Page 49 - January 2009

Purnima Ratilal (c)
Purnima Ratilal receives President’s Early Career Award
Purnima Ratilal, Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University, has been named one of the sixty-seven recipients of the 2007 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the United States highest honor for professionals at the outset of their inde- pendent scientific research careers. The awards ceremony took place on 19 December 2008 at the White House, presided over by John H. Marburger III, Science Advisor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers honors the most promising researchers in the U.S. within their fields. Nine federal departments and agencies annually nominate scientists and engineers whose work shows exceptional promise for leadership at the frontiers of scientific knowledge. Recipients receive up to five years of funding to further their research in support of critical government mis- sions. Purnima Ratilal, was chosen after being nominated by the U.S. Navy for her work on acoustics and remote sensing. She will receive $200,000 a year for five years.
Purnima Ratilal received a B.Sc.(Hons.) in Physics from the National
through a waveguide, and to the acoustic remote sensing of marine life.” She is a member of the ASA Technical Committee on Underwater Acoustics and was also one of the nine young investigators selected to present Young Investigator Keynote addresses at the 75th Anniversary Celebration of the
Acoustical Society of America in 2004.
Portland State University engineering student awarded a graduate traineeship
Jorge Quijano, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) in the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science at Portland State University (PSU), has been awarded a Graduate Traineeship Award by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The award is competitively given to stu- dents who “have demonstrated a spe- cial aptitude and desire for advanced training in ocean acoustics.” Quijano’s award will provide financial support for up to three years of his Ph.D. stud- ies, including stipend, tuition, and trav- el expenses.
Jorge Quijano joined PSU in 2004 as a Fulbright scholar to pursue a mas- ters degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. In 2005 he joined the Northwest Electromagnetics and Acoustics Research Laboratory and in 2006, Quijano was invited to partici- pate in the Navy sponsored Shallow Water 2006 Experiment as part of the
University of Singapore, 1994 and a Ph.D. in Ocean Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 2002. She was a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Department of Ocean Engineering (2002-2004) and a Research Engineer at DSO National Laboratories, Singapore (1994-1998).
Dr. Ratilal has also won the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 2007 and the Office of Naval Research Postdoctoral Award in Ocean Acoustics from 2002 to 2004. She was awarded the R. Bruce Lindsay Award of the Acoustical Society of America in 2006 “for contributions to the theory of wave propagation and scattering
Jorge Quijano
48 Acoustics Today, January 2009