Meet the Recipients of the 2023 Outstanding Faculty Awards

Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award 

Joël Porquet-Lupine, Computer Science 

Joël Porquet-Lupine is passionate about teaching computer science, with his primary research interest in developing tools that advance computer science education. His peers in the Department of Computer Science note that he has led the charge on reshaping computer science at UC Davis due to his dedication to the topic and investment in making courses fair, accessible and inclusive to all students. 

He has developed an offline interactive textbook framework, a technology-oriented podcast project, and a new seminar series on computer science education. One impactful innovation he has brought is "The Missing CS Class." This student-led course teaches computing ecosystem literacy, which aims to reduce the academia-industry gap. Porquet-Lupine is also improving the department's diversity, equity and inclusion efforts by studying, for example, the relationship between class participation and gender.  

Students continuously recognize Porquet-Lupine's ability to present complex information in a clear and engaging manner, particularly for core undergraduate courses. Between 2018 and 2020, he received a teaching award from the student-led Davis Computer Science Club each year. In addition, his department honored him with the Excellence in Teaching Award in 2020. 

Porquet-Lupine joined UC Davis in 2017. Before joining the university, he received his Ph.D., master's and bachelor's degrees in computer science from Sorbonne University. 

Outstanding Junior Faculty Award

Marina Radulaski, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Since joining the college in 2018, Marina Radulaski has become one of the leading voices in the developing field of quantum nanophotonics and computing. She has presented at over 50 conferences, including the Royal Society's meeting on silicon carbide quantum spintronics, and has published more than 30 research papers in esteemed journals like Nature Photonics. In addition, the National Science Foundation, Google and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research have all awarded Radulaski early career awards for research on integrating color centers into nanophotonic devices and for the development of next-generation quantum hardware. 

Radulaski has also impacted the university. She pioneered a quantum computing curriculum and the Quantum Information Science and Technology, or QuIST, a research initiative at the University of California, Davis, and designed three new engineering courses. Her efforts have helped set the global stage for UC Davis to be a quantum computing and information science hub. 

Radulaski earned her Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University in 2017, where she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in electrical engineering before joining UC Davis. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from the University of Belgrade and a bachelor's and master's in computer science from Union University in Serbia. 

Outstanding Mid-Career Faculty Award

Alissa Kendall, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Alissa Kendall is a high-impact researcher seeking to empower societies' ability to mitigate climate change. She applies an industrial ecology approach to engineering to understand and reduce the environmental effects of engineered systems, such as transportation. Her recent work is innovating the sustainable management of electric vehicle batteries globally and linking environmental justice to critical material investments. 

She is an authority on connecting the field of engineering to policy. In California, she frequently presents life cycle assessments relevant to energy and climate policies to industry and government leaders. At the United Nations Environment Programme, she spoke on environmental justice issues in the electric vehicle life cycle.  

Kendall joined the college in 2007 after receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and a bachelor's in environmental engineering from Duke University. She is the founding chair of the Energy Graduate Group at UC Davis, which offers graduate students interdisciplinary training to tackle current and future energy problems. 

Outstanding Senior Faculty Award

Kwan-Liu Ma, Computer Science

Kwan-Liu Ma's research has transformed the visualization of big data with high-performance computing, advanced computer graphics, human-computer interaction and machine learning. His work has allowed scientists to see their data with a higher level of clarity, enabling them to communicate easily and, often, to discover unseen aspects of their research. 

Among the top 10 most cited visualization researchers, Ma has received many prestigious honors. He received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the National Science Foundation in 2000 and the Visualization Technical Achievement Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, in 2013. He became a fellow of the IEEE in 2012. 

Beyond academia, Ma's work on big data visualization has left an indelible mark: the e-commerce, security, manufacturing, and visualization industries have adopted several visualization codes produced by his group. 

Ma earned his Ph.D., master's and bachelor's in computer science from the University of Utah before joining UC Davis in 1999. He is currently a Distinguished Professor and has previously served as the chair for the Graduate Group in Computer Science. He is the director of the UC Davis Center for Visualization.