From the Office of Public Affairs | https://www.news.ku.edu
Headlines
KU debaters recognized as best in nation
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas debaters John Marshall, Lawrence, and Graham Revare, Prairie Village, received the Rex Copeland Award as the top team in the country over the season April 3 at the opening ceremony of the National Debate Tournament in Spokane, Washington. Brett Bricker won the James J. Unger Award as the coach of the regular season champions. Three KU teams will compete April 4-7 in the NDT.
Third School of Business dean candidate to present April 8
LAWRENCE – Cheryl Druehl, professor and senior associate dean for faculty affairs and research at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University, will be the third dean candidate to give a public presentation on her vision for the University of Kansas School of Business. Her public presentation is scheduled for 4-5 p.m. April 8 in Room 1020 of Capitol Federal Hall, and it will be livestreamed.
KU professor of engineering wins NSF CAREER Award for research into high-performance computing
LAWRENCE — An assistant professor of engineering at the University of Kansas who is working to boost efficiency in supercomputers and other high-performance systems is the winner of a five-year, $558,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Hongyang Sun’s goal is to combine algorithm and machine learning to empower HPC systems to reduce runtime variability, conflicting demands and the differing structures of dynamic workflows. Considered to be among NSF’s most prestigious awards, CAREER grants are given each year to about 500 early-career faculty.
Full stories below.
————————————————————————
Contact: Scott Harris, KU Debate, 785-864-9878, sharris@ku.edu, @KansasDebate
KU debaters recognized as best in nation
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas debaters John Marshall, Lawrence, and Graham Revare, Prairie Village, received the Rex Copeland Award as the top team in the country over the season April 3 at the opening ceremony of the National Debate Tournament in Spokane, Washington. Brett Bricker won the James J. Unger Award as the coach of the regular season champions.
Marshall and Revare competed at eight tournaments and compiled a preliminary round record of 40-4, elimination round record of 23-3 and were 8-4 at two round-robin invitationals for the top teams in the country. They began the season by winning the Owen L. Coon Memorial Debate Tournament at Northwestern University in September and closed the season by winning the Texas Open Tournament at the University of Texas in February. In between they won the Georgetown College Tournament and the Herbert L. James Debates at Dartmouth. They finished second at the J.W. Patterson Debates hosted by the University of Kentucky and the Run for the Roses Tournament at the University of Kentucky. They took third place at the Franklin R. Shirley Debates at Wake Forest University and fifth at the Harvard College Tournament.
Over the eight tournaments, the KU duo collected a string of individual speaker awards as they were both among the top speakers at every tournament they attended. Marshall was the top speaker at Northwestern, Kentucky, Georgetown and Dartmouth, second speaker at Wake Forest and Texas, and third speaker at the Run for the Roses and Harvard tournaments. Revare was the top speaker at the Run for the Roses and the Texas Open, second speaker at Kentucky and Harvard, third speaker at Northwestern, Wake Forest and Dartmouth, and fifth speaker at Georgetown.
Scott Harris, the David B. Pittaway Director of Debate, said, “This was a remarkable season by two incredibly talented debaters and is one of the most impressive seasons in the history of KU Debate.”
Marshall and Revare are the third KU team to finish the regular season as the top team in the country. KU’s previous winners of the Copeland Award were Mark Gidley and Zachary Grant in 1982 and William Katz and Quaram Robinson in 2018.
Marshall was also named a Summa Cum Laude member of the Academic All American team by the Cross Examination Debate Association for his academic achievements.
The National Debate Tournament will take place April 4-7 at Gonzaga University. Last year, Revare debating with William Soper and Marshall debating with Jiyoon Park met in the Elite Eight of the NDT, with the higher-seeded team of Revare and Soper advancing to the Final Four. They reached the championship debate and finished as the national runners-up to the University of Michigan.
This year, KU will have three teams competing at the NDT. Joining Marshall and Revare are the team of Rose Larson, Milwaukee, and Luna Schultz, Houston, and the team of Ethan Harris and Jacob Wilkus, both from Lawrence.
-30-
————————————————————————
KU spent $78.9 million across Kansas on research-related goods and services in FY23.
https://ku.edu/distinction
————————————————————————
Contact: Savannah Rattanavong, Office of the Provost, 785-864-6402, s.rattanavong@ku.edu
Third School of Business dean candidate to present April 8
LAWRENCE — Cheryl Druehl will be the third dean candidate to give a public presentation on her vision for the University of Kansas School of Business.
Druehl’s presentation is scheduled for 4-5 p.m. April 8 in Room 1020 of Capitol Federal Hall. The event will also be livestreamed, and the passcode is 800688.
