and of educational policy, is one of 13 well-known scholars appointed to the National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth established by the Department of Education.

The panel will identify, assess and synthesize the literacy research knowledge base related to the education of language minority children and youth. Members of the National Literacy Panel and their support contractor, SRI International and the Center for Applied Linguistics, will produce a report that evaluates and synthesizes the research literature and provides research-based recommendations to guide educational practice and inform educational policy. More information about the panel is at www.ed.gov/PressReleases/05-2002/05142002.html.

Arlette Ingram Willis, professor of curriculum and instruction, recently was elected a trustee of the Research Foundation for the National Council of Teachers of English.

Trustees serve three-year terms. They judge research proposals received from the field and manage fiscal resources of the foundation.

NCTE, with 75,000 individual and institutional members worldwide, is dedicated to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels.

engineering
UI engineering professor Bill Hammack has won the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Award for Service to Society for his public radio commentaries.

The award recognizes outstanding contributions by a chemical engineer to community service and to the solution of socially oriented problems. The award includes a plaque and a $2,000 honorarium.

Hammack’s radio series, "Engineering and Life," opens the world of engineering to the public by sharing the human stories behind seemingly simple objects such as pop-tops, coffee makers, screws and plastic bottles. The series is produced at WILL-AM and distributed to other public radio stations by Illinois Public Radio. It airs on WILL-AM Tuesdays at 7:25 a.m. and 9:25 a.m. The commentaries also can be heard at www.engineerguy.com.

liberal arts and sciences
Charles F. Gammie, a professor of physics and of astronomy, was among 60 young researchers named as recipients of the 2001 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the government on young professionals at the outset of their independent research careers. Gammie received his award July 12 in a White House ceremony.

The young scientists and engineers receive up to a five-year research grant to further their study in support of critical government missions. Gammie will use his award to carry out a research program in theoretical and computational astrophysics that focuses on building numerical models of how plasma flows around black holes. The release of gravitational binding energy in black hole accretion flows is thought to power quasars and active galactic nuclei, and, in our own galaxy, the black hole X-ray binaries.

Gammie and his students also are developing a "digital demo room" to aid in astronomy and physics instruction. The numerical models available in this demo room will focus on topics in stellar evolution, supernovae, star formation and galactic structure.

James W. Marchand, professor emeritus of Germanic languages and literatures, was invested as a laureate of the International Biographical Centre's Lifetime Achievement Award. Investiture as a laureate is only conferred after a thorough evaluation of each candidate's qualifications by the members of the IBC Rresearch and Advisory Board. The award is made to selected noteworthy individuals around the world in recognition of their lifetime accomplishments.

national center for supercomputing applications
R&D Magazine, the magazine of research and development, will present a 2002 R&D 100 Award to HDF5 (Hierarchical Data Format 5), a software package developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in collaboration with the Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, and Los Alamos National laboratories.

HDF5 is a data file format that assists users in storing, manipulating, and sharing scientific data. It works across diverse operating systems and features a library of callable routines, utility programs and tools for creating HDF5 files, converting files into HDF5, and analyzing and visualizing data. The HDF project began in 1987. In 1997 NCSA teamed with the three Department of Energy laboratories to rewrite and upgrade HDF. The resulting product, HDF5, handles files of unlimited size and takes advantage of parallel computing to speed the process of creating files and working with scientific data.

The R&D 100 Awards were established in 1963 by the forerunner of today's R&D Magazine. Each year, technical experts and the magazine's editors evaluate entries looking for products and processes that are the most "technologically significant" and can improve people's lives. The 2002 awards go to developers of products released in 2001. Past winners have included the developers of the automated teller machine (1973), the fax machine (1975), the liquid crystal display (1980), and HDTV (1998).

The winners of the 2002 R&D 100 Awards will be featured in the September issue of the magazine. Each winning technology will be showcased during an Oct. 16 awards banquet in Chicago.

For more information on HDF5, see http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/.

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