VOLUME 12, NO. 3     MAY 1999

President, provost receive professional honors

resident Edward Alton Parrish was recently honored with two important awards from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Parrish received the 1998 Richard E. Merwin Award for Distinguished Service from the IEEE Computer Society for continuing leadership of the society and the institute, particularly in the areas of education and publications. The Computer Society's highest-level service award consists of a bronze medal and an honorarium.

He will receive the IEEE Technical Activities Board's 1999 Richard M. Emberson Award during the honors ceremony at Whitehall Palace in London. The Emberson award is presented for distinguished service to the development, viability, advancement and pursuit of the technical objectives of the IEEE. The prize is a bronze medal, certificate, honorarium and travel expenses to the presentation.

Parrish is a candidate for the presidency of the IEEE, which has a membership of 274,000 engineers, scientists and students in electrical engineering, electronics and allied fields. The election will be held in the fall.

he Transportation Research Board (TRB) recently presented John F. Carney III, provost and vice president for academic affairs, with its K.V. Woods Award for the outstanding paper in the field of design and construction of transportation facilities published by TRB in 1998. Carney presented his paper, "Development of a 100-km/h Reusable High-Molecular Weight/High-Density Polyethylene Truck-Mounted Attenuator," at TRB's 1998 annual meeting in Washington, D.C., attended by more than 8,000 participants from around the world. Co-authors are Subhasish Chatterjee, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University, and Richard B. Albin of the Washington State Department of Transportation.

The field of impact mechanics has been Carney's major research interest for the last 25 years. During this period he has received grants and contracts from such agencies as the National Science Foundation, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Federal Highway Administration, and British Railways Board to develop and implement roadside impact-attenuation devices (crash cushions) in the United States and overseas.

His work with Great Britain's railroad research community has led to new concepts for improving the crashworthiness of trains.

Carney's current research activities center on developing reusable, maintenance-free impact-attenuation devices for transportation safety applications. (See Building a Forgiving Highway, WPI Journal, Spring 1997.)