Tien Award Recipients

2025

Michael S. Spencer is an internationally recognized leader in social work education and research, committed to advancing racial equity and health justice through transformative scholarship and inclusive leadership. A Native Hawaiian (Kānaka Maoli) scholar, Dr. Spencer serves as the Ballmer Endowed Dean and Professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work, where he brings a deep passion for equity, health justice, and the well-being of Indigenous and Asian Pacific Islander communities and utilizes culturally grounded approaches to address systemic inequities.

Dr. Spencer earned his Ph.D. in Social Welfare from the University of Washington, following an MSW from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Psychology from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His academic career spans more than 25 years, including leadership roles at the University of Michigan and the University of Washington. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work, Social Welfare (AASWSW) and the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), Washington State Academy of Sciences and currently serves on the AASWSW Board of Directors.

His current research portfolio centers on wellness, and physical, behavioral health, and educational equity for Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities. He has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications and edited influential volumes, including Social Work and the Grand Challenge to Eliminate Racism (Oxford Press, 2023), Critical Quantitative Research Methods for Social Work (Cambridge Press, forthcoming 2025), The Future of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture in Social Work (Routledge, forthcoming 2025). Dr. Spencer also served on the national executive committee for the Grand Challenges for Social Work and co-chaired two grand challenges: Eliminate Racism and Close the Health Gap. Known for his inspiring vision, collaborative leadership, and mentoring, he speaks nationally and internationally on equity, inclusion, and Indigenous wellness, shaping the future of social work through research, education, and service.

2024

Mung Chiang is the 13th president of Purdue University and the Roscoe H. George Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He was previously the John A. Edwardson Dean of the College of Engineering and executive vice president for strategic initiatives at Purdue University, as well as the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University.

Chiang founded the Princeton EDGE Lab in 2009 and then founded several startup companies and industry consortia in edge computing. As the Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State in 2020, he initiated tech diplomacy programs for the U.S. government. Currently he serves on the inaugural board of the U.S. Foundation for Energy Security and Innovation and several corporate and nonprofit boards.

Chiang received his BS (1999), MS (2000) and PhD (2003) from Stanford University and an honorary doctorate (2024) from Dartmouth College. For his research in communication networks, he received the NSF Alan T. Waterman Award (2013), as well as the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award (2012), the IEEE INFOCOM Achievement Award (2022) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2014). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Class of Mathematical and Physical Sciences 2024), the National Academy of Inventors (2020) and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (2020).

2023

Daryl Joji Maeda, Dean and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education, University of Colorado Boulder, was selected for the 2023 Chang-Lin Tien Leadership in Education Award. In addition to this honor, the Asian Pacific Fund is awarding a grant to establish a Chang-Lin Tien Scholarship Fund for underprivileged AAPI students at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“I am deeply honored to be recognized with the Chang-Lin Tien Leadership in Education Award from the Asian Pacific Fund. Chancellor Tien’s pathbreaking example shows the power of enhancing institutions by moving toward greater diversity and inclusion, and I strive to continue his legacy by enriching equity for all students, staff, and faculty.”

In his three years as the Dean and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education at the University of Colorado Boulder, Daryl has overseen the campus-wide academic experience for about 30,000 undergraduate students, in partnership with seven colleges, schools, and programs, Enrollment Management, Student Affairs, Registrar’s Office. Daryl also collaborates with data analytics and educational technology teams to create predictive analytics models and develop proactive student support programs.

He also supervises the Program in Exploratory Studies, Student Academic Success Center, Undergraduate Enrichment Programs, Undergraduate Research Opportunities, Top Scholarships, Presidents Leadership Class, Education Abroad, International Student and Scholar Services, Air Force, Army, and Navy ROTC programs. Maeda also co-led the First Year Experience (budget of $3M), which created First Year learning outcomes and sponsored the creation of 7 Learning and Living Communities. He also serves as the lead administrator on the development and implementation of campus-wide frameworks for advising and CU LEAD Alliance programs, which support underserved students. Maeda is also a Professor of Ethnic Studies. In that role, he teaches classes on social movements, Asian American history and culture, comparative ethnic studies, and sports.

