Scott Weber and Andrew Whittaker to receive UB Presidents Medal

Adapted from UBNOW 

As previously announced, President Satish K. Tripathi will receive the Chancellor Charles P. Norton Medal, UB’s highest honor.

Also this commencement season, a SUNY honorary doctorate will be presented to School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS)  alumnus and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Marcus Yam.

The UB President’s Medal, first presented in 1990, recognizes “outstanding scholarly or artistic achievements, humanitarian acts, contributions of time or treasure, exemplary leadership or any other major contribution to the development of the University at Buffalo and the quality of life in the UB community.”

Whittaker will receive the President’s Medal at the SEAS graduate commencement ceremony on May 16. Weber, who is also the UB executive vice president for academic affairs, will receive the President’s Medal at the engineering school’s undergraduate ceremony on May 16.

A highly collaborative leader, excellent UB citizen and ambassador, Weber is provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. He previously served as vice president for student life, senior vice provost for academic affairs and dean of undergraduate education. A UB faculty member since 1983, he is a former chair of the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering.

Weber is dedicated to fostering student, faculty and staff success. To this end, he has emphasized curricular innovation, timely degree progression, postgraduation outcomes and excellence in interdisciplinary research grounded in disciplinary accomplishment.

As provost, Weber focuses on empowering academic units and faculty to achieve President Satish K. Tripathi’s vision for academic excellence. Through institutional investments, he has diversified and grown UB’s faculty in key areas and prioritized faculty excellence and honors, leading to an impressive increase in prestigious faculty awards.

Weber was critical in driving UB’s recent enrollment growth, introducing innovations to help students thrive at UB and beyond. He led Finish in 4, UB’s nationally acclaimed program to encourage timely undergraduate degree progression, and revision of the general education curriculum. He also enhanced financial and career planning, increased advising and tutoring, and reorganized programs to improve student persistence.

As part of the Heart of the Campus plan, Weber moved to upgrade facilities critical to the student experience, including libraries, and was critical to UB realizing One World Café, a destination for dining, studying and socializing. A champion of UB’s distinctive programs, he grew the Honors College, served as co-principal investigator on the grant for the Startup & Innovation Collaboratory powered by Blackstone LaunchPad (CoLab) and established the Center for Writing Excellence and the Office of Fellowships and Scholarships. 

An elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, Whittaker is internationally renowned for advancing performance-based earthquake engineering, seismic isolation and damping systems for buildings, bridges and other structures, and for blast and impact engineering. He serves as director of UB’s Institute for Bridge Engineering and interim director of the Stephen Still Institute for Sustainable Transportation and Logistics.

Whittaker’s work has significantly advanced the safety of infrastructure around the world. He has developed seismic protective devices and systems, characterizing seismic hazard, performance-based seismic design and other mission-critical systems and technologies.

Whittaker has conducted extensive research on the seismic resilience of nuclear power plants and is considered a leading expert on the structural design of next-generation nuclear reactors. He chaired the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Nuclear Standards Committee (2015-25) and co-chairs the ASCE 92 committee. He was also a member of the 2024 White House working group on Nuclear Power Project Management and Delivery, and has prepared contractor reports and a topical report on seismic isolation for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Whittaker is a fellow of ASCE, its Structural Engineering Institute and the American Concrete Institute. He has received ASCE’s Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. Award, Walter P. Moore Jr. Award, Nathan Newmark Medal and Ernest Howard Award, and was the inaugural recipient of the Untermyer & Cisler Reactor Technology Medal from the American Nuclear Society. In 2025, he was one of 11 individuals recognized as distinguished members of ASCE, the highest honor the society bestows upon civil engineers. The same year, he received an honorary doctorate in engineering from the University of Melbourne.

The Chancellor Charles P. Norton Medal is presented annually in public recognition of a person who has, in Norton’s words, “performed some great thing which is identified with Buffalo … a great civic or political act, a great book, a great work of art, a great scientific achievement or any other thing which, in itself, is truly great and ennobling, and which dignifies the performer and Buffalo in the eyes of the world.”

Tripathi will receive the medal at the College of Arts and Sciences’ ceremony for undergraduates in the arts, natural sciences and mathematics on May 17.

The longest-serving president in UB’s modern era, Tripathi has led the university through a transformative period of productivity and impact marked by impressive growth in its research portfolio, a dramatically enhanced educational experience and extensive engagement with the region and world.

Together, these achievements have significantly elevated UB’s institutional standing. During Tripathi’s presidency, UB has risen 22 spots in the U.S. News & World Report ranking of U.S. public universities and 44 spots among public and private universities. In 2022, Gov. Kathy Hochul designated UB a New York State flagship.

Sponsored research expenditures increased 65% during Tripathi’s tenure, and the university secured numerous selective grants in frontier disciplines. In 2024, UB was named the home of Empire AI, a public-private consortium placing the state at the forefront of the artificial intelligence revolution. In building up UB’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, Tripathi also helped the university generate robust economic development in the region and state.

Through the master plan Tripathi implemented, UB is revitalizing the South Campus as the locus of professional education and creating a sense of community in the heart of the North Campus. The 2017 move of the Jacobs School to the Downtown Campus catalyzed Buffalo’s life sciences economy and contributed to the city’s renaissance.

As UB’s first internationally born president, Tripathi has burnished the university’s global reputation. He formalized partnerships with 45 international institutions, bringing the total number of such alliances to 120. Throughout his presidency, UB has ranked among the top 30 U.S. universities for hosting international students.

Tripathi has overseen unprecedented fundraising at UB. The Boldly Buffalo campaign, concluded in 2024, raised a record $1.1 billion, supporting student scholarships, faculty research and infrastructure enhancements.

Tripathi will return to the SEAS faculty in the fall. 

Yam, BS ’06, is an international visual correspondent for The Globe and Mail whose work explores resilience, loss and survival in some of the world’s most volatile regions. Throughout his career, his commitment to bearing witness at pivotal moments in history has earned him three Pulitzer Prizes.

Yam will receive a SUNY honorary degree in fine arts at the SEAS undergraduate commencement ceremony on May 16.

Born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Yam came to the United States to study aerospace engineering at UB. As an undergraduate, he worked as a photographer for the student newspaper, The Spectrum, where he discovered his calling in photojournalism. That early experience set him on a path toward international reporting grounded in rigor, empathy and depth. After graduating, he worked at the Associated Press, The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Seattle Times before serving as a foreign correspondent and staff photographer at the Los Angeles Times.

In 2022, Yam won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for documenting the U.S. departure from Afghanistan. He was part of the 2016 and 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning breaking news teams for the LA Times’ coverage of the San Bernardino, California, terrorist attacks and The Seattle Times’ reporting on a mudslide that killed dozens of people in rural Washington state.

Yam is a two-time recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Journalism Award. His previous work has also earned an Emmy Award for News and Documentary and the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award for excellence in digital journalism in the public service, among other national and international accolades. In 2023, he received UB’s highest honor, the Chancellor Charles P. Norton Medal.