Faculty Awards & Recognition

Explore the honors and awards won by our faculty, a scholarly community that defines excellence in engineering education, research and societal impact.

Latest Awards

More recognition
12/12/24 Pratt School of Engineering

Willie Padilla Named a Fellow of IEEE

Padilla was honored for his contributions to the field of metamaterials, including perfect absorbers and active devices.

Awards by Academic Year

  • Fall

  • Spring

  • Spring

    • Yiran Chen (ECE) was appointed to the Committee on Using Machine Learning in Safety-Critical Applications: Setting a Research Agenda, which has been convened under the auspices of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board’s (CSTB) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He was also elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
    • Ingrid Daubechies (ECE, Math) won the 2023 Wolf Prize, known as Israel’s Nobel Prize.
    • Jessilyn Dunn (BME) and her lab were selected to participate in the 2023 Google Season of Docs.
    • Aaron Franklin (ECE) won the MCC Hall of Fame Alumni Achievement Award.
    • Charles Gersbach (BME) made the 2022 Clarivate “Highly Cited Researchers” list and was elected to the National Academy of Inventors.
    • Warren Grill (BME) won the first annual North American Neuromodulation Society Clinical and Basic Science/Engineering Innovator Award and was elected to the National Academy of Inventors. He was also named the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neural Engineering, and he and his collaborators advanced to Phase II of the Neuromod Prize competition.
    • Roarke Horstmeyer (BME) received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation.
    • Gaby Katul (CEE) was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
    • Cameron Kim (BME) received the Best Work-in-Progress presentation from the American Society for Engineering Education in the Biomedical Engineering Division.
    • Nimmi Ramanujam (BME) received the Biomedical Engineering Award from IEEE.
    • Amanda Randles (BME) won a high-impact computational science award through the Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program.
    • Michael Reiter was awarded a “Test of Time” award at the 2022 ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security.
    • Daniel Reker (BME) received the Trailblazer Award from the National Institute of Health’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
    • Michael Rubinstein (BME) was named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society.
    • Tatiana Segura (BME) was named a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors.
    • Adrienne Stiff-Roberts (ECE) won an NSF BRITE Fellowship.
    • Kishor Trivedi (ECE) won a Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Bombay.
    • Mark Wiesner (CEE) made the 2022 Clarivate “Highly Cited Researchers” list and won the 2024 Simon W. Freese Environmental Engineering Award and Lecture presented by the ASCE’s Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI).

    Summer

    • Adrian Bejan (MEMS) won a silver medal in the 2023 Nautilus Book Awards in Science and Cosmology for his book “Time and Beauty”
    • Pranam Chatterjee (BME) won a 2022 Hartwell Biomedical Research Award
    • Yiran Chen (ECE) won a 2024 IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics In Computational Intelligence Outstanding Paper Award, for his work titled “End-to-End Detection-Segmentation System for Face Labeling”
    • Jeff Glass (ECE) was appointed to the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA) Standing Council.
    • Joe Izatt (BME) was selected for a fellowship to build skills in equity-centered academic leadership as an Ivy+ Provost Leadership Fellow
    • Gaby Katul (CEE) was elected a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the main societal organization that deals with weather and climate
    • Samira Musah (BME) received a New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program
    • Amanda Randles (BME) won the Association for Computing Machinery SIGHPC Emerging Woman Leader In Technical Computing
    • Tuan Vo-Dinh (BME) and his startup Minutia, which is pursuing a functional cure for Type 1 diabetes, won the first American Diabetes Association Innovation Challenge
    • Krish Chakrabarty (ECE) was appointed to DARPA’s Microsystems Exploratory Council for a term of three years.
    • Earl Dowell (MEMS) was awarded the 2022 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award.
    • Claudia Gunsch (CEE) was named a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers Environmental & Water Resources Institute and elected to the board of directors of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors.
    • Tony Jun Huang (MEMS) was elected as a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
    • Robert Kielb received the International Symposium for Unsteady Aerodynamic, Aeroacoustics & Aeroelasticity of Turbomachines Award for Unwavering Support and Contributions.”
    • Maiken Mikkelsen (ECE) was named an associate editor of the journal Optica.
    • David Mitzi (MEMS) received a Spiers Memorial Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry.
    • Christine Payne (MEMS) was selected as an Ivy+ Provost Leadership Fellow.
    • Nimmi Ramanujam (BME) won the IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award.
    • Tatiana Segura (BME) joined the editorial board of Advanced Healthcare Materials.
    • Lisa Wu Wills (ECE) was accepted to attend the National Academy of Engineering’s Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering 2022 Symposium.

