EE Professor Kai-Mei Fu was honored May 28 with one of two Junior Faculty Awards by the UW College of Engineering in recognition of excellence in research, teaching and service.
Fu, who joined the faculty in 2011, has a joint appointment in the Electrical Engineering and Physics departments. The nomination materials for Fu, with letters written by EE Chair Radha Poovendran, colleagues and students, highlight her dedication to pursuing cutting-edge research, mentoring students and new faculty recruitment efforts. Fu’s community outreach also was noted, as she established the UW Science Explorers program at Sanislo Elementary School in West Seattle in 2012.
A few excerpts from the nomination materials are included below:
“Professor Fu’s research explores new ground at the intersection of atomic physics and device physics. Her research cuts across departmental barriers and she has published collaborative work with UW professors in Electrical Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering and Physics. She has additionally been very successful in obtaining single-PI research funding, including the prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award and more recently, a 2015 Cottrell Scholar Award. Since arriving at UW, she has published 10 journal papers at the very top journals.”
“Professor Fu is proving to be an excellent faculty adviser, as evidenced by the success of her Ph.D. and undergraduate students. Her former PhD student Nicole Thomas, an Intel Ph.D. Fellowship recipient, finished her Ph.D. in 2014 and is now at Maxim Integrated. Professor Fu also has undergraduate students who are thriving in her lab and winning awards such as the Mary Gates Research Scholarship and NASA Space Grant fellowships. She takes promoting diversity seriously and two of her female undergraduates have, collectively, been admitted to graduate programs at Caltech, Harvard, Princeton, UC Berkeley and Stanford.”
“In the classroom, Professor Fu is doing an outstanding job. She has developed a joint Electrical Engineering/Physics course ‘Introduction to Quantum Optics,’ which meets a critical need for engineers in the emerging area of quantum-enabled technologies. In this graduate level course she received teaching ratings in the Very Good range; her teaching in the advanced undergraduate course Physics 423 received even higher ratings.”
Congratulations, Kai-Mei!