Two members of the UB community - who serve the university in very different roles - were honored Feb. 21 by the Erie-Niagara chapter of New York State Society of Professional Engineers for their contributions to the field of engineering.
The society recognized graduate student Nagarajan Kannan, president of the UB chapter of the National Society of Professional Engineers, as their "Young Engineer of the Year," an award the society presents to engineers younger than 35.
Provost Elizabeth Capaldi was presented with the society's "Citizen of the Year" award, which honors someone outside of the field of engineering who has helped to further the discipline.
Five months ago, Kannan started the student chapter of the NSPE at UB because he said the university was in need of something that "promotes a better way of working as a team for engineering students."
Kannan said students often do not think about working as a group, which is a crucial element in the field. Kannan said his club helps prepare graduating students for work by giving them teamwork experience.
"The main goal is to work as a team and be ethical in the way you work," he said. "I have also taken the club for some industry visits already to places like Niagara Falls Airbase."
Kannan holds both a bachelor's and a master's degree from Annamalai, one of India's highest ranked universities, where he was in the top three percent of his class.
One of the main factors that made him a candidate for the award, Kannan said, was the amount of work he has done around the globe in the field of engineering
"I have worked on projects all over the world," Kannan said. "Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and China are places I worked at before moving to the U.S. where I came to work for Contour Steel."
According to Capaldi, her contributions to the field have been subtle, mainly concentrating on attracting new faculty.
"It's been a priority of mine to hire more faculty," Capaldi said. "We're hiring more faculty for the university and more for the Center of Excellence. The strength of the university is the faculty. It helps the students because you have better education with better faculty."
Capaldi recruited Jeffery Skolnick, who was named director of the Center for Excellence in Bioinformatics in September 2002, an addition she believes put her into contention for the award.
"I think they were probably most recently impressed with Jeff Skolnick," said Capaldi. "The reason I think the engineers were enthralled with this, is that part of the mission of the Center of Excellence is to build the economy of Buffalo."
"There will be a lot of jobs and a lot of need for engineers and excitement around this center," she added. "It is a very big leap forward."
Capaldi said it was admirable on the behalf of the engineers to have created an award that recognizes people involved with engineering other than the actual engineers.
"I didn't even know I was being considered," Capaldi said. "It was out of the blue, they called me up and said I would be receiving the award at the banquet."
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
