Maryland Engineers Recognized with UMD Faculty Honors

Six A. James Clark School of Engineering faculty members are among the honorees of the University of Maryland’s 2024 Distinguished University Professor, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, and Professional Track Faculty Excellence awards. Of note, this year’s awardees include the Clark School’s first recipients of the Professional Track Faculty Excellence Award: Deborah Goldberg and Gregory Payne.

The Maryland engineers will be honored at the university’s convocation, held annually during the fall semester. Event information will be updated on the Faculty & Staff Convocation website.

Distinguished University Professor Award

Among the six UMD faculty selected as 2024 Distinguished University Professors—the highest appointment bestowed on a tenured faculty member—are three Clark School professors. The title is a recognition not just of excellence, but of impact and significant contributions to the nominee’s field, knowledge, profession, and/or practice.

John P. Fisher

Fischell Family Distinguished Professor and Department Chair
Fischell Department of Bioengineering

John P. Fisher is an MPower Professor, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, and Chair of the Fischell Department of Bioengineering. Having served UMD for more than 20 years, he first joined the Department of Chemical Engineering in 2003 and was a founding member of the bioengineering department in 2006. Fisher heads the Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials Lab, where he leads a robust research team in investigating biomaterials, stem cells, bioprinting, and bioreactors for the regeneration of lost tissues. Fisher has served in numerous leadership positions within prominent societies and organizations: Currently, he is a member of the Biomedical Engineering Society Board of Directors; chair of the Council of Chairs, a national assembly of bioengineering and biomedical engineering department chairs; and co-editor-in-chief of Tissue Engineering. He is also the former president of the Americas Chapter of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society. Fisher serves on the editorial boards of key biomedical engineering journals such as the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part A, Bioprinting, Biofabrication, and the Journal of Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine.

Min Wu

Christine Yurie Kim Eminent Professor in Information Technology
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Clark School Associate Dean for Graduate Programs

Min Wu holds appointments in UMD’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Institute for Systems Research, and the Maryland Robotics Center, as well as leads the UMD Media, Analytics, and Security Team (MAST). Her areas of research are information security and forensics, multimedia signal processing, and applications of data science and machine learning for health and the Internet of Things. Her UMD and Clark School Awards include the Outstanding Research Award for Senior Faculty, E. Robert Kent Outstanding Teaching Award for Junior Faculty, and George Corcoran Education Award. She is a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and has received the UMD Invention of the Year Award—twice. Wu’s other accolades include the Harriett B. Rigas Award from the IEEE Education Society, IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Meritorious Service Award, and Excellence in Research Award from the Washington Academy of Sciences. She was elected to serve as president of the IEEE Signal Processing Society for 2024–2025, the first woman of color to be elected to this leadership role.

Howard Milchberg

Professor
Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Physics

Howard Milchberg holds joint appointments with the Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Physics, is affiliated with the Institute for Research in Applied Physics, and is the director of the Laboratory for Intense-Matter Interactions. His research interests include plasma and high energy for density physics, advanced laser-driven particle accelerators, light sources, atomic physics, nonlinear optics, and structured light. Milchberg is the 2024 recipient of the Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science from the American Physical Society. His other awards include UMD’s Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award, the Clark School’s Senior Faculty Outstanding Research Award, American Physical Society’s John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research, and National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator. He also established the Irving and Renee Milchberg Endowed Lecture, an annual lecture program that aims to connect science, truth, the human condition, and a civil society.

With the appointments of Fisher, Wu, and Milchberg, Maryland Engineering’s total number of faculty who have received this honor is 24. View the full list of Clark School faculty members who have been recognized as Distinguished University Professors.

Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award

A Clark School faculty member is among the six UMD faculty selected as 2024 Distinguished Scholar-Teachers. This award honors senior tenured faculty members who combine outstanding scholarly accomplishment with demonstrated excellence in teaching. Distinguished Scholar-Teachers make a public presentation on a topic within their scholarly discipline; lecture information will be available online.

Gottlieb S. Oehrlein

Professor
Department of Materials Science & Engineering

Gottlieb S. Oehrlein works on non-equilibrium plasma-materials surface processing. His work has advanced the miniaturization of semiconductor circuits, including the first experimental demonstration of atomic layer etching of silicon dioxide. His research also includes atmospheric pressure plasma modifications of various materials, including catalysts to produce renewable fuels. Oehrlein holds over 300 publications with more than 17,000 citations; he is a Fellow of the American Vacuum Society, International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and International Plasma Chemistry Society. His awards include the Electrochemical Society’s Electronics Division Award, Japan’s Dry Process Symposium Nishizawa Award, American Vacuum Society’s Thornton Award, and the 2023 Plasma Materials Hall of Fame Award from Japan’s Society for the Promotion of Science. He received a Vordiplom in physics from Würzburg University (1976), and a Ph.D. in physics from the State University of New York, Albany (1981), where he won the Chancellor’s Distinguished Dissertation Award.

With the appointment of Oehrlein, Maryland Engineering’s total number of Distinguished Scholar-Teachers is 33. View the full list of Clark School faculty members who have received the Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award.

Professional Track Faculty Excellence Award

Two Maryland Engineering faculty are among the eight honored with UMD’s 2024 Professional Track Faculty Excellence Awards, which recognize consistently excellent contributions in—and a demonstrated commitment to—student success, innovative academic practices, and impactful scholarly work. Goldberg and Payne are the Clark School’s first recipients of the Professional Track Faculty Excellence Award.

Deborah Goldberg

Senior Lecturer
Fischell Department of Bioengineering

An instructor at UMD for the past eight years, Deborah Goldberg ’06, Ph.D. ’10 joined the Fischell Department of Bioengineering (BIOE) in Fall 2023. In her first semester with BIOE, she earned the Instructional Impact Award, nominated by students in both of her courses (BIOE331: Biofluids, and BIOE489T: Biopharmaceutical Process Development & Manufacturing). Goldberg is invested in improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in the engineering community and the field of education, and serves as an active member on the BIOE Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. Prior to her role in BIOE, Goldberg taught for seven years in the Clark School’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Between her time as a student and a lecturer, Goldberg worked as a scientist in Formulation Sciences at MedImmune (now AstraZeneca) from 2010 to 2016.

Gregory Payne

Research Professor
Institute for Bioscience & Biotechnology Research
Fischell Institute Fellow
Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices

Gregory Payne is a long-time member of the University System of Maryland (USM). In 1986, he was recruited into the fledgling College of Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and USM’s Biotechnology Institute; he then transitioned to the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research and the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. His group performs interdisciplinary and highly collaborative research at the intersection of chemistry, biology, materials science, and information technology. Payne was awarded USM’s Board of Regents Faculty Award for Collaboration in 2011. He was principal investigator on a prestigious Materials Genome Initiative Project awarded by the National Science Foundation in 2014; and his group’s efforts to develop an objective measure of oxidative stress was ranked in the top 10 of Medtech Innovator’s Pediatric Competition for 2020.

Trend of excellence: Read about the Clark School’s 2023 convocation honorees.

Published July 11, 2024