Student Achievements:

• Graduate students Brandon Moore and Eiki Martinson under the guidance of their advisor Dr. Daniel Raviv and the help of their sponsor, inventor Michael Levine have created a process that depends on recycling waste energy to distill water at a near vacuum and at room temperature. The students entered their project in the 2006 Collegiate Inventors Competition®, a program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation, and were among the top seven finalists in the United States/Canada competition. The FAU team and Levine are working with power and water agencies to scale up the project to 1 million gallons of fresh water per day.

• Senior Electrical Engineering students Camilo Cruz and Kyle Millay, advised by Drs. Henry Helmken, Hari Kalva, and Ravi Shankar, entered the 2006 NATCAR Robotics Competition. This is a competition held at UC Davis, Sacramento, CA and is sponsored by National Semiconductor. The objective is to design and build a line follower robot based on visual recognition techniques. The team came in fourth out of twenty teams with only a difference of a fraction of a second to beat third place.

• Graduate student Max Saelzer, advised by Dr. Roger Messenger, Emeritus Professor, invented an Extended Range Solar-Powered Electric Vehicle. A U.S. patent has been filed by FAU for the invention which optimizes the capture of solar energy using an array of automatically adjusting high-efficiency photovoltaic (PV) cells that can significantly extend the range of an electric vehicle.

Faculty Awards/Honors:

• Dr. Salvatore D. Morgera, Professional Engineer and Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

• Dr. Valentine Aalo, FAU Researcher of the Year Award.

• Dr. William Glenn, Fellow of the International Society for Optical Engineering.

• Dr. Perambur S. Neelakanta, Chartered Engineer (UK); Fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers (UK); Tau Beta Pi Eminent Scholar; and FAU Teaching Excellence and Innovation Award.

• Dr. Daniel Raviv, FAU Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award.

• Dr. William Rhodes, Fellow of the International Society for Optical Engineering and Fellow of the Optical Society of America.

• Dr. Zvi Roth, FAU Teaching Excellence and Innovation Award.

• Dr. Vichate Ungvichian, Professional Engineer; Alumni of the Year Award, Khon-Kaen University, bestowed by the Royal Princess of Thailand.

• Dr. Xin Wang, Auburn University Vodafone US-Foundation Fellowship.

• Dr. Hanqi Zhuang, FAU Teaching Excellence and Innovation Awards.