As a writer and teacher, Daryl is interested in movements in two senses. His newest book, Like Water: A Cultural History of Bruce Lee (NYU Press, 2022), explains how the iconic martial artist and actor Lee became a global superstar. His constant motion back and forth across the Pacific mirrored transpacific flows of culture, aesthetics, and martial arts in the 1960s and 1970s. Too elusive to be pinned down to any one location or culture, Bruce crossed borders and combined influences drawn from all those he encountered.

His first two books examine movement in a different sense, as both study social movements for justice by Asian Americans in the 1960s and 1970s. Maeda has also published two books on the Asian American movement, Chains of Babylon: The Rise of Asian America (University Minnesota Press, 2009) and Rethinking the Asian American Movement (Routledge, 2012).

Daryl currently sits on the editorial board of the Justice, Power, and Politics Series published by the University of North Carolina Press. He formerly served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Asian American Studies and as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Civil and Human Rights Studies.

Photo by Glenn Asakawa/University of Colorado

2022

Geeta Anand is Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. In her two years as dean, she has set the school on a path to changing who gets to be a journalist in this world. She launched a $100 million fundraising initiative to remove the economic obstacles to people from historically marginalized groups becoming journalists. She led the development of an anti-racism plan that helped diversify the school’s instructors, among other things, and the school has completed or made substantial progress on 80 percent of these initiatives. She created new journalism classes to enable students to report with cultural sensitivity and historical context on China and other parts of the world. She brought campus leaders together to solve the world’s disinformation problem by analyzing bills before Congress and proposing legislative solutions, as well as creating a new journalism class that produces solutions-oriented stories about efforts to change the U.S. law that protects social media companies from being held liable for their  content.

Anand is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author whose stories on corporate corruption won the Wall Street Journal a Pulitzer Prize in 2002, and she was lead reporter in a series on healthcare that was a finalist in 2003. She wrote the non-fiction book, The Cure, about a dad’s fight to save his kids by starting a biotech company to make a medicine for their untreatable illness, which was made into the Harrison Ford movie Extraordinary Measures. She worked as a journalist for 27 years, most recently as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in India. She began teaching at Berkeley Journalism in 2018 and was appointed dean in 2020.

2021

Dr. Ka Yee C. Lee serves as the fourteenth Provost of the University of Chicago. As Provost, she is responsible for academic and research programs across the University and oversees the University’s budget.

She is the David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry, the James Franck Institute, the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, and the College, and a member of the Board of the University of Chicago Medical Center and the Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratory. Prior to her appointment as Provost, Lee served as Vice Provost for Research, working with deans, faculty, and researchers across the University to increase access to research funding and resources, among other responsibilities.

Lee is an elected member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Her research focus lies in the area of membrane biophysics, and she is the author or co-author of more than 125 scholarly publications.

Lee joined the University in 1998 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and was appointed full professor in 2008. She has served as Director of the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and Associate Director of the James Franck Institute, as well as Chair of the Faculty Advisory Board for The Hong Kong Jockey Club University of Chicago Academic Complex | Francis and Rose Yuen Campus in Hong Kong. Her honors include being named a Searle Scholar, a David and Lucile Packard Fellow for Science and Engineering, and a Sloan Research Fellow. She also was the recipient of the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and the inaugural recipient of the Arthur L. Kelly Prize for Exceptional Faculty Service in the Physical Sciences Division.

Lee holds an Sc.B. degree in Electrical Engineering from Brown University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Physics from Harvard University. She completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

2020

Dr. Liu is Dean and Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She is internationally recognized in academia and industry for her innovations in semiconductor technology, and is highly regarded for her achievements as a teacher, mentor and administrator.

