Two from SEAS receive SUNY Chancellor's Awards

UBNow Staff

The Chancellor’s Awards acknowledge and provide system-wide recognition for consistently superior professional achievement and encourage the ongoing pursuit of excellence.

“Our faculty and staff educate, inspire and support our students to pursue their passions; they are the driving force on campus,” said SUNY Chancellor Kristina M. Johnson. “Those we honor are leading this effort through their commitment to their craft and their dedication to our students. I am proud to celebrate and honor this year’s recipients.”

They were among six faculty members and three staff members to be named recipients of the 2018 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence this year.

The Award recognizes the work of those who engage actively in scholarly and creative pursuits beyond their teaching responsibilities. 

The SUNY Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Kui Ren is widely considered a “global leader” in the field of computer and information security and privacy.

His work has significantly impacted the area of secure cloud data storage and computation with many foundational discoveries that have opened up new and meaningful research directions. These include cloud storage auditing, private and versatile cloud data search and fine-grained cloud data sharing.

In the area of wireless security, Ren has broken new ground with his seminal research on anti-jamming communications, security designs for cognitive radio networks, wireless physical-layer security, and secure mobile device-to-device communications. His recent work on exploring smartphone-based side-channel attacks against 3D printers and voice-replay-attack defense on mobile phones is gaining international attention.

A fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Ren is a prolific scholar, with 90 peer-reviewed journal and magazine articles, and another 123 papers published from peer-reviewed conferences. The resulting 22,000 citations — including nearly 19,000 citations since 2013 — have achieved an h-index of 58, according to Google Scholar.

Since he started his career in 2007, Ren has received 15 research awards from both private and public funding agencies, including eight from the National Science Foundation and two from the Department of Energy.

The award recognizes classified staff members who have consistently demonstrated superlative performance within and beyond their position. 

A UB staff member since 1985, Theresa (Terri) Nusstein joined the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2005 and now works in the Office of the Dean. Tasked with processing financial documents, Nusstein is credited with creating a system to record and provide on-demand balances for faculty startup allocations. She is praised for her work with faculty, staff and students to ensure that everyone understands the school’s processes and requirements.

Nusstein meets with SEAS financial staff monthly to discuss changes and challenges in the school’s financial environment, answer questions and take part in a forum for discussion and questions. She frequently visits departments or individuals directly to help train them or guide them through the application or problem they are trying to solve.

A valuable resource to SEAS students, Nusstein has become the point person who ensures that dean and new faculty startup and student appointments and scholarships are completed. Recognizing that the SEAS graduate student population is overwhelmingly international, she meets with these students and guides them to the appropriate forms, helps students complete the forms to ensure accuracy, and reviews them to make sure that everything is processed and the students receive the support as promised and on time.