Penn State University Recognizes Five Faculty Members with Evan Pugh University Professorships

 Five Penn State professors have been named Evan Pugh University Professors, an elite and prestigious distinction conferred by the University on only 79 faculty members since the establishment of the designation in 1960.

The five professors newly bestowed with the University’s highest faculty honor, effective July 1, are:

• Réka Albert, distinguished professor of physics and biology, Eberly College of Science
• Suresh Canagarajah, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Applied Linguistics, English, and Asian Studies, College of the Liberal Arts
• Vijaykrishnan Narayanan, A. Robert Noll Chair Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, College of Engineering; distinguished professor of engineering and associate dean for innovation in the College of Engineering.
• Clive Randall, distinguished professor of materials science and engineering, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences
• S. Shyam Sundar, James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Studies, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications

The professorships are named for Penn State’s founding president, Evan Pugh, a renowned chemist and scholar who was at the helm of the University from 1859 to 1864.

“I am continually impressed by the extraordinary caliber and accomplishments of Penn State’s world-class faculty. Penn State’s Evan Pugh University Professors embody our commitment to excellence, innovation, creativity, discovery, scholarship and achievement at the highest level,” said Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi. “I am deeply grateful to these five faculty members for their contributions to their fields, to the success of their students, and to our University. It is my honor to recognize them as Evan Pugh University Professors.”

The Evan Pugh University Professorships are awarded to faculty members who are nationally and internationally recognized leaders in their fields of research or creative activity; demonstrate significant leadership in raising the standards of the University with respect to teaching, research or creativity, and service; display excellent teaching skills with undergraduate and graduate students who go on to achieve distinction in their fields; and receive support from colleagues who also are leaders in their disciplines.

The Office of the Senior Vice President for Research oversees the program, as delegated by the Office of the President. An advisory committee of seven Penn State faculty members, including three Evan Pugh professors, reviews nominations for the honor and makes recommendations to the University president.

The new Evan Pugh University Professors are:

Réka Albert 

Réka Albert, distinguished professor of physics and biology, is a leader in the field of systems biology and network analysis. She uses experimental measurements to guide the development of network models, which in turn are used to make predictions about the dynamics of complex biological systems and to guide further experiments.

Albert has received several awards for her research, including a Distinguished Alumna Award from the University of Notre Dame Graduate School in 2016, the Maria Goeppert Mayer Award from the American Physical Society in 2011, and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2007.  She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the Network Science Society, and she is an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Albert received a doctorate in physics from the University of Notre Dame and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in physics from the Babes-Bolyai University in Romania.

Suresh Canagarajah 

Suresh Canagarajah, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Applied Linguistics, English, and Asian Studies, is a world-renowned sociolinguist whose research focuses on the place of language diversity in global communication — an interest he said comes from his upbringing in Sri Lanka, which during the British colonial era adopted a localized version of English that was considered “broken” by native English speakers and teachers. He has recently studied the communication challenges that disabled and neurodivergent people face and shed light on the role of the nonlinguistic resources in their communication.

Canagarajah has been recognized as one of the “Top 50 Scholars Who Have Shaped the Field of TESOL” (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) by TESOL International and listed by the Elsevier Data Repository among the world’s top 2% most-cited researchers and top 400 world linguists. He has written/edited 15 books and numerous articles, several of which have garnered “Best Book” or “Best Publication” awards from the Modern Language Association, the American Association of Applied Linguistics, and the British Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL). He received the Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award from AAAL and served as that organization’s president from 2011 until 2012. He also has held several distinguished fellowships in international universities.

He earned his doctorate in applied linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin and his bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka.

Vijaykrishnan Narayanan

Vijaykrishnan Narayanan is the associate dean of Innovation in Engineering and the A. Robert Noll Chair Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering. His research focuses on computer architecture and design automation, particularly for power-aware systems and emerging technologies. He has co-authored more than 500 papers and supervised the research of 126 graduate students.

Narayanan has received numerous awards and recognitions for his research, including two most influential paper awards, the IEEE Computer Society Edward McCluskey Technical Achievement Award, and the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on VLSI Distinguished Research Award. He is an elected fellow of IEEE, ACM, AAAS and the U.S. National Academy of Inventors. He served as founding co-editor-in-chief of ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies for Computing Systems and IEEE Transactions on Computer Aided Design for Integrated Circuits and Systems.

Narayanan received a doctorate in computer science and engineering from the University of South Florida and a bachelor’s degree from SVCE, University of Madras. 

Clive Randall

Clive Randall, distinguished professor of materials science and engineering and director of Penn State’s Materials Research Institute, is a world leader in ceramics and functional materials. Randall’s research includes material processing, defect and crystal chemistry, material physics, and electrical properties of a broad number of electroceramics. Among his many contributions are the development of novel processing methods such as the fast-sintering processes for multilayer ceramic capacitor devices, a method that has been adopted by major manufacturers, as it permits superior microstructural and dielectric performance. More recently, his group discovered and developed cold sintering, a revolutionary process that enables sintering of ceramics at a much lower temperature than traditional sintering.

Randall was elected to the World Academy of Ceramics and is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Ceramic Society, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He also is an honorary fellow of the European Ceramic Society.

Randall joined Penn State in 1987. He earned a doctorate in experimental physics from the University of Essex in 1987 and his bachelor of science degree with honors in physics in 1983 from the University of East Anglia. 

S. Shyam Sundar

S. Shyam Sundar is the James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects and director of the Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence. He also is the founding director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory housed in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. Sundar is a theorist as well as an experimentalist who examines social and psychological effects of human-computer interaction and computer-mediated communication with a specific focus on technological elements such as multi-modality and interactivity that are unique to modern digital media. His research portfolio includes extensive examination of user responses to online sources, including machine sources such as chatbots, smart speakers and other forms of artificial intelligence.

Sundar was identified as the most published author of internet-related research in the field of communication during the medium’s first decade. He is a fellow of the International Communication Association and a recipient of the Frederick Williams Prize awarded for contribution to the study of communication technology. He also is the winner of the Paul J. Deutschmann award for lifetime excellence in research awarded by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Sundar earned a doctorate in communication and psychology from Stanford University, a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Alabama, and a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Bangalore University, India.