Roundup: EECS faculty awards, prizes, fellowships, and other honors, 2018-2019

Constantinos Daskalakis (left) and Vivienne Sze were among the EECS faculty members honored in the past year. Daskalakis received the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery, while Sze received MIT’s Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award.

EECS Staff

EECS professors are frequently recognized for excellence in teaching, research, service, and other areas. Following is a list of awards, prizes, medals, fellowships, memberships, grants, and other honors received by EECS faculty, primarily from September 2018 through August 2019. For awards from September 2019 and beyond, see this more recent roundup.

Lecturer Zachary Abel received the Kolokotrones Education Award from EECS for revamping the department’s 6.042 class (Mathematics for Computer Science).

Mohammad Alizadeh, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received a Microsoft Faculty Research Fellowship.

Dimitri Antoniadis, Ray and Maria Stata Professor of Electrical Engineering Emeritus, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Regina Barzilay, Delta Electronics Researcher/Professor, was named among the “Top 100 AI Leaders in Drug Discovery and Advanced Healthcare” by Deep Knowledge Analytics.

Lecturer Ana Bell received the Louis D. Smullin (’39) Award for Excellence in Teaching from EECS.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, 3COM Founders Professor of Engineering in the School of Engineering, was named Person of the Year by the Financial Times.

Dimitri Bertsekas, the Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor of Engineering, and John Tsitsiklis, director of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) and Clarence J. Lebel Professor in Electrical Engineering, jointly received the John von Neumann Theory Prize from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

Duane Boning, Clarence J. LeBel Professor in Electrical Engineering, received the Jerome H. Saltzer Award for Excellence in Teaching from EECS.

Tamara Broderick, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received a Notable Paper Award from the International Conference on AI and Statistics (AISTATS) for “A Swiss Army Infinitesimal Jackknife.” She also received a Junior Bose Award for  outstanding educational contributions from the School of Engineering.

Michael Carbin, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received a Best Paper Award from the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) and a Distinguished Paper Award from the International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP). He also received a Google Faculty Award.

Vincent W.S. Chan, Joan and Irwin Jacobs Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, received a Best Paper Award in the Optical Networks and Systems (ONS) category at the IEEE International Conference on Communications, along with PhD student Anny Xijia Zheng.

Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the School of the Engineering and Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Adam Chlipala, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received the Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching from the School of Engineering and EECS.

Luca Daniel, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received a Thornton Family Faculty Research Innovation Fellowship from EECS.

Constantinos Daskalakis, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a Bodossaki Foundation Scientific Prize from the Bodossaki Foundation, and a Frank Quick Faculty Research Innovation Fellowship from EECS.

Jesús A. del Alamo, director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) and Donner Professor of Science, was named a fellow of the Materials Research Society.

Erik Demaine, professor of computer science and engineering, was selected as a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow and received a Teaching with Digital Technology Award from MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor.

Srini Devadas, Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering, received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Joel Emer, Professor of the Practice, received an honorable mention in the Test of Time Awards at the International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA) in recognition of the paper "Predictive Sequential Associated Cache," published in 1996. Emer also received three honrable mentions in IEEE Micro "Top Picks in Computer Architecture."

Dirk Englund, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received a Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grant from MIT.

Shafi Goldwasser, RSA Professor of EECS, received an honorary doctorate of science from the University of Oxford in recognition of "outstanding personal and professional achievements throughout the course of a distinguished academic career in the field of cryptography and theoretical computer science. She also received an honorary Doctor of Mathematics degree from the University of Waterloo.

Ruonan Han, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received a 2019 Outstanding Researcher Award from Intel.

Song Han, Robert J. Shillman (1974) Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was named to MIT Technology Review’s annual list of 35 Innovators Under 35.

Lecturer Adam Hartz received the Digital Innovation Award from EECS.

Thomas Heldt, W.M. Keck Career Development Associate Professor in Biological Engineering and Associate Professor of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering, was named Distinguished Lecturer by the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. He also received the Burgess (1952) and Elizabeth Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching from EECS.

