In recognition of this University of Georgia Honors Week 2026, we are thrilled to congratulate the winners of faculty, staff and student awards across campus. These extraordinary awardees will be honored at our Celebration of Excellence on Wednesday, April 8.
Presidential Award of Excellence
Pumphrey and Madden at the Presidential Honors Week Luncheon in March 2026.
The Presidential Award of Excellence is awarded to undergraduate students in their final year of study who have demonstrated outstanding academic achievement, strong extracurricular involvement, and service to and involvement in their respective school or college. Students selected for this award exemplify the best of UGA’s undergraduate student body.
Deborah Madden, a senior in environmental engineering, is a Foundation Fellow and Stamps Scholar. She serves as president of UGA National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE).
Benjamin Pumphrey, a mechanical engineering senior, serves as co-president of the Engineering Student Ambassadors and program manager of the UGA Small Satellite Research Laboratory.
Kun Yao
Creative Teaching Award
Creative Teaching Awards are presented annually on behalf of the Office of Instruction to faculty who have demonstrated exceptional creativity in using either an innovative technology or pedagogy that extends learning beyond the traditional classroom or for their creative course design or implementation of subject matter that improves student learning outcomes in their courses.
Dr. Kun Yao was awarded UGA’s Creative Teaching Award for his redesign of ECSE 2170: Fundamentals of Circuit Analysis and ELEE 3270: Electronics I. Rather than having students analyze circuits based on instructor examples, he had students create their own original, randomized circuits that met specified functional and analytical constraints.
This innovation shifted students from passive analysis to active design, enhancing their understanding of circuit concepts and exposing misconceptions often hidden in traditional homework and exams, allowing for targeted feedback and timely instructional adjustments.Yao’s creative solutions have since led to this flexible approach being successfully implemented in more courses with different enrollment sizes.
Service-Learning Award
Service-Learning Excellence Awards recognize faculty for outstanding service-learning instruction and advancing service-learning scholarship.
Dr. Stephan Durham provides students with opportunities to complete real-world engineering projects that benefit communities. By collaborating with Archway Partnership, a
Public Service and Outreach unit, Durham’s students connect with clients and take the lead on various community development projects. From developing pedestrian safety projects to improving stormwater mitigation to enhancing public spaces, his students gain hands-on experience while also developing professional skills as effective leaders and communicators.
Lamar Dodd Creative Research Award
UGA’s Creative Research Awards recognize established investigators whose overall scholarly body of work has had a major impact on the field of study and has established the investigator’s international reputation as a leader in the field.
Dr. Hitesh Handa, 2025 Regents’ Entrepreneur of the Year, is a leader in biomedical engineering whose work advances the safety and performance of medical devices. His scholarship integrates materials engineering, chemistry and biomedicine with a focus on developing nitric oxide-releasing biomaterials that prevent thrombosis and infection on blood-contacting medical implants. Drawing on fundamental materials design and clinically relevant animal models, his laboratory creates bioinspired surfaces that mimic the body’s natural nitric oxide production, improving hemocompatibility and antimicrobial performance. Handa’s influence is reflected in over 135 peer-reviewed publications and his reputation in biomaterials research. His collaborative projects have secured more than $25 million in funding from agencies including the NIH, CDC and the U.S. Department of Defense. Complementing his academic research, Handa has translated discoveries into practice through patents and startup companies focused on medical device innovation. Collectively, his achievements demonstrate sustained excellence with far-reaching scientific and clinical impact.
International Collaborative Research Award
Kenan Song
The International Collaborative Research Award recognizes a team with international members for excellence in innovative and impactful scholarship whose fundamental advancement of knowledge and understanding, and/or success in applications, addresses significant societal challenges and would not have been achievable without the international collaboration.
The M³X (Materials, Manufacturing & Machine Learning Nexus) International Team is an integrated research collaboration led by Dr. Kenan Song in partnership with Qatar University. Bringing together expertise in advanced manufacturing, materials science, machine learning, environmental engineering and biomedical applications, the team advances solutions in circular economy materials, clean water technologies and health care manufacturing that could not be achieved by a single institution. M³X is built on complementary strengths: UGA researchers provide leadership in additive manufacturing, composite materials and data-driven design, while Qatar University partners contribute expertise in membrane technologies, polymer processing and water sustainability. Together, the team has produced high-impact, jointly authored research and secured competitive funding from U.S. and international agencies, translating fundamental discoveries into scalable technologies. M³X also supports graduate students and postdoctoral scholars through shared mentorship, international exchange and professional recognition. By integrating environmental, mechanical and biomedical perspectives, M³X demonstrates how international collaboration accelerates innovation and amplifies research impact.
Team Impact Awards
Established by the UGA Research Foundation, these awards recognize junior faculty whose research, creative and scholarly achievements indicate a trajectory toward an exceptional, sustained research career and an imminent rise to international stature in their field of study. For 2026, two teams were awarded, both of which are led by College of Engineering faculty.
(L-R) Associate Professor of Chemistry Amanda Frossard, Associate Professor of Engineering Rawad Saleh, Project Leader US Forest Service Athens Prescribed Fire Lab Joseph O’Brien and Professor of Chemistry Geoffrey Smith inside the US Forest Service Athens Prescribed Fire Lab. The team makes up The Georgia Wildland-fire Simulation Experiment (GWISE).
G-WISE (Georgia Wildland-fire Simulation Experiment) is an ambitious, interdisciplinary research program that has advanced understanding of wildland fire smoke and its implications for public health, environmental regulation and land management. Led by Dr. Rawad Saleh, the team integrates expertise from engineering, forestry and natural resources, chemistry and veterinary medicine to address a central challenge in fire science: how smoke from prescribed fires differs from wildfire smoke in quantity, composition and health impact. Through a tightly coordinated framework that combines laboratory-scale fire simulations, smoke chemistry analysis, toxicological assessment and predictive computer modeling, G-WISE has generated insights that could not be achieved within any single field. The team’s work has clarified how smoke composition, exposure and toxicity interact to shape health outcomes, providing land managers and regulators with evidence-based guidance for the use and timing of prescribed fires. Supported by major federal funding and national collaboration, G-WISE demonstrates how interdisciplinary team science can inform policy-relevant decisions and address complex environmental challenges.
Pictured front row (L-R) Will Mattison, Marshall Shepherd, Rhett Jackson, Amy Rosemond, Seth Wenger, Brian Bledsoe, Zack Ruehman, Matt Billikens, Nate Nibbelink and Lizzie King. Pictured back row (L-R) Matt Chambers, Charles Van Rees, Craig Landry, Alysha Helmrich, Aditya Gupta, Virginia Bacon Talati, Olivia Caraway, Jon Calabria, Todd Bridges and Susana Ferreira.
The Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems (IRIS) is redefining how infrastructure systems are designed to protect communities in a rapidly changing world. Directed by Dr. Brian Bledsoe, IRIS brings together engineering, ecology, forestry and natural resources, environmental design, business, public health, social sciences and related fields to develop integrative solutions in which natural and conventional infrastructure work together to reduce risk. IRIS research addresses urgent societal challenges including flooding, sea-level rise, extreme weather, drought and pollution, combining rigorous engineering and environmental science with social, economic and community-engaged approaches. The team’s work spans local flood mitigation efforts in Georgia, resilience planning for military installations across the U.S. and internationally funded projects in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. Supported by major federal, state and philanthropic investment, IRIS has influenced engineering design standards, policy discussions and on-the-ground implementation of natural infrastructure. IRIS demonstrates how interdisciplinary team science can translate complex research into durable benefits for communities worldwide.
