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Three UCF Professors Join Pegasus Professor Elite
By Courtney Gilmartin April 1, 2009
Photo: Jacque Brund
Peter Hancock, Juin Liou and Debra Reinhart were honored for excellence in teaching, research and service.
An accomplished engineer who mentors young women, an engineer who has saved the semiconductor industry millions of dollars and a researcher whose collaborations have brought international recognition to UCF have won UCF’s highest faculty award.
Debra Reinhart, Juin Liou and Peter Hancock were named Pegasus Professors today at the annual Founders’ Day ceremony. The award recognizes extraordinary contributions to the UCF community through teaching, research and service.
Since 2000, only 18 UCF professors have received the award.
As Pegasus Professors, Reinhart, Liou and Hancock each received a statue of the UCF Pegasus, a gold Pegasus Professor medallion and a check for $5,000.
Debra Reinhart, a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering and interim director of UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center, is an accomplished engineer and leader in the field of solid waste management, as well as a mentor to many of her students.
Reinhart’s research funding has totaled more than $5 million, which has helped to support 11 doctoral students and 45 master’s students.
As an undergraduate at UCF, then Florida Technological University, she was the first engineering student to achieve a 4.0 GPA. Reinhart also founded the UCF chapter of Society of Women Engineers and currently serves as the organization’s advisor.
“Dr. Reinhart has shown sustained excellence from the time when she was a student at FTU and throughout her nearly 20-year faculty career at UCF as a renowned researcher in her field, as an efficient administrator, and as an award winning educator,” wrote James Hickman, head of UCF’s Hybrid Systems Laboratory.
Reinhart has received the University Research Incentive Award and the College of Engineering and Computer Science’s Distinguished Researcher Award, and she has been inducted into the Space Technology Hall of Fame.
Juin Liou, a professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, directs a state-of-the-art laboratory focused on preventing electrostatic discharges from damaging microchips, a problem that costs the semiconductor industry millions of dollars annually.
Throughout his 22 years at UCF, Liou has received more than $9 million in research funding from leading semiconductor companies such as Texas Instruments and National Semiconductor and federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation and NASA.
He has published eight books and more than 220 journal articles and frequently teaches seminars for employees of top semiconductor companies.
“Dr. Liou’s undivided devotion to research and teaching, relentless pursuit of technology innovations and unflagging energy toward high-quality education have put him among the world’s elite researchers in his field and brought great visibility to the University of Central Florida,” wrote Michael Georgiopoulous, an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science professor.
During his career at UCF, Liou has received the College of Engineering and Computer Science’s Distinguished Researcher Award four times, the UCF Research Incentive Award twice and a UCF Teaching Incentive Award.
Peter Hancock, a Provost’s Distinguished Professor in the Psychology Department in the College of Sciences and the Institute for Simulation and Training, is dedicated to helping UCF become America’s leading partnership university.
Since joining UCF in 2001, Hancock has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on more than 25 grants and contracts totaling more than $7 million. He leads a first-class research team striving to understand and limit the effects of stress on human performance.
He has been honored by a wide variety of professional societies, including the prestigious Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and the Aerospace Medical Association.
“Peter Hancock has made almost unparalleled contributions to human factors through extensive publication, research impacting many domains, productions of outstanding students, and service not just within UCF, but to the wider professional world,” wrote Randall Shumaker, director of the Institute for Simulation and Training.
In addition to supervising 15 doctoral students during the past five years, Hancock has led the Human Factors Program Committee and contributed to several important committees at the Institute for Simulation and Training.
UCF Stands For Opportunity: The University of Central Florida is a metropolitan research university that ranks as the 5th largest in the nation with more than 50,000 students. UCF's first classes were offered in 1968. The university offers impressive academic and research environments that power the region's economic development. UCF's culture of opportunity is driven by our diversity, Orlando environment, history of entrepreneurship and our youth, relevance and energy. For more information, visit http://news.ucf.edu.
