Awards and Honors

Three members of the Cornell Engineering faculty have been named Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellows, Cornell’s highest honors for graduate and undergraduate teaching. The Stephen H. Weiss Teaching Awards honor teaching faculty in three categories who have a sustained record of commitment and excellence in the teaching and mentoring of undergraduate students.

• Mark Campbell, the John A. Mellowes ’60 Professor (MAE, Systems)
• David Shmoys, the Laibe/Acheson Professor of Business Management & Leadership Studies (ORIE)
• Aaron Wagner, professor (ECE)

At its recent meetings, the Cornell University Board of Trustees elected the following professors to appointment with indefinite tenure, effective November 1, 2024:

• Krystyn J. Van Vliet, Professor, (BME, MSE), was elected Professor with indefinite tenure. 
• Qi Li, Assistant Professor (CEE), was elected Associate Professor with indefinite tenure.
• Andreas A. Malikopoulos, Professor (CEE, Systems), was elected Professor with indefinite tenure.

EchoICs, an I-Corps regional course alum and 2022 National I-Corps Team participant, received a $275,000 STTR Phase I Award from the National Science Foundation. Founded by Alyssa Apsel, IBM Professor (ECE), and postdoctoral student Thomas Tapen ’15, Ph.D. ‘21, EchoICs developed a new flexible spectrum radio for more efficient military communications and commercial cellular usage.  

A podcast featuring Gregory Falco, assistant professor (MAE, Systems), won the Defense Media Award for Best Cyber Security Submission of the Year. The Threat Landscape, A Cyber Vulnerability, And Ransoming a Satellite episode aired February 10 on The Downlink Space Tech podcast.

The following faculty have received approval for promotion to the rank of professor, effective November 1, 2024:

• Khurram Afridi, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Nelly Andarawis-Puri, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Ricardo Daziano, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Meredith Silberstein, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Zhiru Zhang, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Lauren Stulgis, the Swanson Director of Student Project Teams, been named one of the 2024-25 Faculty Fellows in Engaged Learning.

Three members of the ORIE faculty will be presented prizes at the INFORMS Annual Meeting October 20-23 in Seattle.

Jim Dai, the Leon C. Welch Professor, will receive the John von Neumann Theory Prize, which is awarded annually to a scholar who has made fundamental, sustained contributions to theory in operations research and the management sciences.

David Shmoys, the Laibe/Acheson Professor of Business Management and Leadership Studies, will receive the George E. Kimball Medal, which is awarded for recognition of distinguished service to the Institute and to the profession of operations research and the management sciences.

Huseyin Topaloglu, the Eleanor and Howard Morgan Professor and program director at Cornell Tech, will receive the Lanchester Prize honorable mention for contributions to operations research and the management sciences published in the past five years. 

Brian Bauer, professor of practice (CBE), received a Louis H. Zalaznick Teaching Assistantship grant from Entrepreneurship at Cornell to support a teaching assistant for his I-Corps training course.

Tom O’Rourke, the Thomas R. Briggs Professor Emeritus (CEE), has been selected by the Geo-Institute Board of Governors to receive the 2025 Harry Schnabel Jr. Award for outstanding contributions to the field of earth retaining structures.

Mark Lewis, the Maxwell M. Upson Professor (ORIE), was named the 2025 Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) president-elect. Lewis will serve a one-year term as president elect, effective Jan.1, and then will serve as president of INFORMS for the 2026 calendar year. INFORMS is the leading international association for professionals in operations research, analytics, management science, economics, behavioral science, statistics, artificial intelligence, data science, applied mathematics, and other relevant fields, with more than 12,000 members.