October 5, 2006

Ollis Receives R.J. Reynolds Award

Dr. Ollis

Dr. David F. Ollis, Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is the twenty-second recipient of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Extension. Dr. Louis Martin-Vega, dean of the College of Engineering, presented Ollis with the award in a ceremony held at 3 p.m. Wednesday, October 18, in Room 136 Monteith Engineering Research Center at North Carolina State University. The presentation was followed by Ollis’s lecture, “A Lab for All Reasons, A Lab for All Seasons: Collaborative Representations of Engineering within the University.”

The award was established in 1981 within the College of Engineering to honor a member of the engineering faculty who has demonstrated superiority in several areas of activity that relate to the University’s three-fold mission of teaching, research and extension. The annual award is supported by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company through the NC State Engineering Foundation Inc. to bring recognition to scientific and educational achievements in fields of engineering. The recipient is given a $25,000 prize distributed over five years.

An internationally known researcher in biotechnology and photocatalysis, Ollis is regarded as one of the most influential educators in his field. His excellence in the laboratory and in the classroom demonstrates that teaching and research are complementary endeavors, each enriching the quality of the other. During his 37 years in academia, Ollis has demonstrated that being a professor not only brings great personal satisfaction, it is great fun.

Ollis, who joined the College of Engineering faculty in 1984, has been the catalyst for many innovative engineering courses during his tenure at NC State. The Freshman Engineering Laboratory that he developed has provided engineering students with an introduction to “hands-on” involvement with engineering products and processes. The “take apart” and “experiment” laboratory gave students the opportunity to work in teams to learn about technical operation and engineering design of products and processes by operating and disassembling everyday items like photocopiers, CD players and video cameras and experimenting with water purification processes and optical fiber data transmission. This early laboratory opportunity has been extended to collaborative offerings with the NC State colleges of Humanities and Social Sciences, Design, and Education, and to a recent course on Technological Literacy, informally known as “How Stuff Works.” At the graduate level, first-year doctoral students in chemical engineering take his research proposition course and learn to master writing and communication in the research process. Reflecting his interest in French, he launched a study-abroad summer program in technical French.

A Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, he has received numerous awards recognizing his excellence in the classroom, including a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, NC State Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor Award, induction into NC State’s Academy of Outstanding Teachers, the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Sterling Olmsted Award from the Liberal Education Division of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). In 2004 he received the Director’s Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in recognition of his contributions to scholarship and education. The Director’s Award is the highest honor bestowed by NSF for excellence in both teaching and research.

Prior to joining NC State’s faculty, Ollis was a professor at the University of California at Davis from 1980 to 1984 and at Princeton University from 1969 to 1980. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre de Cintique Physico Chimique in France and a teaching and research assistant at Stanford University prior to joining Princeton. He also served as a process research engineer for Texaco, Inc. He has written more than 130 journal articles with his students, delivered more than 200 invited lectures in English and French, published four books, including a translation with Nick Serpone of Photochemical Technology from French to English. The textbook he co-authored with James Bailey, titled Biochemical Engineering Fundamentals, was the dominant text in its area for a decade.

Dr. Ollis received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1963, his master’s degree in chemical engineering from Northwestern University in 1964 and his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Stanford University in 1969.

— weston —

/ News Index / News Archives Index /