College of Engineering Faculty Research Excellence Award recipients announced

Wayne State University's College of Engineering is pleased to announce the recipients of the inaugural Faculty Research Excellence Awards: Eranda Nikolla, assistant professor of chemical and materials science, and Le Yi Wang, professor of electrical and computer engineering. The awards of $2,000 each will be presented at the upcoming Night of the Stars event.

Wang is a world-renowned expert on control theory and its applications, and has recently been elected to the rank of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) fellow for his contributions to system identification and the analysis of system complexity. He has published 39 papers in highly reputable journals and given 16 seminars at international conferences and universities in the last three years. Among his many distinguished recognitions, Wang serves as an international expert team member in the Academy of Mathematics and System Sciences, sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences; as a foreign principal expert on Smart Grids in Beijing Jiao Tong University; has served as associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control; and is currently the editor/associate editor for two international journals. In the last three years, Wang received five major grants totaling more than $2.7 million. Most recently, he was awarded nearly $500,000 on a new grant entitled "Networked Systems for Enhanced Adaptability: Frameworks Using Switching Diffusions, Stochastic Functional and Partial Differential Equations, and Quantum Identification and Control."

Nikolla is a rising star in the field of heterogeneous catalysis and has received the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award. In her short time at Wayne State, Nikolla has built the size of her research group to four Ph.D. students, two postdocs and seven undergraduate students; published nine high-impact journal articles; and generated more than $1.3 million in external funding from the NSF, including a CAREER award. She also has established national visibility for herself and her work through service as president of the Michigan Catalysis Society, symposium chair at American Catalysis Society's national meetings in 2013 and 2014, session chair at American Institute of Chemical Engineer's annual meetings, and as a frequent participant in NSF panel reviews. As one of the recommendation letters stated, "Eranda Nikolla is poised to have a transformational effect on the field of heterogeneous catalysis and is putting Wayne State University on the map in this field."

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Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution of higher education offering 380 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 28,000 students. For more information about engineering at Wayne State University, visit engineering.wayne.edu.