Martha Kim and Shree Nayar among those receiving honors at SEAS Class Day

Martha Kim was named the recipient of the Edward and Carole Kim Award for Faculty Involvement. Established in 2000 by Edward and Carole Kim in appreciation of their son Brian’s positive experience at Columbia, this award honors a faculty member demonstrating teaching excellence and a special, personal commitment to students. Nominations are made by undergraduate and graduate students.

In presenting the award, Dean Mary Boyce cited professor Kim’s role as a caring professor who actively encouraged undergraduates to participate in her own path-breaking research to improve the programmability of hardware accelerators. As a result, four students became co-authors of research papers with Kim, an incredible achievement for undergraduate students.

Shree Nayar, T. C. Chang Professor of Computer Science, received the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award along with James Hone (Mechanical Engineering). Instituted by the Columbia Engineering Alumni Association and bestowed on faculty of SEAS since 1996, the award is given on behalf of students and alumni for excellence in teaching, including dedication to undergraduate students. Selection is based on student evaluations and recommendations of a selection committee made up of three students and two alumni.

The award was presented by Dr. Hitoshi Tanaka in his capacity as president of Columbia Engineering Alumni Association. Dr. Tanaka cited Nayar’s research in three areas: creation of novel cameras that provide new forms of visual information, the design of new physics-based models for vision and graphics, and new algorithms for understanding scenes from images.