  • National Recognition and Professional Leadership

    • Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science—Cate Brinson
    • Fellow, National Academy of Inventors—Tony Jun Huang
    • Fellow, Royal Society of Chemistry (UK)—Christine Payne
    • Fellow, Sigma Xi—Henry Petroski
    • Member, National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee, U.S. Department of Energy/White House Office of Science & Technology Policy—Jungsang Kim and Christopher Monroe
    • Member, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board—Mark Borsuk
    • Deputy Human Risk Manager, NASA Johnson Space Center—Dan Buckland
    • Member, North Carolina Board of Science, Technology and Innovation (governor’s appointment)—Bill Walker
    • Champion of Science, UNESCO International Day of Light Steering Committee—Junjie Yao
    • 2020 Outstanding Technical Staff Award, National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure/National Science Foundation (NSF)—Justin Gladman

    Professional Society Recognition

    • Fellow, American Chemical Society (ACS)—Matthew Becker
    • Fellow, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)—Yiran Chen
    • Fellow, Optical Society of America (OSA)—Sina Farsiu, Chris Monroe
    • Fellow, International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering—Ravi V. Bellamkonda, Jennifer West and Ashutosh Chilkoti
    • Lifetime Achievement Award, Reliability Society (IEEE)—Kishor Trivedi
    • Lifetime Achievement Award, International Association for Green Energy—Adrian Bejan
    • Edwin H. Land Medal, The Optical Society (OSA) and Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T)—Joseph Izatt
    • Vitold Belevitch Award, IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS)—Krishnendu Chakrabarty
    • R. Tom Sawyer Award, International Gas Turbine Institute/American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)—Bob Kielb
    • Chris Jacobs Award, Cellular and Molecular Engineering Special Interest Group (BMES)—George Truskey
    • IEEE-HKN Asad M. Madni Outstanding Technical Achievement and Excellence Award—Krishnendu Chakrabarty
    • IEEE Carl Hellmuth Hertz Ultrasonics Award—Kathryn Nightingale
    • Distinguished Research Award, IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Very Large Scale Integration—Helen Li
    • Outstanding Teaching Award, American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)-Southeastern Section—Lisa Huettel
    • ECE Distinguished Educator Award, American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)—Lisa Huettel
    • Systems Prize Paper Award, IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration—Krishnendu Chakrabarty
    • Best Paper Award, 2020 Conference of the Division of Experimentation and Laboratory Oriented Studies/ASEE—Aaron Franklin, Kip Coonley and Alex Culbert
    • Best Review of 2020, Nanoscale Horizons—Gaurav Arya and Marcello DeLuca
    • Dissertation Runner-Up Award, ACM SIGMOBILE—Tingjun Chen
    • Editor-in-chief, Biomedical Engineering Education (BMES)—Ann Saterbak
    • Editor-in-chief, Optical Engineering (SPIE)—Adam Wax

    Early Career Awards

    University Awards and Recognition

    DUKE UNIVERSITY
    • Graduate School Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring—Aaron Franklin
    • 2021 Bass Fellows—Michael Bergin, Joel Collier
    • Edmund T. Pratt, Jr. Distinguished Professor, Stefano Curtarolo
    • John W. Strohbehn Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Charles A. Gersbach
    • Gilhuly Family Presidential Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Christopher Monroe
    PRATT SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
    • Klein Family Distinguished Teaching Award—Libby Bucholz
    • Stansell Family Distinguished Research Award—Maiken Mikkelsen
    • Lois and John L. Imhoff Distinguished Teaching Award—Adrienne Stiff-Roberts
    • Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Teaching and Research—Marc Sommer
    • Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising—Shani Daily
    • Dean’s Award for Leadership in Program and Operational Excellence—Manuela Damian

    Media Recognition

  • National Academy of Engineering Membership

    • Kenneth C. Hall, Julian Francis Abele Distinguished Professor and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

    National Recognition and Professional Leadership

    • Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science—Ravi Bellamkonda, Ashutosh Chilkoti and Tony Huang
    • Fellow, National Academy of Inventors—Kathryn Nightingale and Blake Wilson
    • Senior Member, National Academy of Inventors—Krishnendu Chakrabarty and Amanda Randles
    • Chair, US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, National Academy of Engineering—Jennifer West
    • Chair, Aerospace Engineering Peer Committee, National Academy of Engineering—Earl H. Dowell
    • Member, National Advisory Council, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering-NIH—Kathy Nightingale
    • Chevalier, l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (France)—Adrian Bejan
    • TÜBA International Academy Prize in Basic & Engineering Sciences, Turkish Academy of Sciences—Adrian Bejan
    • Italia Award, Aspen Institute—Natasha Litchinitser
    • Outstanding Staff Member Award for Education and Outreach, NSF National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure—Holly Leddy

