Halas receives honorary doctorate from La Salle University

Halas receives honorary doctorate from La Salle University

By MARILYN HOWARD
Special to the Rice News

Naomi Halas, the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, professor of bioengineering and professor of chemistry, has received one of the highest honors in academia, an honorary doctorate of science from her undergraduate alma mater, La Salle University.

NAOMI HALAS

“It was a really great honor for me and a very moving experience,” Halas said of the Oct. 7 ceremony in Philadelphia.

In conferring the degree, La Salle President Michael McGinniss said, “Your work has been recognized by the federal government, industry, academia, professional societies, publications and women’s organizations, among others. Today, it is La Salle’s turn to honor you. It is important to note that we honor you also for the ‘spiritual barometer,’ as you call it, which guides your life, for your belief in putting a human face on engineering and for your devotion to your students.”

Halas, a world-renowned leader in the field of nanophotonics, joined Rice’s faculty in 1989. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Society for Optical Engineering and the Optical Society of America.

She is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award and a four-time winner of the Rice Engineering Alumni’s Hershel M. Rich Invention Award. She received the Cancer Innovator Award from the congressionally directed medical research programs of the U.S. Department of Defense in 2003 and was named to Esquire magazine’s “Best & Brightest 2006” list in December.

Halas earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from La Salle in 1980, graduating magna cum laude. She earned her master’s and doctorate degrees from Bryn Mawr College.

La Salle is a comprehensive, coeducational university established in 1863 by the Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic teaching order. Today the university educates approximately 6,100 undergraduate and graduate students in nearly 60 academic disciplines at its three campuses in Philadelphia and surrounding counties.

A recent study conducted by researchers at Franklin and Marshall College found that La Salle ranked seventh out of 253 schools of its type as the undergraduate point-of-origin of doctoral degree recipients between 1920 and 1975.