The school of engineering honored three junior faculty members with the E. Lawrence Keyes, Jr. / Emerson Electric Co. Faculty Advancement Award on May 26. The award recognizes young faculty members who have established vibrant teaching and research programs in their first years.

Kelly Caylor, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, studies hydrology, conducting field work in Kenya and laboratory research at Princeton. His work is revealing important interactions between plants, the water cycle and human land use practices – with an aim of creating more sustainable farming and land management practices in semi-arid regions of the world. He also has developed a course he is teaching in Kenya as well as other special topics courses.

Michael Freedman, assistant professor of computer science, focuses on distributed and network systems. He has translated his broad understanding of this field into creating systems that are both groundbreaking and practical, including the first successful, completely decentralized content distribution network, which provides a democratic means of distributing content on the Internet. He has established a strong research group with five graduate students and a National Science Foundation grant.

Celeste Nelson, assistant professor of chemical engineering, has earned substantial recognition for her contributions to the field of tissue engineering. She investigates the cellular mechanisms that determine the architecture of tissues and organs. She also has been a popular choice for graduate advising and has jumped into undergraduate teaching, earning strong evaluations from students.