Fawwaz Ulaby Since joining the Universityof Michigan faculty in 1984, Professor Ulaby has directed numerousinterdisciplinary projects aimed at the development of high-resolutionsatellite radar sensors for mapping Earth's terrestrial environment. He alsoserved as the founding director of the NASA-funded Center for Space TerahertzTechnology, whose research was aimed at the development of microelectronicdevices and circuits that operate at wavelengths between the infrared and themicrowave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. He then served a seven-yearterm as the University of Michigan's vice president for research from1999-2005. Over his academic career, he has published 10 books and supervisedmore than 100 graduate students. Professor Ulaby is a memberof the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the American Associationfor the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Institute of Electrical andElectronic Engineers (IEEE), and serves on several international scientificboards and commissions. In recognition for his outstanding teaching anddistinguished scholarship, he has been the recipient of numerous honors andawards from universities, government agencies, and scientific organizations.Among them are the NASA Achievement Award (1990), the IEEE Millennium Medal(2000), the 2002 William Pecora Award, a joint recognition by NASA and theDepartment of the Interior, and the Distinguished FEA Alumni Award from theAmerican University of Beirut (2006). In 2006, he was selected by the studentsin the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science asProfessor of the Year, and shortly thereafter, he was awarded theThomas Edison Medal, the oldest medal in the field of electrical and computerengineering in the United States. Umberto Ravaioli Professor Ravaioli attendedthe University of Bologna, Italy, where he obtained degrees in ElectronicsEngineering and Physics. He conducted his dissertation work on fiber optics andmicrowaves at the laboratories of the Marconi Foundation in Villa Griffone, thesummer estate where Guglielmo Marconi performed his first radio experiments.After developing interests in high speed semiconductor devices and large scalecomputation, he pursued a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Arizona StateUniversity, where he developed Monte Carlo particle simulations for the highelectron mobility transistor. He joined the Department ofElectrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign in 1986. He was a co-founder of the National Center forComputational Electronics, which promoted for over a decade the development oflarge scale device simulation by leveraging resources at nationalsupercomputing centers. His research group has developed Monte Carlo andquantum simulators for a wide range of semiconductor device applications,expanding recent activities to charge transport in biological systems, coupledelectro-thermal simulation, and nanoelectronics. He is now the leader of theComputational Multiscale Nanosystems group at the Beckman Institute of theUniversity of Illinois and is also serving as Senior Assistant Dean forUndergraduate Programs in the College of Engineering. Professor Ravaioli is aFellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and aFellow of the Institute of Physics (IOP). He received the First PlaceOutstanding Paper Award at the 2007 IEEE International Conference on ElectronInformation Technology for his recent work on electro-thermal simulation.
