In This Issue:

Bill Gates Speaks to SEAS Students

SEAS Sees Operas and Concerts

Entrepreneurialism, with a Scottish EDGE

Three Chairs for Columbia Engineering

SEAS Leads Technology & Society Studies at Columbia

Inspiring Children and Youth to Become Engineers

SEAS Incubates New Generation of Engineered Tissue

The Power of Data Mining and Machine Learning

Chemical Engineering Celebrates 100 Years

Engineering Start-Ups + Venture Capitalists = Success

SEAS Teachers Honored by SOCG and Engineering Alumni

Reunion: Maintaining the Columbia Connection

Our Newest Alumni (Class of 2005) Celebrate

Homecoming 2005

SEAS Teachers Honored by SOCG and Engineering Alumni

Columbia continues to reward excellent teaching for its undergraduates. This year, three SEAS professors have been singled out for their exceptional teaching abilities by two alumni groups.

Tony Heinz

Tony Heinz, David M. Rickey Professor of Optical Communications and chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering, was honored last month by the Society of Columbia Graduates as a recipient of its 2005 Great Teacher Award. Professor Heinz joined SEAS in 1995 after 12 years as a research scientist at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY.

One of his principal objectives in moving into the academic research environment was to be able to teach and guide students toward a career in the field of optics. As a scientist, his teaching and research interests lie in the area of lasers and their application to probing materials on the nanoscale.

He has been particularly recognized for his innovative application of laser-based techniques to study surfaces and nanostructured materials, such as carbon nanotubes. Professor Heinz is also a Professor of Physics at Columbia and a researcher in Columbia’s National Science Foundation Centers for Electron Transport in Molecular Nanostructures and for Materials Science Research and Engineering.

Prof. Soulaymane Kachani, left, and Prof. Woonghee Tim Huh, right, stand with Columbia Engineering School Alumni Association President K. Daniel Libby ’82, ’84, center, prior to the Class Day ceremonies at which the professors received the Association’s 2005 Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award.

The Columbia Engineering School Alumni Association presented its 2005 Distinguished Faculty Teaching Awards at Class Day ceremonies to two members of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. CESAA President K. Daniel Libby ’82, ’84 awarded the honor to Soulaymane Kachani and Woonghee Tim Huh. To the cheers of the graduating students, Libby said that these two professors “exhibit a caring attitude, approachability, responsiveness to student concerns and the ability to lucidly teach essential skills and complex subject matter.”

The professors were selected based on student evaluations and the recommendations of a selection committee that was composed of students and alumni.