Awards and Recognition

Three Cornell Engineering faculty members are part of the 2025-26 Engaged Faculty Fellows cohort. The Faculty Fellows in Engaged Learning include Jonathan Jaramillo, lecturer, and Kate Reiter, assistant director of student project teams, Undergraduate Programs. This year’s Faculty Fellows in Engaged Scholarship include Lauren Stulgis, Swanson Director of Student Project Teams, Dean’s Office, Undergraduate Programs.

Fengqi You, the Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor in Energy Systems Engineering, had his paper on AI-driven rational design of promiscuous and selective plastic-binding peptides featured with art on the inside front cover of Chemical Science.

Lara A. Estroff, the Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Industrial Chemistry, has been named a 2026 Materials Research Society (MRS) Fellow, one of the most selective honors awarded by the society. Estroff is recognized for her influential contributions to bio-inspired materials synthesis, including advancing the understanding of biomineralization and crystal growth mechanisms, as well as for her impactful academic leadership within the materials community.

Huili Grace Xing, the William L. Quackenbush Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and of Materials Science and Engineering, is the recipient of the 2025 University Research Award in Technology from the Semiconductor Industry Association and Semiconductor Research Corporation.

Fengqi You, the Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor in Energy Systems Engineering, had his paper on a technological, economic, and ecological systems approach to sustainable agrivoltaics development featured with art on the front cover of ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

Lingxiao Shao, postdoctoral associate in Alex Kwan’s lab, received the Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award in Neuroscience from the Society of Neuroscience.

A Cornell research project, led by Eilyan Bitar, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, exploring how electric vehicles (EVs) can serve as a flexible, dispatchable network of mobile energy storage to strengthen and decarbonize the power grid is advancing with a $1.8 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund.

Iwijn De Vlaminck, associate professor, has received a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health. This prestigious and highly selective award will fund the De Vlaminck lab’s research on CD8+ T cell activation and development throughout early life and into adulthood.

Z. Jane Wang, professor, was recognized as the recipient of the American Physical Society’s 2025 Stanley Corrsin Award. Wang was selected “for original and innovative work on insect flight that provided fundamental insights into unsteady aerodynamics, flight efficiency, flight stability, and neural control, and for opening new dimensions of research in biological fluid dynamics.”

Jack Hare, assistant professor, has received the American Physical Society’s 2025 Thomas H. Stix Award for Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Plasma Physics Research. Hara was cited for “For the development and exploration of pulsed-power experimental platforms to investigate magnetic reconnection in novel regimes and, in particular, their use in the study of reconnection in the presence of strong radiative cooling.”