Accolades: Week of November 6, 2000

Faye Duchin, dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and professor of economics, made a keynote presentation, "Social Accounts for the Analysis of Social Systems," at the Workshop on Quantitative Modeling of Europe's Societal Expenditure, in Brussels, Sept. 25-26. Duchin serves as an adviser to the European Commission's Joint Research Center, the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (Seville), on their Futures Project, which sponsored this event. 10/30/00

Roger Grice, clinical assistant professor in the department of language, literature, and communication, was presented with an IEEE Third Millennium Medal by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for outstanding achievements and contributions. The medal was presented at the IPCC/SIGDOC 2000 conference co-sponsored by the IEEE Professional Communication Society and the ACM Special Interest Group on Documentation in Cambridge, Mass., in September. 10/30/00

Matthew Szolwinski, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, aeronautical engineering, and mechanics, was awarded the Marshall B. Peterson Award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) at the International Joint Tribology Conference 2000 in October. The award honors significant contribution to field of tribology by young researchers and was named in honor of late Marshall B. Peterson, adjunct professor of mechanical engineering at Rensselaer from 1975-95. Szolwinski will also be honored at the ASME International Meeting in Orlando in November.

Also at the International Joint Tribology Conference 2000, John Tichy, professor and chair of mechanical engineering, aeronautical engineering, and mechanics, and several colleagues from Georgia Tech were awarded the ASME 2000 Best Paper in Tribology Award for their paper, "Interfacial Fluid Mechanics and Pressure Prediction in Chemical Mechanical Polishing." 10/30/00

E. Bruce Watson, Institute Professor of Science and professor of earth and environmental sciences, has received a four-year, $371,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study accessory minerals in Earth's crust. Accessory minerals, such as zircon, are not abundant but often are found in the presence of such radioactive minerals as uranium and thorium, and thus have economic and technological significance. 10/30/00