Watson College honors faculty, staff at Watson Awards
Binghamton University’s Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science recently announced the recipients of its annual 2020-21 Watson College Recognition Awards.
Nominations for the awards — which started in 2017 — are taken from department chairs, faculty and staff at Watson College, and a committee reviews the nomination dossiers. The awards are generally given during a spring meeting of all faculty and staff, but the COVID-19 pandemic meant that the winners were honored in a recent online gathering.
The Early Stage Distinguished Research Award is given to tenure-track faculty in the Watson College who are within the first 10 years of receiving their doctorate. This year’s winner is Assistant Professor Aravind Prakash from the Department of Computer Science.
Prakash joined the Watson College faculty in 2015 after receiving his PhD from Syracuse University. He conducts research in the areas of program analysis, exploit diagnosis, binary reverse engineering, memory forensics and software security. Prakash has published in several highly selective and prestigious venues, receiving a significant number of citations.
He has a distinguished research record with more than $2.36 million in external grants, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
The Distinguished Educator Award is given to tenured and tenure-track faculty, lecturers, visiting faculty and adjunct faculty who earn consistent praise from students, alumni and faculty peers as an effective instructor, share innovations about effective teaching and have a track record as a mentor for students.
Two faculty members received awards this year: lecturers Ammar Abdo from the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Kirill Zaychik from the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Abdo joined Watson in 2016 and has taught 12 courses for the department, developed a micro-credential course and guided two capstone design courses. His teaching performance is constantly rated as “very high,” and his online teaching skills serve as a resource for many of his colleagues.
Zaychik has been a lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering since 2013. Due to his energy and work ethic over the past eight years, he has become a key instructor in the mechanical engineering undergraduate program. In 2019, Zaychik took over the junior design course, and in 2020 he took over the senior capstone design course as well. For the last six years, he has been the faculty advisor for the Hyperloop Project.
The Outstanding Faculty Service Award is open to any faculty at Watson College with significant service contributions to their departments, the college, Binghamton University, their professions and their community at large. This year’s winner is Professor Hiroki Sayama in the Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering.
Since Sayama joined the college in 2006, he has served as the director of the systems science graduate program and has implemented successful initiatives to promote this program nationally and internationally, including collaborative initiatives with our partner institutions in India. He also served as co-chair of the search committee for the George Klir Professor in Systems Science — Watson’s first named professorship — who will join Watson in fall 2021.
Sayama has served on the University’s Public Health Advisory Group since early 2020, advising on various COVID-19 related issues. He also is the director of the Center for Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems (also known as CoCo), organizing seminars, providing seed funding to junior faculty and facilitating development of collaborative grant proposals.
The Outstanding Staff Service Award, open to all staff members at Watson College, recognizes significant service contributions to their departments, Watson College and/or Binghamton University. This year’s winner is Tara Brentari from the Department of Computer Science.
Brentari joined the Computer Science Department in 2018. As the only graduate administrative assistant, she has developed ways to streamline processing and communication with both applicants and the department’s graduate admissions committee. She is the department’s primary liaison with the Graduate School as well as the expert on the Slate application system, often offering internal training sessions.
In addition to her work in graduate admissions, Brentari is responsible for graduate program administration. She takes the time to hand-register each CS student for courses every semester. She tracks the funding of all graduate and undergraduate students, and she has developed processes for tracking students’ progress.