Awards and Recognition

Matthew Reiter, professor of practice, has been selected for a two-week residency in July as an Innovation Scholar at the American Institute of Steel Construction’s Chicago headquarters. Reiter will collaborate with AISC’s engineering and research team on a structural steel-focused project and take part in a variety of industry events, including committee meetings and local facility tours.

Brian Kirby, Meinig Family Professor, and Rong Yang, assistant professor, have received Creative Teaching Awards from the Cornell Center for Teaching Innovation. Kirby won for his case study, Oral Assessments to Reinforce and Evaluate Student Learning: A Case Study in Fluid Mechanics, while Yang’s case study, Mastery-Based Grading in Chemical Engineering: A Holistic Approach, was selected.

A team under the guidance of Max Zhang, Irving Porter Church Professor, placed third in the Solar District Cup Collegiate Design Competition. Cornell EERL’s entry for the competition is designing an agrivoltaics microgrid on the Cornell campus. The team lead is Mike Liao (Ph.D. student), and team members include Guanning Li (M.S. candidate) and Richard Mahuze (Ph.D. student).

Zhiru Zhang, professor, and his team received the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS 2025) for their work on “SmoothE: Differentiable E-Graph Extraction.” The work is done by Cornell graduate students Yaohui Cai, Kaixin Yang, and Chenhui Deng, in collaboration with Prof. Cunxi Yu at the University of Maryland.

Geoff Abers, William and Katherine Snee Professor, has been chosen as Chair-elect for Earthscope’s Board of Directors. This nonprofit operates NSF-funded major geophysical instrumentation and data.

Fengqi You, Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor, had his study “Robust Assessments of Lithium Mining Impacts Embodied in Global Supply Chain Require Spatially Explicit Analyses” featured on the cover of Environmental Science & Technology.

Fengqi You, Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor, had his study “Climate Sustainability through AI-Crypto Synergies and Energy Transition in the Digital Landscape to Cut 0.7 GtCO₂e by 2030” featured on the cover of the Environmental Science & Technology.

Dean Lynden Archer has announced the following faculty promotions:

• Michael O. Thompson, professor, Materials Science and Engineering, was elected professor with indefinite tenure, effective April 1.
• Alexandra Coso Strong, associate professor, Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, was elected associate professor with indefinite tenure, effective April 1, 2025.
• Jian Xun Wang, associate professor, was elected associate professor with indefinite tenure, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, effective with Cornell appointment to regular professorial title, anticipated for July 1, 2025.

Jack Hare, assistant professor, received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award. Hare will use his award to develop a new platform for producing turbulent plasma in the laboratory, and new methods for measuring plasma turbulence.

Aaron Wagner, professor, is serving as President of the IEEE Information Theory Society’s Board of Governors for 2025.