Rama Chellappa, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering and an interim co-director of the Data Science and AI Institute, has been elected as a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. This honor is conferred to those “who have made outstanding contributions in the selected areas of engineering and technology, maintained a consistent professional relationship with India, and emerged as a global leader for their most distinguished accomplishments.”
Vicky Nguyen, professor of mechanical engineering, was named the recipient of the 2025 James R. Rice Medal by the Society of Engineering Science (SES). The medal, which includes a prize of $1,500, is awarded to a mid-career researcher in the field of engineering sciences who has had a substantial impact in his/her field. Nguyen was awarded the medal “for foundational work in the mechanics of soft materials using integrated experimental and modeling approaches, with applications to the biomechanics of the eye, and the mechanics of soft tissues and responsive polymers.” She will formally accept the prize at the 2025 SES Annual Meeting next October in Atlanta.
Christian Davies-Venn, an instructor in the Johns Hopkins Engineering for Professionals program in environmental engineering, was named a 2024 Fellow by the Water Environment Federation, which “celebrate[s] outstanding contributions to the global water sector by long-time Water Environment Federation members [and] recognizes the professional achievement, stature, and contributions of WEF members to the preservation and enhancement of the global water environment.”
Mateo Diaz, assistant professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, has won the 2024 Beale–Orchard-Hays Prize for Excellence in Computational Mathematical Programming. This award recognized Diaz and his team’s “groundbreaking work on Primal-Dual Linear Programming.” The Beale–Orchard-Hays Prize is awarded every three years by the Mathematical Optimization Society.
Mark Dredze, a John C. Malone Professor of Computer Science, the interim deputy director of the Data Science and AI Institute, and the associate head of research and strategic initiatives for the Department of Computer Science, received an Optum Research Award in the area of foundational methods development. This award will support his project on “using large language models, or LLMs, to build clinical question-answering systems that preserve patient privacy.”