Liu was born in Ithaca, New York while her parents, who immigrated to the United States from Taiwan, were graduate students at Cornell University.  “After graduating from Cornell, my father conducted research in earthquake prediction, so he moved the family to California where the action was — and still is,” said Liu. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area during the tech boom, Liu was influenced to pursue a career in engineering and ended up earning her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University. She spent a few years as a member of research staff at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) before joining the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at UC Berkeley as an assistant professor in 1996.

As a researcher, Liu has authored or co-authored more than 500 publications and holds 96 U.S. patents in the field of integrated-circuit devices and technology.  She is best known for co-developing an advanced fin-shaped field-effect transistor design, dubbed “FinFET,” that can be scaled down in physical dimensions to below 25 nanometers. Today, FinFETs are used in all leading-edge microprocessor chips.

Liu’s technical contributions have garnered her many honors, including elevation to Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, Member of the National Academy of Engineering, Member of the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame, and Member of the Board of Directors of Intel Corporation. Her awards include the DARPA Significant Technical Achievement Award, the Intel Outstanding Researcher in Nanotechnology Award, and the Semiconductor Industry Association University Research Award.

As an educator, Liu’s dedication in teaching and mentoring the next generation of engineers earned her the EE Division Outstanding Teaching Award, UC Berkeley Distinguished Faculty Mentoring Award and the Semiconductor Research Corporation Aristotle Award.

Liu became the 13th dean of the College of Engineering in 2018, and is the first woman to hold that position at UC Berkeley.  In this leadership role, she has bolstered efforts to recruit outstanding new faculty members who value diversity, equity and inclusion, and to enhance the success and well-being of all engineering students at Berkeley.  She aims to effect a cultural transformation within the college – and within the field of engineering in general – to be more welcoming, inclusive and socially connected, to help ensure that engineering innovations have broad, positive impact with minimal unintended negative consequences.

Prior to becoming dean, Liu held numerous administrative leadership roles. From 2016 to 2018, she was UC Berkeley’s vice provost for academic and space planning, overseeing the campus’ academic program review process, space planning, and international partnerships. In the College of Engineering, she also served as associate dean for research from 2008 to 2012. In the EECS department, Liu served as department chair from 2014 to 2016, EE division chair from 2012 to 2016, and vice chair for graduate matters from 2003 to 2004. In addition, she served as Faculty Director of the UC Berkeley Microfabrication Laboratory from 2000 to 2004 and from 2006 to 2008 and as Faculty Director for the UC Berkeley Marvell Nanofabrication Laboratory in 2012.

Liu is married and has two children. Her husband, Dr. David Kuan-Yu Liu, is a semiconductor industry veteran who has been a stalwart source of inspiration and support for her since their graduate school days at Stanford. Their affinity for engineering and for animals has influenced their sons: one is a Berkeley Engineering Ph.D. student while the other is enrolling this fall in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

2019

Dr. Mun Y. Choi is currently the President of the University of Missouri System and Chancellor of University of Missouri-Columbia.

Dr.  Choi was named the 24th president of the University of Missouri System in November 2016, and began in March 2017. As president, Dr. Choi serves as the chief executive and academic officer of the UM System, a land-grant institution that provides centralized administration for four universities, a health care system, and extension program, and ten research and technology parks. Dr. Choi oversees all academic, public, business, financial and related affairs of the UM System under the policies and general supervision of the University of Missouri Board of Curators.

As a product of and passionate champion for public higher education, Dr. Choi advocates tirelessly on behalf of the four universities of the UM System with state and national business, political and civic leaders to achieve excellence. In partnership with the board and university leadership, Dr. Choi introduced a new collective vision for the UM System in September 2018: to advance the opportunities for success and well-being in Missouri, the nation and the world through transformative teaching, research, innovation, engagement and inclusion.

To fulfill this vision, Dr. Choi announced the Missouri Compacts for Achieving Excellence, a plan that includes $260 million in strategic investments. The Missouri Compacts are a promise to achieve excellence through student success; research and creative works; engagement and outreach; inclusive excellence; and planning, operations and stewardship to best serve our students and Missourians. Supported by one-time investments from the UM System, the Missouri Compacts support the universities’ five-year strategic plans.

