Vattano Named Professor of the Year The Carnegie Foundation named psychology professor Frank Vattano the 1999 Colorado Professor of the Year, marking the first time a Colorado State University professor has received the prestigious award. The honor to Vattano came shortly after he received $427,000 from McGraw Hill Publishers to produce a series of video modules on social psychology. Vattano began collaborating with colleagues Thomas Bennett and Michelle Butler and Colorado State's Office of Instructional Services in 1987 to produce educational video modules on the brain. Their work was supported by the Annenberg Foundation/Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Worth Publishers. A 1958 graduate of Colorado State, Vattano earned his master's and doctoral degrees in psychology from Ohio State University.
Boardman Awarded Deming Medal Statistics Professor Thomas J. Boardman received the 1998 Deming Medal last year at an awards ceremony of the American Society for Quality's Annual Quality Congress and Exposition in Anaheim, Calif. The medal is named for W. Edwards Deming, who developed a comprehensive philosophy of quality that has had global commercial impact. The medal was created to recognize outstanding leadership in combining statistical thinking and management that leads to quality in products and services. The citation mentioned Boardman's promotion of statistical thinking and process improvement through education and his service in professional organizations using Deming ideals. Boardman is a fellow and former chair of the American Statistical Association's Quality and Productivity Section, co-director of Colorado State's Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement, an American Society for Quality fellow, and an elected member of the International Statistical Association.
Barisas Receives Humboldt Prize Chemistry Professor B. George Barisas will work with colleagues in Germany to study ways of using laser microscopy to track protein molecules on the surface cells, research that eventually may lead to an understanding of how the immune system combats disease. Barisas will conduct his collaborative research under the auspices of a 1999 Humboldt Award, a number of which are given annually by vote of German scholars and scientists. Barisas and his colleagues in Germany will use a new confocal microscope containing hundreds of tiny mirrors in a computer-controlled, programmable array that should provide even more detail about the interactions of proteins on cell membranes. The research will seek to answer whether a particular kind of protein, an "antigen presenting molecule," exists in certain places on cell membrane or moves there in response to a chemical signal. The answer could have important implications for how the body fights infection.
Shi Named Researcher of the Year The Colorado State University Research Foundation has named organic chemist Yian Shi Researcher of the Year. Shi received the award at the foundation's 14th annual researchers' recognition dinner, held to honor individuals at Colorado State with active technology license agreements, patents filed in fiscal year 1998-99, and U.S. patents issued prior to June 1999. Shi specializes in a form of chemistry called catalytic asymmetric synthesis. The field uses catalysts to synthesize one of two symmetrical versions of a molecule. Since one version often is medicinally useful, the ability to synthesize that version selectively is of great advantage to pharmaceutical companies. A native of China, Shi earned his bachelor's degree from Nanjing University, a master's from the University of Toronto, and a doctorate in organic chemistry from Stanford University in 1992. He then served as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School until joining Colorado State in 1995.
Srimani Becomes IEEE Fellow Computer Science Professor Pradip Srimani was elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for his contributions to interconnection networks and their fault tolerance. The IEEE fellow designation recognizes his superior standing in the field. Srimani's work has led to significant advances in the design and performance of computer networks. Srimani earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from the University of Calcutta in India and came to Colorado State in 1990. His research interests include parallel and distributed computing, interconnection networks, graph theory applications, and mobile computing.