Druehl is the senior associate dean for faculty affairs and research and a professor within the information systems and operations management area at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
The fourth and final candidate will be announced approximately two business days before their campus visit. Their presentation will take place 4-5 p.m. April 10 in Room 1020 of Capitol Federal Hall.
Members of the KU community are encouraged to attend each presentation and provide feedback to the search committee. Presentation recordings and online feedback forms will remain available on the search page through April 15.
Further search information, including Druehl’s CV, can be found on the search page.
As senior associate dean for faculty affairs and research at the Costello College of Business, Druehl sees to the success of faculty, including leading college strategic planning, promoting excellence in research and teaching, and overseeing school-level faculty awards and professional development programs. She also collaborates on recruitment, retention, evaluation, and promotion and tenure initiatives while advocating for faculty and research needs.
In addition, Druehl teaches operations management, supply chain management, and management of technology and innovation processes.
Druehl’s research centers on product development, innovation contests and supply chain management. She has published research in journals including the Productions and Operations Management Journal, Journal of Operations Management and Decision Sciences Journal.
Druehl serves as department editor for the Innovation and Project Management department at the Journal of Operations Management. She is an associate editor for Decision Sciences Journal and is on the editorial review board of Productions and Operations Management Journal and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. She previously served on the boards of the Production and Operations Management Society’s College of Product Innovation and Technology Management and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences’ Technology, Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship Section.
Druehl earned a doctorate in business administration and master’s in business research from Stanford University, a Master of Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles.
The School of Business Dean search committee includes representatives from faculty, staff, students and alumni and is being led by Ann Brill, dean of the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications, and Jason Hornberger, vice provost of finance.
-30-
————————————————————————
KU News Service is now on BlueSky.
Follow for KU News Service stories, discoveries and experts.
https://bsky.app/profile/kunewsservice.bsky.social
————————————————————————
Contact: Cody Howard, School of Engineering, 785-864-2936, codyh@ku.edu
KU professor of engineering wins NSF CAREER Award for research into high-performance computing
LAWRENCE — An assistant professor of engineering at the University of Kansas who is working to boost efficiency in supercomputers and other high-performance systems is the winner of a five-year, $558,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.
Hongyang Sun, faculty member in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, is the recipient of an NSF Early Career Development (CAREER) award for his efforts to strengthen high-performance computing (HPC) systems by allowing them to do more work as they continue to expand. His goal is to combine algorithm and machine learning to empower HPC systems to reduce runtime variability, conflicting demands and the differing structures of dynamic workflows.
Eliminating such sources of uncertainty makes it easier for big computers — actually, clusters of networked servers together containing millions of nodes — to run together more smoothly, clearing the way for advancements in everything from neuroscience and medical research to climate modeling, artificial intelligence and beyond.
“These sources of uncertainty are becoming increasingly prevalent in today’s HPC platforms, and being able to effectively manage them will provide a significant improvement in runtime performance for a wide range of scientific applications,” Sun said. “This five-year grant will allow me to start an exciting new chapter in my research career and set the stage for influencing how future HPC systems operate at an unprecedented scale.”
Sun’s focus is on resource scheduling, which HPC systems use to govern which applications they run and when. He and his team look to find efficiencies in a combined approach: developing algorithms that will provide more accurate approximations of a range of metrics, from job completion times to resource utilization, while the researchers also use machine learning to train models to deliver accurate predictions for jobs runtimes, performance degradation and structural variability.
“Our hope is to achieve a new level of performance that neither framework — algorithm or machine learning — is able to accomplish alone,” Sun said. “We expect this integrated approach to offer unique perspectives and lay the foundation for the future of HPC resource management.”
Considered to be among NSF’s most prestigious awards, CAREER grants are given each year to about 500 early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research as well as education. The foundation expects recipients’ work to build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research.
The NSF first issued CAREER awards in 1995. Since then, KU’s Lawrence faculty has included 70 recipients: 28 in the School of Engineering, two in the School of Pharmacy and 40 in schools and departments across the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.
Sun, who arrived at KU in 2021, plans to use the grant to empower what he sees as a series of synergistic activities: outreach programs, curriculum development, student recruitment and more. He aims to engage students in K-12 through graduate school with programs and research opportunities that foster success in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and computer science.
Sun said he is grateful for the support he has received from his department, the School of Engineering and KU, and he’s ready to strengthen the performance, reliability, resilience — even energy and thermal efficiency — of large-scale computing systems and applications.
“The CAREER award will allow us to tackle a grand challenge in high-performance computing resource management,” Sun said. “I’m thankful.”
-30-
————————————————————————
KU News Service
1450 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence KS 66045
kunews@ku.edu
https://www.news.ku.edu
Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, director of news and media relations, ebp@ku.edu
Today’s News is a free service from the Office of Public Affairs