    Professional Society Recognition

    • National Award in the Chemistry of Materials, American Chemical Society—David Mitzi
    • Outstanding Teacher Award-Southeastern Section, American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE)—Ann Saterbak
    • Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award, The Optical Society—Nimmi Ramanujam
    • Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award, Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)—Nimmi Ramanujam
    • Women in Molecular Imaging (WIMIN) Outstanding Leadership Award, World Molecular Imaging Congress—Nimmi Ramanujam
    • Mid-Career Award, IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation Technical Committee on Cyber-Physical Systems—Yiran Chen
    • Prolific Author Award, Asia and South Pacific Automation Conference (ASD-DAC)—Yiran Chen
    • High Performance Computer Architecture Hall of Fame, IEEE Computer Society—Yiran Chen
    • Best Research Artifact Award, IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN)—Maria Gorlatova
    • Alan O. Plait Award for Tutorial Excellence, 2021 Reliability & Maintainability Symposium (RAMS)—Kishor Trivedi
    • Nominee, 2020 A F Harvey Engineering Research Prize, Institution of Engineering and Technology—Warren Grill
    • College of Fellows, American Institute for Medical and Biomedical Engineering (AIMBE)—Sina Farsiu, Asutosh Chilkoti
    • Fellow, American Vacuum Society—Stefan Zauscher
    • Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)—Sina Farsiu and Jeffrey Krolik
    • Fellow, Institute of Mathematical Statistics—Cynthia Rudin
    • Fellow, International Union of Societies for Biomaterials and Engineering—Ashutosh Chilkoti
    • Fellow, The Optical Society of America—Michael Gehm
    • Fellow of Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine, Undersea & Hyperbaric Medical Society—Laurens Howle
    • Distinguished Member, Association of Computing Machinery—Benjamin Lee
    • President, American Association of Physicists in Medicine—James T. Dobbins III
    • Dean’s Council Executive Board Member, American Association of Engineering Education (ASEE)—Ravi V. Bellamkonda
    • Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine (CAS-M)—Yiran Chen
    • Associate Editor, Journal of Computational Physics—Guglielmo Scovazzi
    • Member, Editorial Board, PRX Quantum—Ken Brown
    • EMBS Distinguished Lecturer, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society—Nimmi Ramanujam
    • Morton Antler Lecturer, IEEE Holm Conference on Electrical Contacts—Mary “Missy” Cummings
    • Rayleigh Lecturer, International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE)—Earl H. Dowell

    Early Career Awards

    • CAREER Award, National Science Foundation (NSF)—Johan Guilleminot, Amanda Randles
    • Young Investigator Award, IEEE Photonics Society—Junjie Yao
    • Rising Star Award, Association of Chinese Scholars in Computing (ACSIC)—Neil Gong

    Fellowships and Research Awards

    • Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship, Institute of International Education (IIE)—Edgard Ngaboyamahina
    • Moore Inventor Fellowship, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation—Maiken Mikkelsen
    • Faculty Fellow in Israel, Jewish National Fund—Xiling Shen
    • Systems for Machine Learning Research Award, Facebook Research—Lisa Wu Wills
    • Top 100 Finalist, 100&Change Competition, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation—Nimmi Ramanujam

    University Awards and Honors

    • Aleksander S. Vesic Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Duke University—Michael Rubinstein
    • Hugo L. Blomquist Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Duke University—Matthew Becker
    • Bass Fellow, Duke University—Brenton Hoffmann and Christine Payne
    • Undergraduate Mentor of the Year, Mary Lou Williams Center, Duke University—Shani Daily
    • WOMc Impact Award, Duke Women’s Center—Nimmi Ramanujam
    • Klein Family Distinguished Teaching Award, Pratt School of Engineering—Eric S. Richardson
    • Stansell Family Distinguished Research Award, Pratt School—Ken Brown
    • Lois & John L. Imhoff Distinguished Teaching Award, Pratt School—Joel Collier
    • Capers & Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring & Advising, Pratt School—Rebecca Simmons
    • Capers & Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Teaching & Research, Pratt School—Aaron Franklin
    • Dean’s Award for Leadership in Program & Operational Excellence, Pratt School—Patrick McGuire
    • Willie Hobbs Moore Distinguished Lectureship, University of Michigan—Adrienne Stiff-Roberts

