Five researchers earn prestigious citations from academic groups

Chirik

Flanagan

Gross

McQuade

Parks

By Susan Lang

Five Cornell researchers have been honored by prestigious United States and international academic groups. They are Leonard Gross, professor of mathematics; Eanna Flanagan, associate professor of physics; D. Tyler McQuade and Paul Chirik, both assistant professors of chemistry and chemical biology; and Thomas W. Parks, professor of electrical engineering.

Gross is the only Cornellian, and one of 178 new fellows, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) this year. Flanagan is the recipient of this year's $10,000 Basilis C. Xanthopoulos International Award in Gravitational Physics. McQuade is the recipient of a grant of $240,000, one of 20 Beckman Foundation Young Investigator national awards for 2004. Chirik is the recipient of a $75,000 Cottrell Scholar Award for 2004. Parks is the co-recipient of the 2004 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal.

Gross' area of research is functional analysis and constructive quantum field theory. It could be described, he said, as analysis over infinite dimensional spaces. He focuses on the naturally arising probability measure of the infinite dimensional space that links functional analytic questions to probability theory.

After receiving his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1958, Gross was an instructor at Yale until 1959 and a National Science Foundation (NSF) fellow from 1959 to 1960. He joined the Cornell faculty in 1960 and became a full professor in 1968. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and the Humboldt Foundation Senior Scientist Award. He served a three-year term on the board of the NSF Institute for Mathematics and its Applications at the University of Minnesota.

The AAAS was founded in 1780 by John Adams, George Washington and James Bowdoin. There now are 74 fellows of the academy among Cornell faculty on the Ithaca campus and at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

Flanagan was cited by the Xanthopoulos award committee for his "broad set of contributions to gravitational physics, ranging from data analysis for gravitational wave detectors to studies of quantum gravity and cosmology." The award was set up by the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas in memory of the late Xanthopoulos, a Greek theoretical physicist who was shot to death by a mad student in 1990 at the University of Crete. It is given triennially to a scientist under 40 years of age who has made outstanding theoretical contributions to gravitational physics.

Flanagan's research group works on the physics of strong gravitational fields, developing quantitative models of processes involving neutron stars, black holes and the early universe.

After receiving his B.Sc. (1987) and M.Sc. (1988) at the University College Dublin and his Ph.D. (1993) from the California Institute of Technology, Flanagan was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology for a year and an Enrico Fermi fellow at the University of Chicago for two years before he joined the Cornell physics faculty in 1994. He was named an associate professor in 2001.

McQuade's Beckman award will further his work in creating and studying functional materials using the tools of chemistry, biology and materials science. Specifically, he is seeking to create well-defined polymeric and molecular-based assemblies that mimic the complexity and function of biological materials, from enzymes to organs. His goal is to create new methods for the synthesis of complex polymers and functional materials designed to produce sensors and catalysts.

Awards from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation are made to nonprofit institutions to promote research in chemistry and the life sciences. The Young Investigators grants are intended to provide research support to the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of academic careers in the chemical and life sciences.

McQuade joined the Cornell faculty in 1998 after earning a Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He received a B.S. in biology and chemistry from the University of California at Irvine in 1993.

Chirik's Cottrell award will be applied to his research and classroom programs focusing on the application of transition metal chemistry to problems in chemical synthesis. He is interested in developing metal compounds that convert unreactive molecules, such as atmospheric nitrogen, into more value-added products such as ammonia, fuels and fine chemicals. He also is interested in developing new iron-based catalysts as inexpensive and environmentally friendly alternatives to more expensive and toxic heavy metals.

Chirik, who joined the Cornell faculty in 2001, earned his B.S. at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (1995) and his Ph.D. at Cal Tech in 2000. He won a NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program award in 2002 and the Herbert Newby McCoy Award in 2000.

Cottrell awards are offered by Research Corp., a Tucson-based foundation for the advancement of science. The awards are given to tenure-track assistant professors in astronomy, chemistry and physics to further their teaching and research.

The IEEE Kilby Medal was given to Parks "for fundamental contributions to digital filter design and interpolation, especially the Parks-McClellan algorithm." The award was established in1995 to recognize outstanding achievements in signal processing.

Parks earned his B.E.E. (1961), M.S. (1964) and Ph.D. (1967) at Cornell. He taught at Rice University from 1967 until 1986 when he joined Cornell's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is a fellow of the IEEE and a recipient of the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the Humboldt Foundation Senior Scientist Award and a Senior Fulbright fellowship. He has co-authored a number of books and papers on digital signal processing. His research interests are in signal theory and digital signal processing.