Electrical Engineering Professor Qian Receives Teaching Award

Professor Chunjiang Qian of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is among the initial recipients of the prestigious Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award from The University of Texas System.

To be honored with this award, Qian underwent a rigorous campus-level review. Once identified as one of UTSA’s most qualified candidates for this award by UTSA President Ricardo Romo, Qian and his fellow nominees were evaluted by an external review committee.

Only a select number of faculty members from across The University of Texas System were chosen.

Congratulations, Dr. Qian, on this esteemed accomplishment.

Federal Security Agencies Name UTSA a National Center of Academic Excellence in Research

Want to learn about information assurance and security? You might want to consider The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). The university has received the elite National Center of Academic Excellence in Research (CAE-R) designation from the National Security Administration (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security for five years through 2014.

“This designation is not a college designation, but a designation for the entire university,” said Glen Dietrich, chair of the Information Assurance Department in UTSA’s College of Business. “It takes into account faculty, programs, research and funding from the College of Business, the College of Engineering, the College of Sciences and our Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security.”

The CAE and CAE-R programs are jointly sponsored by the NSA and DHS to reduce vulernabipity in the U.S. information infrastructure by promoting higher education and research in information assurance and by supporting a growing number of professionals with information assurance expertise. Specifically, the CAE-R program in information assurance aims to increase the understanding of robust technologies, policies and practices that will enable the U.S. to effectively prevent or respond to a catastrophic cyber event.

UTSA, an emerging research institution with a strong focus in security, first applied for CAE designation in 2001. It received that designation in 2002, making it the only CAE-designated university in Texas. Since then, six other universities and colleges in Texas have joined suit, earning their CAE designations, and one other, UT Dallas, has received the prestigious CAE-R designation.

Considerations for the CAE-R designation include:

• a university’s research, faculty and academic programs in information assurance and security
• its Carnegie Foundation classification
• its peer-reviewed publishing rate in security
• the overall number of graduate students it produces in security
• its level of funding for security programs

(by: Christi Fish)

UTSA Earns Accolades from Magazine

The University of Texas at San Antonio has been recognized as one of the national leaders in educating and graduating Hispanic students by Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education magazine.

According to the May issue of the magazine, the university (UTSA) ranked fourth in the nation in the number of undergraduate degrees and twelfth nationally in the number of master’s degrees award to Hispanic students.

The magazine looked at the 2007-08 school year of the top 100 predominantly Hispanic-serving colleges and universities in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

In a prepared statement, UTSA President Ricardo Romo said the recognition demonstrates the university’s vision of providing access to “educational excellence.”

“To have nine of our programs ranked in the Top 10 among the nation’s leading Hispanic Serving Institutions shows UTSA continues on the right path to building the next great Texas university,” Romo said.

UTSA is one of 200 Hispanic Serving Institutions in the U.S. It is one of the fastest-growing higher education institutions in Texas and the second largest of nine academic universities and six health institutions in the UT System.

UTSA serves more than 28,400 students through 64 bachelor’s, 47 master’s and 21 doctoral degree programs.

(via: San Antonio Business Journal)

Mechanical Engineering Students Win Awards at Regional Conference

At the AIAA Southwestern Regional Student Conference held April 17th and 18th at UTSA, Carlos Acosta and Juan Ocampo won first place in the Team category for their paper, High Performance Computing Implementation in a Risk Assessment Problem. The students received a $500 prize and travel expenses for one author to present the work at the International Aerospace Sciences meeting in Orlando, Florida. Another UTSA Engineering student, Andy Voorhees, won third place in the Masters category for his paper, Complex Variable Methods for Fatigue Sensitivity Analysis.

Ruyan Guo Elected SPIE Fellow

SPIE will honor 59 new Fellow of the Society this year. Fellows are members of distinction who have made significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imaging. They are honored for their technical achievement, for their service to the general optics community, and to SPIE in particular. More than 600 SPIE members have become Fellows since the Society’s inception in 1955.

“The annual recognition of Fellows provides an opportunity for us to acknowledge outstanding members for their service to the general optics community,” says Maria Yzuel, SPIE President.

Ruyan Guo, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is being recognized for achievements in advanced optical materials.

Guo has a distinguished career in academics and is a recognized leader in electronic and optical materials research. She is known for her research on ferroelectric, piezoelectric, and nonlinear optical materials.

She has made significant contributions on the synthesis, characterization, and growth of single crystals. This includes work on crystal chemistry and structure-composition-property relationships, low loss and frequency agile microwave dielectrics and devices. She also excels in research on electro-optic, photorefractive, and nonlinear optical materials, optical fiber communications, and tunable wireless optical interactions.

Her research abilities and accomplishments are well established. For example, Guo’s contribution on the scientific basis of high-temperature superconducting substrate materials is well known. Another great contribution is on badly needed but rarely available piezoelectric and electro-optical crystals and on properties of new strategic materials.

Guo is an active member of several societies including the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), the Materials Research Society (MRS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and as a fellow of the American Ceramic Society and senior member of IEEE. With SPIE, Guo has contributed greatly such as organizer and co-organizer of the Photonic Fieber and Crystal Devices Conference since 2002. Additionally, she served on the editorial board of the APIE journal Optical Engineering from 2001-2007.

Guo joins Professor Sos Agaian as one of only two faculty members in the ECE department who are SPIE Fellows.