Frank Greene, a technology pioneer and 1999 OECE award recipient, died December 26 in Mountain View, California at the age of 71. He completed his master's degree at Purdue in 1962.

Professor Vladimir Shalaev has won the 2010 Willis E. Lamb Award for his pioneering studies of optical metamaterials and plasmonic nanostructures. The award honors Willis E. Lamb, Jr., famous laser scientist and 1955 winner of the Nobel Prize in physics.

Professor Mark Lundstrom is the 2009 recipient of the IEEE Aldert van der Ziel Award. The award recognizes "a distinguished career in education and research."

"Super Tetris" extends the popular Tetris game by adding pieces of 5, 6, or 7 squares. Groups of students pass qualification, group elimination, semifinals, and the final match. They learn how to create graphical user interfaces, use TCP sockets to communicate, and develop strategies to win.

Professor David Ebert has been appointed the Silicon Valley Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He performs research in novel visualization techniques; visual analytics; volume rendering; information visualization; perceptually based visualization; illustrative visualization; mobile graphics and visualization; and procedural abstraction of complex, massive data.

Professors Joerg Appenzeller, Anand Raghunathan, Timothy Sands, and Vladimir Shalaev have been elevated to IEEE Fellows effective January 1, 2010.

The IEEE Board of Directors has appointed Professor Lee to the 2010 Fellow Committee. The term is from January 1 - December 31, 2010.

The ECE Ambassador program was launched last fall to provide a core group of students who could interact with prospective students, families, alumni, and industry visitors.

The new center, called Visual Analytics for Command, Control and Interoperability Environments, or VACCINE, is funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and headed by ECE Professor David Ebert

Professors Charles Bouman, James Cooper, Saeed Mohammadi, and Kaushik Roy were issued patents during the 2008-09 fiscal year.