David Frakes
ASU’s Faculty Women’s Association has given two of its annual awards to a faculty member and a graduate student in the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering.
The FWA’s Outstanding Mentor Award went to assistant professor David Frakes, and a Distinguished Graduate Student Award was given to biomedical engineering doctoral student Christine Zwart.
Candidates for the awards are nominated by ASU faculty members, students or staff. Recipients are selected by the FWA executive board.
Frakes was cited for his leadership of the Image Processing Applications Laboratory and his work to “maintain a productive and diverse research environment, in which his students are challenged and supported to reach their full potential.”
He was also recognized for his mentoring of individual students. One of his nominators wrote: “Student success does not end at the planning stage, but is only possible with the assistance and mentorship of an outstanding professor. Dr. Frakes fits this model perfectly in his ability to know when and how to push his students.”
Christine Zwart
Zwart, who works in Frakes’ lab, “has established herself as an excellent student, researcher, teacher, and mentor,” the FWA said. She “is responsible for bringing two extremely competitive fellowships to ASU, by being awarded the Science Foundation Arizona Graduate Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.”
Her research efforts have resulted in numerous publications in prestigious journals and conference presentations. Zwart, described by one nominator as “remarkable,” was also cited for her teaching contributions.
She was co-instructor for a graduate-level biomedical and electrical engineering course for which she developed the curricula. She also has designed and implemented multiple K-12 education outreach efforts.
