NAE hands out awards

The National Academy of Engineering has bestowed its highest honors in recognition of achievements that have revolutionized how people use information and that have opened new medical applications of biomechanics, among other milestones. Two of the recipients do physics-related work. The awards were presented in February during a ceremony in Washington, DC.

The NAE awarded its Charles Stark Draper Prize—a $500 000 annual award that honors engineers whose accomplishments have significantly benefited society—to Timothy Berners-Lee “for developing the World Wide Web.” Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium and a senior researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he holds the 3Com Founders chair and leads the decentralized information group. He is also a professor of computer science at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science in the UK.

Yuan-Cheng Bertram Fung received the Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize—a $500 000 biennial award recognizing engineering achievement that significantly improves the human condition—“for the characterization and modeling of human tissue mechanics and function leading to prevention and mitigation of trauma.” He is a professor emeritus of bioengineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.