This award, which was established in the Spring of 2011, recognizes the outstanding faculty mentorship that currently exists at UB and seeks to encourage further faculty commitment to and participation in the undergraduate research and creative experience.
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Lora Cavuoto, PhD, directs the Ergonomics and Biomechanics Lab, as well as the SurgE Surgery Ergonomics and Human Factors Lab. Her research interests include the biomechanics of obesity, modeling worker fatigue development, and human factors concerns in laparoscopic and robot-assisted surgery. An excellent teacher and mentor, she has worked with more than 30 undergraduate students on these research projects, and she has taught numerous courses. She also leads the department’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)-sponsored Occupational Safety and Health Training Program.
Department of Physics
A researcher who investigates frontier issues in particle physics, Salvatore Rappoccio, PhD, is a member of UB’s High Energy Particle Physics and Cosmology group, as well as the CMS Collaboration, an international group of particle physicists committed to advancing knowledge of the basic laws of the universe. In 2015, he received the CMS LHC Physics Center Distinguished Researcher Award. In 2013, he was a co-recipient of the European Physical Society’s High Energy and Particles Prize for the discovery of a Higgs boson.
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Wenyao Xu, PhD, founded and directs the Embedded Sensing and Computing Group, which investigates research topics related to hardware/architecture, operation systems, algorithms, human factors and their applications to medicine, health care and security. He has published more than 160 technical papers and two books, and he holds numerous patents. A UB faculty member since 2013, Dr. Xu has long been a mentor to undergraduates, and he has served as a research advisor for numerous undergraduate research projects.
