The University of Colorado at Boulder will present the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award to six accomplished engineers at the 44th annual Engineering Awards Banquet on April 24.
Recipients of the 2009 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award are:
o David DiLaura, a retired CU-Boulder professor who specialized in lighting engineering;
o Dayl Larson, a retired architect with the Colorado firm H&L Architecture;
o Kenneth May, director of the industrial division at Abengoa Solar;
o Kile Morgan, chairman of Ponderosa Homes, a California company;
o Theodore Randolph, a CU-Boulder professor of chemical and biological engineering; and
o Nguyen Vinh, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan.
Dean Robert H. Davis will present the awards, which recognize outstanding graduates and friends of the College of Engineering and Applied Science who have distinguished themselves through outstanding personal qualities, knowledge and significant contributions to their fields. The honorees were selected by a committee of the Engineering Advisory Council.
David DiLaura, who received an honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado in 2008, is a retired professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering who was the guiding force behind the lighting engineering program at CU-Boulder for 26 years. DiLaura brought more than 20 years of experience in industry to his faculty position, and was an outstanding teacher and scholar whose innovative research revolutionized the field of lighting design and manufacturing.
Dayl Larson, who earned dual bachelor's degrees in architectural engineering and business from CU-Boulder in 1953, is retired from H&L Architecture, where he was an architect specializing in the design of education and health care facilities for more than 30 years. Larson was the project architect on several major buildings for CU-Boulder, the Cherry Creek School District, Silver Creek High School in Longmont, and several major hospital buildings in Denver.
Kenneth May, who earned his master's degree in chemical engineering from CU-Boulder in 1974, is a researcher and entrepreneur who helped to make solar thermal technology a commercial reality. After working on large-scale solar industrial projects at the Solar Energy Research Institute, he co-founded Industrial Solar Technology, a Colorado company that continued to develop and deploy the technology throughout the world. May is currently the director of the industrial division at Abengoa Solar.
Kile Morgan, who earned dual bachelor's degrees in civil engineering and business at CU-Boulder in 1969, is the chairman of Ponderosa Homes, a homebuilding company in the San Francisco Bay area, and a member of the California Building Industry Hall of Fame. Morgan also presides over his family foundation, which has established several endowments at CU-Boulder and awarded more than 30 full college scholarships to students from his high school alma mater in National City, Calif.
Theodore Randolph, who earned his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering at CU-Boulder in 1983, has been a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at CU-Boulder for the last 15 years. He is a world leader in protein stabilization and supercritical fluid technology in processes for enzymatic catalysis, particle formation and drug delivery, and he co-directs the Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. He also played a role in spinning off two companies, RxKinetix of Louisville, Colo., and BaroFold of Boulder.
Nguyen Xuan Vinh, who was CU-Boulder's first Ph.D. graduate in aerospace engineering in 1963, has led a distinguished career as a professor at the University of Michigan. His seminal work on the guidance, dynamics and optimal control of space vehicles and their interaction with the atmosphere has played a fundamental role in space exploration and technological development. Vinh came to the United States in 1962 to pursue a scientific career after serving as the commander of the Vietnamese Air Force at the young age of 28.
More information on these and past awards is available on the college's Web site at .