Jason Cummings *07 has received the 2008 Professional of the Year award from the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. The award is presented for overall leadership and technical achievement and will be presented this fall at the AISES National Conference in Anaheim, Calif.

Cummings is a member of the Lumbee and Coharie tribes of North Carolina, and has been active in the Native American community. He earned his PH.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton, where his thesis research focused on understanding how certain proteins destroy disease-causing microbes. He currently works for IBM as a semiconductor development engineer.