Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM

Faculty Excellence Awards Fund Upgrades to Curriculum

Monday, August 18, 2014, By Matt Wheeler
Share

As part of the continuous improvement of the College of Engineering and Computer Science’s educational experience, Amit Agrawal, the John E. and Patricia Breyer Professor in Electrical Engineering, and Professor Dacheng Ren will receive this year’s Faculty Excellence Awards. The awards provide summer funding for faculty to develop innovative new educational student experiences.

Amit Agrawal, left, and Dacheng Ren

Amit Agrawal, left, and Dacheng Ren

Agrawal’s award funds the creation of an optics teaching laboratory with state-of-the-art equipment for hands-on research experiments and demonstrations in optics, nanoscience and nanofabrication. It will be used in graduate optics courses and in the freshman gateway course, “Introduction to Engineering and Computer Science.” In this cutting-edge facility, students will be trained on the fundamentals of these technologies and prepare them for careers in contemporary optics and nanophotonics research.

Ren’s award supports work to integrate the new Syracuse University Flow Cytometry and Cell Sorting Core Facility into the biomedical and chemical engineering curriculum. In the Biological Principles for Engineers course, students will conduct laboratory exercises using a cell sorter and flow cytometer, providing them with first-hand experience in molecular cloning, DNA isolation and antibiotic resistance. Additionally, Ren will promote outreach activities that give K-12 students and other key groups access to the advanced facility.

The results of their work will be presented at the Annual Conference of the American Society of Engineering Education.

The Faculty Excellence Awards are made possible by the generosity of chemical engineering alumnus and department advisory board member Brian Beals ’64 and his wife, Emily.

  • Author

Matt Wheeler

  • Recent
  • Jianshun ‘Jensen’ Zhang Named Interim Department Chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
    Wednesday, July 16, 2025, By Emma Ertinger
  • Star Scholar: Julia Fancher Earns Second Astronaut Scholarship for Stellar Research
    Wednesday, July 16, 2025, By Kelly Homan Rodoski
  • Traugott Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Bing Dong to Present at Prestigious AI Conference
    Wednesday, July 16, 2025, By Emma Ertinger
  • Maxwell’s Robert Rubinstein Honored With 2025 Wasserstrom Prize for Graduate Teaching
    Tuesday, July 15, 2025, By News Staff
  • National Ice Cream Day: We Tried Every Special at ’Cuse Scoops So You Don’t Have To
    Tuesday, July 15, 2025, By News Staff

More In STEM

Jianshun ‘Jensen’ Zhang Named Interim Department Chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

The College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) is excited to announce that Professor Jianshun “Jensen” Zhang has been appointed interim department chair of mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE), as of July 1, 2025. Zhang serves as executive director of…

Star Scholar: Julia Fancher Earns Second Astronaut Scholarship for Stellar Research

Julia Fancher, a rising senior majoring in physics and mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), a logic minor in A&S and a member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program, has been renewed as an Astronaut Scholar for…

Traugott Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Bing Dong to Present at Prestigious AI Conference

Professor Bing Dong was recently selected to lead a workshop on artificial intelligence (AI) at NeurIPS, the Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems. Founded in 1987, NeurIPS is one of the most prestigious annual conferences dedicated to machine learning and AI research. Dong’s workshop…

6 A&S Physicists Awarded Breakthrough Prize

Our universe is dominated by matter and contains hardly any antimatter, a notion which still perplexes top scientists researching at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, but now nearly everything—solid, liquid, gas or plasma—is…

Setting the Standard and Ensuring Justice

Everyone knows DNA plays a crucial role in solving crimes—but what happens when the evidence is of low quantity, degraded or comes from multiple individuals? One of the major challenges for forensic laboratories is interpreting this type of DNA data…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2025 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.