June 3, 2004

Rouskas, Sitar Garner Alcoa Foundation Engineering Research Awards

Dr. Sitar (center) receives his Alcoa award from Dr. Rajala and Dean Masnari (Photo: Jon Pishney)

The Alcoa Foundation Engineering Research Awards for 2004 were presented to Dr. Zlatko Sitar, professor of materials science and engineering, and Dr. George N. Rouskas, professor of computer science, at the spring faculty meeting for the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University. Sitar received the Alcoa Foundation Distinguished Engineering Research Award, made to a senior faculty member for research achievements over a period of at least five years at NC State. Rouskas was awarded the Alcoa Foundation Engineering Research Achievement Award, intended to recognize young faculty who have accomplished outstanding research achievements during the preceding three years.

Sitar is recognized as an international leader in the growth of wide bandgap bulk semiconductor crystals. His direction of the Office of Naval Research-sponsored WideBandgaps lab on Centennial Campus has resulted in highly innovative and productive research. As part of his research, Sitar has developed processes and equipment for growing and characterizing bulk nitride crystals, created methods for growing nearly epitaxial diamond on silicon substrates, and established a scientific basis for understanding field emission from wide bandgap materials and carbon nanostructures. He has authored more than 60 publications in the past five years alone and is associate editor of Diamond and Related Materials, New Diamond and Frontier Carbon Technology, as well as an organizer of the European Diamond conference since 1998. He received the Materials Research Society Best Paper Award in 1997. A 1990 graduate of NC State's doctoral program, Sitar joined the College of Engineering faculty in 1995.

	Dr. Rouskas

Rouskas is one of the most highly respected young researchers in the field of optical networks. He won the Alumni Outstanding Research Award in 2003, received an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (Career) Award in 1997 and won a Best Paper Award at the SPIE Conference on All-Optical Networking in 1998. He is best known for his work with the Jumpstart project on optical burst switching technology and the Helios project on multi-wavelength optical access networks. He serves as editor for IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Computer Networks and Optical Networks and is technical committee co-chair for Networking 2004 in Athens, Greece. Rouskas is a member of ACM and a senior member of IEEE. In the past three years, he has published 30 peer-reviewed journal papers, 28 peer-reviewed conference papers and five book chapters. He received his doctorate from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1994 and joined the faculty at NC State in 1995.

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