This week, Dateline UC Davis has news of an association fellowship, a major award from an industry association, emeriti awards and more.

Dateline UC Davis welcomes news of faculty and staff awards, for publication in Laurels. Send information to dateline@ucdavis.edu.

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Association for Computing Machinery Fellow

The Association for Computing Machinery has named Kwan-Liu Ma, distinguished professor of computer science, to its 2023 cohort of fellows in honor of his leadership and contributions to large-scale data visualization. It is the organization’s most prestigious member grade.

Ma’s research has transformed the visualization of big data with high-performance computing, advanced computer graphics, human-computer interaction and machine learning. His work has allowed scientists to see their data with a higher level of clarity and has left an indelible mark on diverse fields of study, from cybersecurity, supercomputing and manufacturing to healthcare and social science.

Harlan D. Mills Award

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society has announced Premkumar Devanbu, a distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Computer Science, as the recipient of the 2024 Harlan D. Mills Award. 

Established in 1999 in honor of software engineering pioneer Harlan D. Mills, the award recognizes researchers and practitioners who have demonstrated continuous and impactful contributions to the software engineering field throughout their careers. Devanbu will receive the award at the International Conference on Software Engineering, which will be held this year in April in Lisbon, Portugal. 

Devanbu uses large open-source code and meta-data to improve software tools and processes. Perhaps most notably, in 2012, Devanbu presented "On the Naturalness of Software," in which he and his colleagues explain the discovery that due to its repetitive and predictable nature, most software coding can be analyzed by using statistical models common in natural language processing.

—  Jessica Heath

ASU Morrison Prize

Karrigan Börk, acting professor of law, has won the Morrison Prize from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University for his article “Water Right Exactions,” published in 2023 in the Harvard Environmental Law Review. The honor is presented “to the most influential environmental sustainability-focused law journal article published in North America in the previous year.”

3 National Endowment for the Humanities grants

A science historian studying the complex history of sociogenomics, a historian revealing the lives of Chilean children during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, and a researcher chronicling the performances of contemporary Black women poets are among this year’s UC Davis recipients of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Emily Merchant, associate professor of science and technology studies; Marian Schlotterbeck, associate professor of history; and Marit MacArthur, University Writing Program continuing lecturer and performance studies faculty affiliate, received grants between $30,000 and $60,000 for their projects.

The grants are part of an overall funding initiative of $33.8 million that went to 260 humanities projects across the country. 

 — Greg Watry

Distinguished Emeriti Award

This year’s recipients of the Distinguished Emeriti Award from the UC Davis Emeriti Association are Ralph Algazi, distinguished professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer science, and George Tchobanoglous, distinguished professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering.