UCF Professors Honored For Contributions to Science, Engineering

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is honoring five University of Central Florida professors with specialties in everything from archaeology to engineering for their significant contributions to their perspective fields.

“These individuals have been elevated to this rank because of their efforts toward advancing science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished,” according to the AAAS.

UCF’s recipients are:

Arlen Frank Chase: For distinguished contributions to Maya archaeological data and theory, and to archaeological sciences, especially in remote sensing.

Louis C. Chow: For outstanding contributions in the areas of heat transfer in electro-optical, computing and power systems and two-phase spray cooling.

Suhada Jayasuriya: For outstanding contributions to the fields of robust control of nonlinear systems, quantitative feedback theory and multi-agent systems.

Zhihua Qu: For distinguished contributions to the field of nonlinear systems and control, particularly for control of networked systems with applications to robotics and energy systems.

Peter Adrian Hancock: For distinguished contributions to engineering psychology and human factors with respect to integrative theoretical modeling in the areas of attention, workload, stress and fatigue.

The UCF recipients said they were honored and humbled.

“It is gratifying to have your scientific contributions recognized by your peers,” said Chase, the chair of the anthropology department. “For Anthropology, this is one of the few truly national-level honors that is available to our discipline.”

Others said they were thrilled to see so many UCF faculty members honored.

“I am very proud and honored to be named a Fellow of AAAS and to join with colleagues from UCF who are sharing in this status,” said Hancock a Pegasus professor of psychology with appointments to the Institute for Simulation & Training, the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Industrial Engineering. “I think it is a mark of the growing prestige of our institution that we have a ‘class’ of this size.”

A total of 702 fellows were named including 28 from Florida institutions. New Fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin during the 2013 AAAS annual meeting in Boston on Feb. 16.

The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874. Currently, members can be considered for the rank of Fellow if nominated by the steering group of their respective sections, by three Fellows, or by the association’s chief executive officer. Each steering group then reviews the nominations of individuals within its respective section and forwards a final list to the AAAS Council.

The AAAS Council votes on the final aggregate list. The council is the policymaking body of the association, chaired by the president, and consisting of the members of the board of directors, the retiring section chairs, delegates from each electorate and each regional division, and two delegates from the National Association of Academies of Science.