Dr. Choi’s leadership has been instrumental in moving the University of Missouri forward and strengthening the collaboration between the four universities in the system. Since he took office, the university has changed dramatically, including the reversal of significant student enrollment declines at the flagship campus, administrative and budget transformations that support a more efficient and collaborative environment and the restoration of public funding through a dramatically improved relationship with the Missouri legislature. Most importantly, Dr. Choi is widely recognized to have regained the trust of the university community, alumni, legislators, and Missourians by changing the attitude of the entire state towards higher education.

Before serving as the UM System president, Dr. Choi’s 25-year career in higher education included serving as assistant and associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (1994-2000), department head of mechanical engineering and mechanics at Drexel University (2000-2008), then dean of engineering at the University of Connecticut (UConn) (2008-2012). Later, he took on the role of provost and executive vice president at UConn (2012-2017).

Dr. Choi is married with three children and resides in Columbia, MO.

2018

Jerry Kang is a Distinguished Professor of Law and Distinguished Professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA. He is also the inaugural Korea Times – Hankook Ilbo Endowed Chair in Korean American Studies and Law. At the time of the award, he served as Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at UCLA which he founded in 2015.

Professor Kang’s teaching and research interests include civil procedure, race, and communications. On race, he has focused on the nexus between implicit bias and the law, with the goal of advancing a “behavioral realism” in legal analysis. He regularly collaborates with leading experimental social psychologists on wide-ranging scholarly, educational, and advocacy projects. He also lectures broadly to lawyers, judges, government agencies, and corporations about implicit bias and how to counter them.

As an expert on Asian American communities, he has written about hate crimes, affirmative action, the Japanese American internment, and its lessons for the “War on Terror.” He is a co-author of Race, Rights, and Reparation: The Law and the Japanese American Internment (2d ed. Wolters Kluwer 2013).

On communications, Professor Kang has published on the topics of privacy, net neutrality, pervasive computing, mass media policy, and cyber-race (the construction of race in cyberspace). He is also the author of Communications Law & Policy: Cases and Materials (5th edition 2016), a leading casebook in the field.

After graduating magna cum laude in both physics (BA, Harvard College) and law (JD, Harvard Law School), he joined UCLA School of Law as faculty in Fall 1995. He has been recognized for his teaching by being elected Professor of the Year in 1998; receiving the law school’s Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2007; and being chosen for the highest university-wide distinction, the University Distinguished Teaching Award (The Eby Award for the Art of Teaching) in 2010.  At UCLA School of Law, he was founding co-Director of the Concentration for Critical Race Studies as well as PULSE: Program on Understanding Law, Science, and Evidence. Professor Kang has taught at Harvard and Georgetown law schools, and was the David M. Friedman Fellow at NYU’s Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law & Justice.

Professor Kang is a member of the American Law Institute and the Council of Korean Americans. He has chaired the American Association of Law School’s Section on Defamation and Privacy, has served on the Board of Directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and has received numerous awards including Vice President Al Gore’s “Hammer Award” for Reinventing Government.

2017

Dr. Mia Tuan is the Dean of the University of Washington College of Education and has served in this role since 2015. Throughout her career, Dr. Tuan has worked to strengthen equity and inclusion for students of all backgrounds across educational settings. Her commitment to helping all students know that they matter and belong originated with her upbringing as a 1.5 generation American. Born in Taiwan, Dr. Tuan migrated to the U.S. at the age of 3 with her family, growing up in the Bay Area as part of the generation that helped diversify the region.

Dr. Tuan’s formative experiences with belonging led her to study sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her bachelor’s degree, and later earn her master’s and doctorate in sociology from UCLA. She joined the University of Oregon’s sociology faculty in 1996, and in 2007 joined its College of Education.

Dr. Tuan’s scholarship focuses on racial and ethnic identity development, Asian transracial adoption, and majority/minority relations. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles and three books, Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race: Korean Adoptees in America; Prejudice in Politics: Group Position, Public Opinion and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dispute; and Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites? The Contemporary Asian Ethnic Experience.

