University recognizes four engineering faculty and staff

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Three College of Engineering faculty and one staff member received 2018 distinguished awards for scholarship, teaching and diversity enhancement from The Ohio State University.

Distinguished University Professor

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Provost Bruce McPheron (right) congratulates Steven Ringel on being named a Distinguished University Professor during a surprise award presentation.
Neal A. Smith Endowed Chair Professor Steven Ringel was named a 2018 Distinguished University Professor in recognition of his exceptional record in teaching, research and scholarly work at The Ohio State University. He is one of only 58 awardees to receive the honor throughout Ohio State’s history.

Ringel is internationally recognized for his seminal contributions and leadership in the field of electronic materials and devices, particularly in photovoltaics, defect characterization techniques, wide bandgap semiconductors, and compound semiconductor-silicon integration. He also studies global innovation, and translational research between academia and industry. In addition to his faculty role, Ringel is an associate vice president for research in the Office of Research and is the executive director of the Institute for Materials Research.

“[Ringel’s] contributions to the department, college and university have been outstanding, and his leadership of the Institute for Materials Research and the Material and Manufacturing for Sustainability Discovery Theme have had a transformative impact on materials research at Ohio State,” said Electrical and Computer Engineering Chair Joel Johnson, who nominated him for the award.

Ringel is an AAAS Fellow and AIAA Associate Fellow. He is the author or co-author of more than 150 journal articles, the editor of three books and has filed three patents, with two issued.

Distinguished Scholar Award

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Provost Bruce McPheron (right) surprises Kevin Passino during class with a 2018 Distinguished Scholar Award.
Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Kevin Passino received a 2018 Distinguished Scholar Award in honor of his exceptional scholarly accomplishments. Passino is a world leader in the field of intelligent control, an area that uses ideas from biological systems to solve engineering problems. Along with his expertise in intelligent and fuzzy control methods, stability theory, swarm dynamics and biomimicry, he is renowned in non-traditional areas such as ethics in engineering, social justice and humanitarian engineering. He has invented several novel methods and analysis approaches for intelligent systems, invented a framework for modeling and stability analysis of discrete event systems, made contributions in animal and honeybee hive behavioral analysis and to modeling and analysis of group drinking behaviors. Passino is also the founder and director of the College of Engineering’s Humanitarian Engineering Center.

“Kevin is without doubt one of the most outstanding faculty members at Ohio State in terms of his research contributions, national and international impact and research leadership,” one colleague stated. “He demonstrates excellence in all aspects of his career, including research, innovation, service to the technical community, mentoring, teaching and leadership at Ohio State.”

Passino is a Fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a Fulbright Specialist Scholar. He has authored 133 journal papers and serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Swarm Intelligence Research.

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(from left): Sr. Associate Vice President for Research Janet Weisenberger, Interim Senior Vice President for Research Randy Moses and Vice Provost for Academic Policy and Faculty Resources Kay Wolf present the 2018 Distinguished Scholar Award to Ponnuswamy Sadayappan.
Fellow 2018 Distinguished Scholar Awardee Ponnuswamy Sadayappan, professor of computer science and engineering, is internationally renowned for his research on compilers for high-performance and parallel computing. His work addresses challenges faced by developers of high-end scientific/engineering applications for parallel computing systems—how to achieve high performance, high productivity, as well as portability for emerging and future systems. His research has made significant advances to both the theory and the state of practice with optimizing compilers. A collaborative project with quantum chemists has led to the creation of a domain-specific compiler targeted at an important class of computational chemistry models, enabling parallel code for many new models to be automatically synthesized from conveniently specified high-level expressions by domain scientists.

“Saday has established a well-deserved reputation among his national and international peers as a stellar researcher in high-performance computing who pursues innovative approaches to persisting problems of productivity and programmability in the field,” said one colleague.

Sadayappan’s research has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation for the past 20 years, and by the Department of Energy for the past 15 years. He has published over 250 peer reviewed papers, with over 12,000 citations to his work. He is a Fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Distinguished Diversity Enhancement Award

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McLaughlin Morrison

Center for Aviation Studies Curriculum and Assessment Manager Shannon McLaughlin Morrison received a 2018 Distinguished Diversity Enhancement Award in recognition of her outstanding diversity and inclusion work.

Morrison has demonstrated a tireless commitment to introduce students to women and minorities in the aviation industry. In addition to serving as an advisor to the Women in Aviation student organization, she has authored a Diversity in Action Plan for the center, led diversity initiatives as the its diversity and inclusion coordinator and taught a Diversity in Aviation course. Her efforts have significantly enhanced student understanding on the importance diversity and inclusion in the aviation industry.