2005 Engineer's Week Awards Dinner
Tuesday February 22
Von Braun Center North Hall
The Huntsville Section presented awards to five outstanding members of the Huntsville Engineering Community at the Engineer Week Banquet Tuesday 22 March. The banquet was held at the North Hall of the VBC under the auspices of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Dr. Fat Duen Ho received the Outstanding Educator award. Dr. Ho holds a BSEE degree from South China Technological Institute and MSEE and PhD degrees from southern Illinois University. He has served for the last five years as a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept of UAH teaching 9 different undergraduate and graduate level courses. His research areas have been microelectronic devices, circuits, and materials. His current research interests focus on microelectronic device modeling for IC design, nonvolatile semiconductor memories, metal-ferroelectric-semiconductor field effect transistors, and RF MOSFET modeling for wireless communications. He is an author or co-author of numerous Journal and Conference papers.
Robert A. (Bob) Robinson was honored as our Outstanding Engineer. Bob holds degrees in mathematics and EE from Louisiana Tech and a MSSAE from the University of Southern California. He is currently employed by Boeing as a principal investigator in unmanned ground systems. Bob’s background is primarily in the software side of EE and his recent projects have included software lead on FCS Autonomous Navigation System, NASA Cargo Mission, and JTRS proposals.
The Outstanding Service award went to our own Ronald D. (Ron) Hackett for his long-term service as Huntsville Section representative to the Joint Engineering Council of Alabama (JECA) and on the Huntsville Section Executive Committee (EXCOM).
This year the EXCOM established two new awards, for Student Branch Members of the year at A&M and UAH respectively. Candidates for these awards are nominated by their respective student branches with the EXCOM making the final selection. Both student branches submitted excellent candidates, and the decision between them was difficult.
The A&M Student Branch Member of the Year award went to Christopher J. Payne. Chris is a Junior working toward a BSEE with Very Large Scale Integration Option and currently holds a cumulative 3.6 GPA. He calls Little Rock, Arkansas home. In the summer of 2004 he served as an intern at Rockwell Automation Global Manufacturing Solutions in Cleveland, OH, where he worked on various automation projects. In Summer 2003 he was an intern with the US Army Corps of Engineers Little Rock District where he worked primarily on security programs. He has been the recipient of numerous academic honors and served as the Vice President of the IEEE Student Branch.
Matt McDougal received the UAH Student Branch Member of the Year award. He has been a member of the student branch for 2 years, attended SoutheastCon (SECON) 2003 and 2004, and played a vital role in the 2004 SECON Robot project. He served as a mentor for new members in 2004 and continues in this role in preparation for SECON 2005. After SECON 2004 Matt initiated and taught a microcontroller class for IEEE members. Currently he is working on the motor control board for the student branch SECON 2005 robot candidate. He has served as Student Branch Treasurer, and is now the Robot Team Lead.