While at the UO, Dr. Tuan served in numerous leadership positions, including interim dean of the College of Education, associate dean of the Graduate School, director of the Center on Diversity & Community, and director of the sociology department’s honors program.

As dean of the UW College of Education, Dr. Tuan leads a national powerhouse in education research, with more than $42 million in funded research during FY2016 advancing knowledge of early learning best practices, inclusive education, STEM learning in the classroom and informal environments, and how to prepare and support outstanding teachers. The College partners with more than 300 schools, districts and communities throughout the Puget Sound and beyond to take up the most pressing challenges in education.

Since her arrival, the UW College of Education has received leadership grants of more than $15 million supporting its leading edge research in early childhood education and ambitious science teaching; created the national Family Leadership Design Collaborative to advance equitable family-school-community partnerships for educational justice and community well-being; established a new Education, Communities & Organizations major in which every student performs an intensive capstone project within a local school or community organization; and launched the UW Brotherhood Initiative to support the success of young men of color in higher education.

Dr. Tuan serves on the Alliance for Education Board of Directors and is Incoming Chair of the American Educational Research Association’s Consortium of Universities and Research Institutions Executive Committee.

2016

Dr. Ming-Tung “Mike” Lee was formerly the Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at California State University, Sacramento. In the 69-year history of the university, Dr. Lee was the first Asian to ever serve as the Provost and the Vice President/CFO positions.

Dr. Lee has dedicated his career to providing a life-changing higher education to students from all backgrounds and social economic statuses.  This strong belief in access to high quality education originated from his humble upbringing during the economically deprived era of Taiwan.  His father had three years of schooling in mainland China and his mother was illiterate.  With their humble income, all savings of the parents went to the children’s education.  With hard work and determination, Dr. Lee became the first in the family to attain the Bachelor, Master, and Ph.D. degrees.

Dr. Lee became a proud United States citizen in 1999.  Since 1990, the year he joined the faculty of California State University, Sacramento, Dr. Lee has taught business classes for 12 years and served in many administrative positions.  He was a mentor and role model for numerous students and highly respected by his colleagues.  He has successfully served as Chair of the Department of Management, Special Assistant to the President for Strategic Planning, Associate Vice President and Dean for Academic Programs, Vice Provost, Vice President for Administration and Chief Financial Officer, and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs.  Dr. Lee’s progression in administration is extremely unusual in American higher education because he was able to achieve all administrative positions in the same university.  This is due to his dedication to the missions of the California State University (CSU) system and the university’s confidence in his leadership.

Dr. Lee’s leadership is also highly appraised in the California State University system and the nation.  In 2014, he was selected as Chair of the Chief Administrators and Business Officers (CABO), the organization consisted of all CSU Vice Presidents and Chief Financial Officers.  In 2015, he was elected as the Vice Chair of the Executive Committee of the CSU Risk Management Authority, a joint power authority providing insurance coverage for all CSU campuses and auxiliaries.  He has served in many committees and task forces to enhance student access to higher education and student success.  After a rigorous national selection process, Dr. Lee attained the honor of American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow in 2001.

In addition to the higher education roles, Dr. Lee has been active in services to the community, particularly in promoting mental health, community engagement, and political awareness of Asian Americans in the State of California.  For more than eight years, he served on the Board of Directors of the Asian Pacific Community Counseling (APCC) of Sacramento.  This is a non-profit organization dedicated to mental health care in the API communities.  While serving as the Treasurer, Dr. Lee was instrumental in securing the annual $3M funding from California Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) funds.  This funding allowed APCC to provide much needed mental health care to hundreds of API clients suffering from severe mental illness.  This is his most proud accomplishment.

Dr. Lee joined the California Legislature’s Joint API Legislative Caucus Institute in 2012.  The Institute organizes the Capitol Academy, which selects the best and brightest local API elected officials to participate in training programs on how to become a state legislator.  The success of the Institute and the Capitol Academy has significantly enhanced the presence of API legislators and the political influence of API communities.