    Media Recognition

    • 100 Inspiring Black Scientists in America, Cell Press—Samira Musah
    • Early Career Board, Nano Letters—Po-Chun Hsu
    • Top 0.01% of world scientists in new citations impact, PLoS Biology—Adrian Bejan
    • Highly Cited Researchers, ISI-Web of Science—Charles Gersbach, David Mitzi, Willie Padilla, Guillermo Sapiro, David Smith and Mark Wiesner
    • 50th Anniversary Milestone Paper, Physics Review B—David Smith

  • National Academy of Engineering Membership

    • Ana Barros
    • Vahid Tarokh

    National Research and Professional Leadership Awards

    • Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science—Krishnendu Chakrabarty
    • Fellow, International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE)—Ravi Bellamkonda and George Truskey
    • Fulbright Global Scholar Award, U.S. Department of State—Nimmi Ramanujam
    • Trailblazer Award, National Institutes of Health—Stefan Zauscher
    • Humboldt Research Award, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation—Adrian Bejan
    • International Award for Women in Science-North American Laureate, UNESCO & L’Oreal—Ingrid Daubechies
    • Highway Safety Hero, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety—Mary “Missy” Cummings
    • Social Impact Abie Award, AnitaB.org—Nimmi Ramanujam
    • Member, Science Advisory Board, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—Mark Wiesner

    Professional Society Recognition

    • Fellow, American Physical Society—Willie Padilla and Ken Brown
    • Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)—Hai “Helen” Li
    • Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)—Lingchong You
    • Distinguished Member, Association for Computing Machinery—Yiran Chen
    • Hydrology President, American Geophysical Union—Ana Barros
    • Van C. Mow Medal, American Society of Mechanical Engineers—Tony Jun Huang
    • Innovative Applications of Analytics Award, The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences—Cynthia Rudin
    • IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award—Lisa G. Huettel
    • IEEE Bob Madge Innovation Award—Krishnendu Chakrabarty
    • AEESP/Mary Ann Liebert Award for Publication Excellence in Environmental Engineering Science—Helen Hsu-Kim
    • Sir George Stokes Award, Royal Society of Chemistry (United Kingdom)—Tuan Vo-Dinh
    • 2019 Soft Matter and Physical Chemistry Award, Royal Society of Chemistry (United Kingdom)—Michael Rubinstein
    • Test of Time Award, International Conference on Machine Learning—Guillermo Sapiro

    Early Career Awards

    • Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, National Science Foundation—Yiyang Gong
    • Young Investigator Award, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)—Junjie Yao
    • Early Career Award, Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Embedded Systems—Miroslav Pajic

    University and School Honors

    • Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring (Duke University)—Jennifer West
    • Betsy Alden Outstanding Service-Learning Award (Duke University)—Kevin Caves
    • Bass Connection Professor (Duke University)—Amanda Randles, Stacy Tantum and Vahid Tarokh
    • Klein Family Distinguished Teaching Award (Duke University Pratt School of Engineering)—Wanda Krassowska Neu
    • Stansell Family Distinguished Research Award (Duke University Pratt School of Engineering)—Charles Gersbach
    • Lois and John L. Imhoff Distinguished Teaching Award (Duke University Pratt School of Engineering)—Ann Saterbak
    • Capers and Marion McDonald Mentoring and Advising Award (Duke University Pratt School of Engineering)—Gregg Trahey
    • Capers and Marion McDonald Teaching and Research Award (Duke University Pratt School of Engineering)—Sina Farsiu
    • Dean’s Award for Leadership in Program and Operational Excellence (Duke University Pratt School of Engineering)—Crystal Chapman
    • Distinguished Alumni Award (Duke University)—Blake Wilson
    • Distinguished Alumni Award (University of Illinois Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering)—Qing Ho Liu
    • Distinguished Alumni Award (University of Illinois Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering)—Ken Gall
    • R. Wells Moulton Award for Distinguished Alumnus in Academia (University of Washington Department of Chemical Engineering)—Ashutosh Chilkoti
    • Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award (Fudan University and Zhongzhi Enterprise Group)—Ingrid Daubechies
    • Fellow, Executive Leadership in Academic Technology, Engineering and Science (Drexel University)—Claudia Gunsch

    Media Recognition

    • Top 1% of Highly Cited Researchers, Clarivate Analytics—Steven Cummer, David Mitzi, David Smith, Mark Wiesner and Benjamin Wiley
    • “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019,” MIT Technology Review—Jeff Glass