Professor Randy Beard was presented with the College Excellence in Scholarship Award which recognizes leadership in the conceiving and operation of research programs that benefit students, faculty, society, and the institution. Dr. Beard is the co-founder of the BYU Magicc Lab which conducts research in cooperative control and small unmanned air vehicles.

Lucas Kunz (MS 04) was recently recognized by IEEE as the first runner up for the 2008 New Face of Engineering, a prestigious recognition of junior engineers who are making a significant impact early in their career. Lukas is a senior multi-disciplined engineer in the RF Signal Processing Department at Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, Arizona, and focuses on algorithm development for air-to-ground radar applications. He has been involved in conceptual design, development, and demonstration of advanced sensor technologies to help protect American troops in battlefield environments.More

As Engineering Week activities drew to a close, Dr. David Comer was presented the Outstanding ECEn Teacher Award for the 2007-2008 year. Dr. Comer was selected for the award by a vote of students in the Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology. Dr. Comer has been with Brigham Young University since 1981.

Kevin Priddy (BS '82) recently received the prestigious Senior Leadership Award for 2007 from the Sensors Directorate, Air Force Research Labs. This award is presented annually "for significant contributions that exhibit outstanding qualities of leadership and management." The award was given to Dr. Priddy (MS AFIT '85, PhD AFIT, '92) for his role in the development of wide-area persistent surveillance systems which utilize commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components enabling very rapid transition from concept to fielded systems.

Christopher Chase (BS'87) was one of 5 recipients of the 2007 AT&T Honor for innovative and pioneering contributions to Virtual Private Network architecture and management. Chris, who works in Austin, TX, received his award at the AT&T Technology Awards Dinner at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ. The AT&T Fellows Honor "acknowledges those individuals in its technical community who have made continual, outstanding and unique contributions to AT&T and the world through their technical and scientific achievements. More

Dr. Wei Ren, who received his PhD in 2004 was recently awarded an NSF CAREER award for his work on distributed multi-vehicle cooperative control. Dr. Ren is currently an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Utah State University. His work is expected to have significant impact on applications that include space-based interferometry, environment monitoring, border patrol, and search and rescue.

Michael Jensen was elevated to Fellow of the IEEE on 15 November 2007 "for contributions to antennas and propagation for mobile devices and multi-antenna wireless communications systems." Each year, the IEEE Fellow Committee recommends a select group of individuals for this prestigious honor. The 2008 Fellows Class consists of 295 members, which by policy is less than one-tenth of a percent of the active IEEE membership. Dr. Jensen joined the BYU faculty in 1994 and currently serves as the director for the BYU Wireless Communications Laboratory and as the Department Chair.