Dr. Lee and his wife, Fei, has a daughter and two sons.

2015

Dr. S. David Wu is President of Baruch College, a constituent college of The City University of New York (CUNY). At the time of his award, Dr. Wu was the Provost and Executive Vice President at George Mason University. In that role, he was responsible for coordinating and overseeing the full range of the university’s academic activities, including curricular, instructional, and research affairs.

Prior to joining Mason, Dr. Wu  served as Dean of the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, and holder of the Lee A. Iacocca endowed chair at Lehigh University. In his capacity as Dean at Lehigh, he oversaw 7 academic departments, over 40 degree programs, and 14 research centers and institutes.

Dr. Wu led the development and implementation of Lehigh Engineering’s strategic plan with broad involvement of the Lehigh community. The essence of the plan was to redefine engineering education as a critical component of liberal education for the 21st century.

Dr. Wu is an accomplished scholar in systems engineering and operations research. A IISE Fellow, he has published extensively in his field and has served on various national and international boards, such as the National Science Foundation and the Science Foundation of Ireland. He also serves on the board for Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering, and was on the engineering advisory boards for the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He was a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and HKUST. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University.

2014

Dr. Liza Cariaga-Lo was formerly the Associate Provost of Academic Development and Diversity at Brown University. She has dedicated her career to understanding inequality and she is an advocate for more diverse educational systems. She continues a tradition of Asian American activism on college campuses and she focuses her work on addressing inequality in academia. Dr. Cariaga-Lo is a leader in the fields of education program evaluation, minority student development, ethnic minority health care and public policy affecting children and families. She recently completed a book about the identity development of Asian Americans. Her dedication to uplifting the underserved is a testament to Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien’s legacy.

Dr, Cariaga-Lo was previously the Assistant Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity at Harvard University, the Assistant Dean and Director of the Office for Diversity and Equal Opportunity at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine.

2013

Dr. Ellen Junn is the President of California State University, Stanislaus. At the time of her award, she was the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at San Jose State University. During her time at SJSU, she worked to increase and coordinate multiple support programs to improve student learning, retention, and graduation rates, with special attention to closing the under-represented minority student graduation gap. Dr. Junn graduated cum laude from the University of Michigan with High Honors in Psychology in 1979, and earned a Ph.D. and M.A. in Cognitive and Developmental Psychology from Princeton University. She completed Harvard University’s Management Development Program in 1998.

2012

Dr. Jacqueline L. Mok is the Vice President for Academic, Faculty and Student Affairs at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Prior to this position, she was Secretary of the Board of Trustees, Vice President and Chief of Staff at Johns Hopkins University. At the time of her award, Dr. Mok was at the University of Arizona, where she was appointed the first Vice President and Chief of Staff. She has also served for five and a half years as a cultural attaché of the US diplomatic corps in France, Nigeria and Sri Lanka. Dr. Mok earned her bachelor’s degree from Middlebury College in Vermont, her master’s degree in music education from the University of North Texas, and her doctorate in arts education from New York University.

2012

Dr. Suresh Subramani is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus and holds the Tata Chancellor’s Endowed Professorship in Molecular Biology at the University of California, San Diego. At the the time of his award, he held the positions of Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Chancellor Associates Chair.

A professor of Molecular Biology and a highly distinguished cell and molecular biologist, he has been a member of the UC San Diego faculty since 1982. Dr. Subramani received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and completed his post-doctoral work in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate, Paul Berg, at Stanford University. He is the recipient of many honors and awards and has been involved in many leadership roles in academia and in the biotechnology industry.

2011

Dr. Phyllis M. Wise was formerly the Interim President of the University of Washington. At the University of Washington, she had responsibility for all programs and operations of the University, reporting directly to the Board of Regents. The University of Washington is an AAU research university with an annual operating budget of near $4 billion and nearly 35,000 full and part-time employees. The University educates 47,000 regular students and 31,000 extension students and is the national leader among all public universities (2nd among all universities, public and private) in research funding, attracting more than $1 billion in grants and contracts per year.

