The American Hellenic Council of California presented its 2011 Aristeio Award in Academics to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi last weekend.

Katehi, an electrical engineer who was born and raised in Greece, received the award during an April 9 dinner in Los Angeles. “Aristeio” is Greek for “excellence.”

The chancellor’s husband, Spyros Tseregounis, a lecturer in UC Davis’ College of Engineering and a faculty coordinator in the recently established Office of Corporate Relations, joined her at the awards gala.

“Chancellor Katehi is being recognized by the Greek-American community for her achievements in her field of expertise and for making the Greek-American community proud,” Alexander Mizan, the council’s executive director, said by e-mail before the ceremony.

“She has achieved regional, national and international recognition for her excellence, and we deem it past due that her own ethnic community present her with an award for her accomplishments.”

The council has presented the Aristeio Award in Academics for the last seven years, honoring Greek-Americans who have made major impacts, each in his or her field of study, nationally and internationally, and who have supported Hellenism.

Katehi was born in Athens and raised about 40 miles west of there, on the island of Salamis in the Aegean Sea.

At the awards gala, Katehi and husband sat with American Hellenic Council board member Nick G. Alexopoulos, retired dean of engineering at UC Irvine. He met Katehi more than 30 years ago at the National Technical University in Athens; Alexopoulos was a professor at UCLA at the time, on sabbatical at the Greek university, and Katehi was an undergraduate there.

Alexopoulos became Katehi’s mentor at UCLA, where she did her graduate work, receiving a master’s degree in 1981 and a doctorate in1984.

Twenty-five years later, in May 2009, Alexopoulos sat in Jackson Hall, at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, when UC President Mark G. Yudof introduced Katehi as UC Davis’ sixth chancellor.

In between UCLA and UC Davis, she was a professor and administrator at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Purdue University; and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006, cited for her contributions to three-dimensional integrated circuits and on-wafer packaging, and to engineering education.

Katehi has received numerous national and international awards, recognizing her as a technical leader and educator. She holds 19 U.S. patents and has applied for several more. She is the author or co-author of 10 book chapters and about 650 refereed publications in journals and symposia proceedings.

Read the American Hellenic Council of California’s interview with Chancellor Katehi.

•••

Two faculty members are due to receive awards this month from the Association for Women in Science, Northern California Chapters, recognizing scientific achievement in combination with support of other female scientists, through mentoring and career development.

The association announced Tonya Kuhl, professor of biomedical engineering and of chemical engineering and materials science, as the recipient of the Judith Pool Award for scientists with 10-plus years past training.

Angelique Louie, associate professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and of Chemistry, receives the Ellen Weaver Award for service by a scientist with five to 10 years past training.

The awards presentation is scheduled during a banquet April 27 in Burlingame, on the San Francisco Peninsula.

More information.

•••

Alison Berry, a professor of plant sciences and director of the Road Ecology Center, is the recipient of an honorary degree from Stockholm University.

The university recognized her for exemplary research in plant biology, work that is helping to integrate human and natural ecosystems worldwide.

Berry is an expert in the field of nitrogen-fixing actinorhizal plant microbe interactions and has recently expanded her research to bioenergetics and conflicts in the interface between people and the environment.

She has a long-standing collaboration with Stockholm University's Department of Botany, where she was a visiting professor in 2008-09.

•••

The American Accounting Association’s executive committee has appointed Paul A. Griffin, professor of management, as a co-editor of the association’s quarterly journal, Accounting Horizons. The committee appointed Arnold Wright of Northeastern University as the other co-editor.

Griffin’s research spans a wide range of topics in financial accounting, capital markets and auditing research. This research extends from his early publications on the time-series properties of accounting earnings to later articles on a diverse set of issues, including investors’ responses to financial disclosures, auditor changes, and Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Griffin and Wright are due to take up their co-editor posts in late spring of 2012, when co-editors Dana Hermanson and Terry Shevlin complete their three-year terms.

•••

Eric Mah, director of UC Davis’ Institutional Review Board, has taken a seat on the state Board of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians.

Assembly Speaker John A. Perez appointed Mah to the state board, as a public member. The board is charged with protecting consumers from unprofessional and unsafe licensed vocational nurses and psychiatric technicians. Board members do not receive a salary for their service.

His UC Davis work puts him in charge of the Institutional Review Board’s administration, which provides education and training, administrative and recordkeeping support, and conducts quality improvement audits for the Institutional Review Board. The board is a campuswide committee charged with protecting the rights and welfare of human subjects in university research studies.

•••

Dateline UC Davis welcomes news of faculty and staff awards, for publication in Laurels. Send information to dateline@ucdavis.edu.