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Engineering faculty, staff honored in former dean's name
The Bromilow Awards are given annually by the College of Engineering at New Mexico State University , in recognition of Dr. Frank Bromilow's leadership and enhancement of the quality of faculty during his tenure as dean of the College of Engineering , a position he held from 1961 until his death in 1974.
This year's faculty award was given in recognition of excellence in research to Dr. David G. Voelz, electrical engineering, who has been involved in optical imaging, remote sensing and communications research for more than 20 years. His experience in this area began as a graduate student at the University of Illinois where his dissertation work involved laser radar measurements of the structure and abundance of atomic sodium suspended in the Earth's upper atmosphere. In 1987 he accepted a position at the Air Force Research Lab (Phillips Lab at that time) in Albuquerque and his focus shifted to unconventional methods for long-range imaging and sensing of vehicles such as aircraft and satellites with laser illumination systems.
Voelz accepted a faculty position in the Klipsch School at NMSU in 2001. During his time at NMSU his research has broadened to include free-space laser communications, laser-beam control, polarization sensitive imaging, and AOTF (acousto-optic tunable filter) spectral imaging for astronomy.
One of the first research grants Voelz received at NMSU as sole investigator was from the National Imaging and Mapping Agency (now the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, NGA). This work transitioned into two subsequent awards in which Voelz teamed with Dr. Chuck Creusere, also of the Klipsch School , to further explore polarization-sensitive imaging.
Voelz and Dr. Nancy Chanover of the NMSU Astronomy Department established a strong collaboration that has led to the in-house development of a spectrally-agile astronomical imaging sensor known as the NMSU AOTF Imaging Camera (NAIC). This system was deployed in 2004 on the Air Force Advanced Electro-Optic System (AEOS) telescope in Maui , HI for spectral imaging of Saturn's moon Titan and at the Apache Point Observatory (APO) 3.5 m telescope in 2005 for observing Jupiter.
This year's staff award was presented to Gloria Jacquez, program facilitator for the Engineering Research Center . Jacquez was hired by NMSU in 1994 and worked in the chemical engineering department and for the WERC program prior to her current position.
Jacquez oversees the preparation of grant proposals, assisting faculty, principal investigators and students with budget preparation and interpretation of funding agency regulations and requirements. In addition to her regular job responsibilities, Jacquez has also taken on the responsibility of developing and updating the Advisory Council on the Administrative Policy web site for NMSU.
“For more than 12 years, Gloria has been a devoted, enthusiastic, trusted and ethical employee of New Mexico State University . Gloria's professionalism and dedication to the College of Engineering as well as New Mexico State University has helped provide the framework to provide quality service to all the people she works with,” wrote Norma J. Ledesma, assistant director for research in the Engineering Research Center and Gloria's supervisor.