Prior to assuming the role of Interim President, Wise served as Provost and Executive Vice President. As the University’s chief academic and budgetary officer, the Provost and EVP provides leadership in educational and curriculum development, formulation and allocation of budget and space, long-range strategic planning, and management of the University’s research programs.

Wise, who is a professor of Physiology and Biophysics, Biology, and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Washington, previously served as dean of the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California at Davis, from 2002 to 2005. Prior to that, she was professor and chair of the Department of Physiology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington from 1993 to 2002. Wise was a faculty member at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, from 1976 to 1993, promoting through the ranks to full professor of physiology in 1987.

She holds a bachelor’s degree (1967) from Swarthmore College in biology and a doctorate (1972) degree in zoology from the University of Michigan. In 2008 she received an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore College and was elected to the National Academy’s Institute of Medicine. She was also selected by the Puget Sound Business Journal as one of its 2008 Women of Influence.

Wise continues an active research program in issues concerning women’s health and gender-based biology. She has been particularly interested in whether hormones influence brains of women and men during development, during adulthood and during aging.

She has served on a number of scientific advisory committees, including NIH study sections and the Council of the National Institute on Aging. She currently serves on the RAND Health Board of Advisors, the Bullitt Foundation Board of Trustees, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. In 2008 she was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and was inducted into the Institute of Medicine.

Wise has received many awards, and is particularly proud of those that have acknowledged her lifelong dedication to mentoring students and junior investigators, particularly women. She received the Excellence in Science Award from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in 2002 and the Women in Endocrinology Mentor Award in 2003.

2010

Dr. S. Shankar Sastry is a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Bioengineering, and Mechanical Engineering and he is the faculty director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley. At the time of the award, he was also serving as the Dean of Engineering. An internationally recognized expert on embedded and autonomous software, Sastry has an exceptional background in technology research, spearheading projects to improve the nation’s cyber security and network infrastructure as well as initiatives in robotics and hybrid and embedded systems.

Sastry earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computers sciences from Berkeley in 1981. Since joining the faculty in 1983, he has demonstrated a level of energy, determination and commitment that would be exceedingly difficult to surpass. One of Berkeley’s most distinguished professors, he has held directorships of the Information Technology Office at DARPA and the Electronics Research Laboratory at Berkeley. He served as chair of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Department at Berkeley from 2001 to 2004 and as director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society from 2006 to 2008. He currently serves as the faculty director of the Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies.

His numerous honors include membership in the National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the IEEE, an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award and the Eckman Award of the American Automatic Control Council. He also received the President of India Gold Medal, the IBM Faculty Development Award, an honorary degree from Harvard and the distinguished alumnus award of the Indian Institute of Technology in 1999. Sastry began has tenure as dean of the College of Engineering, UC Berkeley on July 1, 2007.

2010

Dr. Meredith Jung-En Woo is currently the president of Sweet Briar College. At the time of her award, she was serving as the dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia. She came to UVA from the University of Michigan, where she served most recently as professor of political science and associate dean for the social sciences in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Prior to her eight years on the Michigan faculty, she taught for 12 years at Northwestern University, where she helped rebuild the department of political science and co-founded the Center for International and Comparative Studies.

An expert on international political economy and East Asian politics, she has written and edited seven books, and was the executive producer of an award-winning documentary film about Stalin’s ethnic cleansing of Koreans during the Great Terror. President Bill Clinton appointed her to serve on the Presidential Commission on U.S.-Pacific Trade and Investment Policy. She has consulted for the World Bank, the United States Trade Representative, Asian Development Bank Institute, the Asia Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation.

A native of Seoul who was educated in Seoul and Tokyo through high school, she came to the United States to study at Bowdoin College in Maine. She completed her master’s and doctoral degrees in international affairs, Latin American studies and political science at Columbia University.

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