University honors three faculty for teaching, scholarship

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Avraham Benatar
Avraham Benatar

Three Buckeye engineering faculty were honored by The Ohio State University this spring for distinguished teaching and scholarship.

Materials Science and Engineering Associate Professor Avraham Benatar is passionate about what he teaches, and that comes through whether he is teaching in class or online as the coordinator of the Welding Engineering Distance Education Master of Science program. Benatar received a 2015 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching in honor of his superior teaching.

Although he teaches what is described as challenging material, students seem to flock to, not run from, Benatar’s welding engineering courses. He exhibits patience with his students, especially distance learners who are working professionals, accommodating their specific needs and answering any and all questions. He also fosters an engaging classroom of student discussion and ideas, both in the class and after hours on the Carmen message boards. When students finish one of Benatar’s courses, they feel engaged with what they’ve learned because of how he relates the material to real-world engineering situations. 

“The man is a truly brilliant educator who is genuinely interested in the success of his students,” a student nominator wrote. “Knowing that I’ll have the satisfaction of receiving a world-class education has motivated me to continuously seek out his courses.”

Dhabaleswar K. (DK) Panda
Dhabaleswar K. (DK) Panda

Recipients of the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching receive a $3,000 cash award, a $1,200 salary increase and are inducted into the university's Academy of Teaching, which provides leadership for the improvement of teaching at Ohio State.

A world leader in research on high-performance and scalable communication in parallel and high-end computing systems, Computer Science and Engineering Professor Dhabaleswar K. (DK) Panda received a 2015 University Distinguished Scholar Award. One of his most significant contributions is the design of a scalable and high-performance communication library for the popular Message Passing Interface (MPI) programming model for modern supercomputers using InfiniBand networking technology. The majority of supercomputers in the world are currently powered by this software for running a diverse range of high-performance computing applications. Daily, these libraries help tens of thousands of users worldwide from many disciplines advance research and develop products in their respective fields. Panda has extended his research into the emerging areas of big data and cloud computing. He has designed high-performance, scalable designs for Hadoop framework, a common middleware being used for big data analytics, which are available to the public. 

A colleague wrote, “DK Panda is an accomplished computer scientist, with noted achievements in the field of scientific computing and the development of techniques for the world’s most technologically advanced supercomputers.” 

Steven Ringel
Steven Ringel

2015 University Distinguished Scholar Award recipient Steven Ringel is one of the world’s preeminent scientists in the field of semiconductor materials. He is best known for his transformational contributions to the development of advanced solar photovoltaics and to the area of wide-bandgap semiconductors, the basic materials enabling the revolution of solid state lighting, wireless communications and power electronics. The professor and Neal A. Smith Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering is internationally renowned for his leadership in the development of novel characterization methods that have unraveled the mysteries of how atomic defects in semiconductor crystals dictate their properties and operation. His methodologies are recognized for leading to the development of high-performance operation devices, such as those now used in solid state lighting. He is distinguished as a world leader in the development of the so-called III-V/Si photovoltaics, a transformative approach key to the advancement of truly cost-effective, high-efficiency solar energy panels. 

According to one colleague, “It is no exaggeration to say that Professor Ringel’s research and scholarship have led to new levels of scientific understanding and have had a game-changing effect on the fields of photovoltaics and semiconductor devices.”

Recipients of the University Distinguished Scholar Award receive a $20,000 research grant and a $3,000 honorarium to pursue further scholarly activity. 

Categories: AwardsFaculty