Tommi Jaakkola, Thomas Siebel Professor in EECS and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), was named among the “Top 100 AI Leaders in Drug Discovery and Advanced Healthcare” by Deep Knowledge Analytics.

Patrick Jaillet, Dugald C. Jackson Professor of EECS and co-director of the MIT Operations Research Center (ORC), and colleagues received the Best Applications Paper Award at the 29th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS).

David R. Karger, professor of computer science and engineering, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dina Katabi, Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was named a Great Immigrant by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Manolis Kellis, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, was named among the “Top 100 AI Leaders in Drug Discovery and Advanced Healthcare” by Deep Knowledge Analytics. He also received the Gregor Mendel Medal for outstanding achievements in science and gave a Mendel Lecture in the Czech Republic.

Jing Kong, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received a Thornton Family Faculty Research Innovation Fellowship from EECS.

Barbara Liskov, Institute Professor Emerita, received an honorary Doctor of Mathematics degree from the University of Waterloo.

Luqiao Liu, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received a Young Investigator Research Program grant from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Nancy Lynch, NEC Professor of Software Science and Engineering, received the Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement from the IEEE Technical Committee on Distributed Processing, presented at the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems.

Muriel Médard, Cecil H. Green Professor of Electrical Engineering, was named as a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Robert T. Morris, professor of computer science and engineering, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Stefanie Mueller, X-Window Consortium Career Development Assistant Professor, received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award.

Alan V. Oppenheim, Ford Professor of Engineering, received the 2018-2019 Creative Advising Activity Award from MIT’s Office of the First Year.

MIT President L. Rafael Reif, professor of electrical engineering, was named as a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Ronitt Rubinfeld, professor of computer science and engineering, received the Seth J. Teller Award for Excellence, Inclusion, and Diversity from EECS.

Devavrat Shah, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received the 2019 Test of Time Paper Award from ACMSIGMETRICS, the ACM special interest group for the computer system performance-evaluation community. The award, which "recognizes an influential performance evaluation paper whose impact is still felt 10-12 years after its initial publication," was for a 2009 paper titled "Network adiabatic theorem: an efficient randomized protocol for contention resolution."

Max Shulaker, Emmanuel E. Landsman (1958) Career Development Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, received the Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching from the School of Engineering and EECS.

Julian Shun, Douglas Ross (1954) Career Development Assistant Professor of Software Technology, received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award and the Distinguished Paper Award from the ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) Symposium on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI).

David Sontag, Hermann von Helmholtz Associate Professor of Medical Engineering, and Peter Szolovits, professor of computer science and engineering, jointly received the Burgess (1952) and Elizabeth Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching from EECS. Szolovits, also a professor of health sciences and technology, was also named among the “Top 100 AI Leaders in Drug Discovery and Advanced Healthcare” by Deep Knowledge Analytics.

Suvrit Sra, Edgerton Career Development Associate Professor, received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award.

Principal Lecturer Joseph Steinmeyer received the Outstanding Educator Award from EECS.

Vivienne Sze, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received the Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award from MIT.

John Tsitsiklis, Clarence J. Lebel Professor of Electrical Engineering and director of MIT's Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), received an honorary doctorate from Harokopia University in Greece in recognition of his contributions to computer science.

Caroline Uhler, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received a Simons Investigator Award in the Mathematical Modeling of Living Systems (MMLS) category from the Simons Foundation.

Joel Voldman, EECS Associate Department head and professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received the IEEE/ACM Best Advisor Award, presented annually by the EECS student group.

Jacob White, Cecil H. Green Professor in Electrical Engineering, received the Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching from MIT.

Alan S. Willsky, Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering (retired), received the IEEE’s 2019 Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal.

Updated 2/2/2020. Please send clarifications, updates, and information on new or pending faculty awards to eecs-awards@mit.edu. For a list of awards beginning in September 2019, please see this more recent roundup.