The BME Department presented its annual service awards at its Awards Celebration on Monday, December 9, 2002. The awards recognize outstanding service to the department, Purdue biomedical community, and/or the biomedical engineering community at-large. Selection criteria include the exemplary nature of service undertaken based on written nominations by faculty and staff.

This year's Faculty Service Award was presented to Nicholas Peppas for his energetic efforts to develop, nurture and improve our graduate programs including the NSF-sponsored Integrative Graduate Education Research and Traning (IGERT) Program in Therapeutic and Diagnostic Devices at Purdue University. This unique and interdisciplinary training program continues to train outstanding engineers and scientists at the forefront of medical device design and development.

For the first time, two Staff Service Awards were presented. Kirk Foster received the first award for his ongoing support of the faculty, student and staff research efforts through his mechanical design abilities. Kirk's expertise in device design has proven time and again to be extremely valuable (especially when something breaks).

Bill Schoenlein received the second award, and is BME's first repeat recipient (having also received the award in 2000). The award truly reflects Bill's constant efforts to make sure things go smoothly in the department on all fronts, and honors his expertise and never-flagging willingness to help.