New Wu and Upton fellows welcomed to Princeton campus

The 2002 Wu and Upton fellows had a very stylish welcoming reception and dinner at Prospect House on Oct. 2. The gardens were still in brilliant bloom, and the air warm enough to enjoy a drink on the patio.

The Gordon Y.S. Wu Fellowship and the Francis Lothrop Upton Fellowships are given to graduate students in engineering. This year, Princeton welcomed 11 Wu fellows and one Upton fellow to campus.

Milda Darguzaite is a Francis Lothrop Upton Fellow.

Several Princeton administrators were in attendance. E. David Mendez, assistant dean for graduate affairs in the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) welcomed the guests and extended congratulations to the new fellows on behalf of the entire school.

SEAS Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Sankaran Sundaresan led the room in introducing themselves so the fellows had an opportunity to state their interests and meet some of the faculty.

Interim Dean James C. Sturm '79 welcomed the fellows into the research process at Princeton.

"To my fellow faculty members Princeton means scholarship," Professor Sturm said. "New discoveries, new inventions--we welcome you to be a part of that."

He also talked about one of the differences between graduate and undergraduate work and urged them to be more scholastically adventurous.

"You probably got to where you are by following the rules," he said. "But I urge you now to break the rules. We need independent thinkers here. Do things that aren't supposed to happen."

Lastly, he advised them to experience every opportunity Princeton has to offer and to not confine themselves to a lab. Dean Sturm made note of two recently married Princetonians, who met at a place where one might not necessarily be looking for a spouse.

They met at the 1997 Wu and Upton dinner (see related story on next page).

"So look around the room," he urged. "Don't be shy. You never know."

David Redman, associate dean for academic affairs at the Graduate School, said that the SEAS has constantly pushed graduate work to new levels of excellence and has brought about many of the best transformations in the Graduate School.

He urged the students, however, not to let their scholastic minds be contained to one side of campus.

"Look broadly at the curriculum to richen and deepen your education," Dean Redman said. "You are all going to do great things."

Dean Sundaresan distributed certificates, and Dean Mendez closed the evening with good wishes for all.

Established in 1996, the Wu Fellowships were created in honor of Sir Gordon Y.S Wu, who in 1958 earned his bachelor of science in engineering from the SEAS. Today, Sir Gordon is one of the most influential engineers and businessmen in the world. He has led the development and construction of highways, railroads, and power generation stations throughout Asia.

The Upton Fellowships are named in memory of Francis Robbins Upton, the very first student to officially earn, by examination, a graduate degree from Princeton.

He received a master of science degree in 1877. Mr. Upton was a longtime associate of Thomas Edison. Since Edison was an intuitive genius with no formal education, he relied heavily upon Upton to interpret his revolutionary insights and translate them into mathematical equations.

The Upton Fellowships are made possible by a gift from the Lucy and Eleanor S. Upton charitable Foundation and matched by alumnus Gordon Y.S. Wu.

Photos by Frank Wojciechowski

Below, The Gordon Y.S. Wu Fellows for 2002 are, back row from left, Gregory Reeves, Aaron Patzer, Derek Paley, Gregory Nieberg, and Miroslav Dudik; front row from left, Camilla-Sophie Bres, Ellen Taylor, Elad Hazan, Daniel Dantas, and Aurelie Chloe Lozano. Semih Sezer is not pictured.

A Wu fellowship leads to a wedding

Fellows

No doubt, the 1997 Wu and Upton Dinner was a momentous occasion for all of the fellows, but perhaps most magical for Wu fellows Iris Hsu and David Brooks *01.

Iris Hsu and David Brooks

The pair met during the predinner reception, and discovered they were both in the Department of Electrical Engineering and had much else in common. David made a point of walking Iris home after dinner that night, and continued his pursuit of her the next day, when he tracked down her e-mail and asked her to a movie.

The rest, as they say, is history. Iris and David were wed on Aug. 24, 2002, in a small ceremony at the Delaware home of David's parents.

Iris's adviser Professor James Sturm '79 was on the guest list. Unfortunately, despite a valiant effort, Professor Sturm got stuck in traffic en route from a vacation in North Carolina and didn't make it to the wedding.

The newlyweds have discussed the question of whether they'd ever have met if not for the Wu Fellowship they'd each received. Each of them applied for graduate study at the same universities, so it's possible that they might have met somewhere else. Ultimately, it was Princeton's superior fellowship program that brought them to campus, and ultimately, to the dinner that fateful night.

David recently got an assistant professor position in the computer science department at Harvard University. Iris spends some of her time in Cambridge, Mass., with her husband, and some time sleeping on a friend's couch on the days she must be in Princeton to finish her own graduate work.

A grander wedding banquet was held on Jan. 4, in Taiwan, for Iris' family.

"It will be more traditional, in the Chinese way," Iris said. "So we'll have to go to each table and drink with everybody."

Iris has already begun making flash cards for her husband and in-laws to train them in the local language.

"His mom is worried about getting lost," she said, "and his brother-in-law wants to know how to ask for a beer."

 

12 new fellows welcomed The Wu and Upton fellows for 2002, their departmental affiliation, and their undergraduate alma mater are: Wu Camilla-Sophie Bres EE McGill University Daniel Dantas CS Cornell University Miroslav Dudik CS Caltech Elad Hazan CS Tel Aviv University Aurelie Chloe Lozano EE Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Gregory Nieberg EE University of Pennsylvania Derek Paley MAE Yale University Aaron Patzer EE Duke University Gregory Reeves ChE University of Florida Semih Sezer ORFE Bogazici University Ellen Taylor MAE Johns Hopkins University Upton Milda Darguzaite ORFE Middlebury College

Three form winning team

Graduate student Li Shang, alumnus Robert Dick *02, and professor Niraj K. Jha received the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems held in November.

The team's paper is titled, "An economics-based power-aware protocol for computation distribution in mobile ad-hoc networks."

All are affiliated with the Department of Electrical Engineering. Dr. Dick is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Top jumper

In its December issue, Track and Field News ranked Tora Harris '02 as the leading high jumper in the United States. Harris, an NCAA champion, was ranked sixth in the world for the high jump. He earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton.

MAE is a department full of prize winners The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) presented a bounty of prizes and awards recently. * Lenny Cassady received a Crocco Teaching Prize in recognition of his outstanding performance in his duties as assistant-in-instruction for MAE 341: Space Flight with Professor Edgar Choueiri in fall 2001. * James Buchholz also received a Crocco Teaching Prize in recognition of his outstanding performance in his duties as assistant-in-instruction for MAE 222: Fluid Mechanics with Professor Pino Martin in spring 2002. * Andrew Davis and Danxu Du received Sayre Graduate Prizes in recognition of their outstanding performance in both research and course work during their first year of study. * Anne Staples received the Larisse Rosentweig Klein Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement in Graduate Research. This award is given by Josette Bellan *74 and Paul Bellan *76 in memory of Josette's twin sister Larisse, who received her Ph.D. from this department. The award is to be given annually to a female MAE student with outstanding research effort. * Peter Pan received the Ray Grimm Memorial Prize in Computational Physics, which was presented in recognition of his innovative research in the field of computational physics, outstanding research achievements, academic merit, and creativity. This prize was established to honor Ray Grimm, a talented and popular Princeton scientist and teacher who taught computational MHD and supervised many graduate students.