The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Illinois International Programs are pleased to introduce the recipients of the 2022 and 2020 International Achievement Awards. The International Achievement Awards recognize outstanding alumni, faculty, and students whose exceptional work, service, and/or scholarship has made a significant, global impact.
The 2022 International Achievement Award recipients are:
Professor Arun Chaiseri
Madhuri and Jagdish N. Sheth International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement
Richard Cooke
Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement
Anna Fairbairn
Charles C. Stewart International Young Humanitarian Award
Hanwei Wang
Illinois International Graduate Achievement Award
The 2020 International Achievement Award recipients are:
Bambang P S Brodjonegoro
Madhuri and Jagdish N. Sheth International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement
Dr. Peter Goldsmith
Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement
Gloria Yen
Charles C. Stewart International Young Humanitarian Award
Sital Uprety
Illinois International Graduate Achievement Award
Sophie Luijten
Illinois International Undergraduate Achievement Award
Recipient Biographies
Madhuri and Jagdish N. Sheth International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement Recipient
Professor Arun Chaiseri
Professor Arun Chaiseri (M.S. Civil Engineering, 1960) has made tremendous contributions to the development of civil engineering practice and construction technology in Thailand. He taught civil engineering at Chulalongkorn University until 1976 and established ACS engineering consulting company in 1977. ACS has fostered the development of young engineers. Many university students around the world are trained at his company.
Professor Arun has combined academic research in structural engineering and latest construction technology, including large-diameter bored pile, micro pile, wind-tunnel testing of long-span structures to be used in his country for the first time. His works include more than 20 high-rise and several iconic buildings in Bangkok.
Professor Arun is also known for his dedicated service to his profession and his contribution to the public. He was the President of the Engineering Institute of Thailand under the King’s Patronage from 1994-1997 and was the First President of the Council of Engineers of Thailand in 2000.
Learn more about Professor Chaiseri's life and career.
Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement Recipient
Dr. Richard Cooke
Richard Cooke is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE) at UIUC. He is a world-renowned, highly regarded expert in drainage engineering. He has been leading research and extension efforts on increasing the efficiency of drainage-related management practices and developing protocols for their design. His upbringing in Jamaica has provided him with a unique perspective on the international importance of effective and sustainable management of water resources. It is through this lens that he has devoted a substantial part of his professional career to engaging with professionals in various countries, including Sierra Leone, Brazil, and India, who are in dire need of advice, mentoring, and resources to address their water management challenges.
For the past several years, Professor Cooke has been working with Njala University in Sierra Leone to determine the feasibility and economic viability of a new system for lowland development. This systems approach involves graduate students from the participating departments working on different aspects of a single project. In addition to developing the research capacity and research culture at Njala University, the impact of this study is twofold. First, it will increase rice productivity and increase food security by introducing efficient water management, improved rice cultivars, and staple crops. Second, it will investigate the impact of improved agricultural practices on farmers’ socio-economic conditions in the context of Sierra Leone where little research currently exists.
He also serves as an adjunct professor in the Department of Agricultural Engineering at Njala University in Sierra Leone and focuses on capacity building through workshops in GIS Applications in Soil and Water Engineering, Nonpoint Source Pollution Modeling, and Research Methodology. He has supervised two PhD students to completion. His students are advancing research in rainfall harvesting, which has extended the single cropping season to two and three seasons per year in upland areas and inland valley swamps, respectively. Both PhD awardees are also strategically extending their research across Sierra Leone and into to neighboring countries in West Africa. Professor Cooke was instrumental in initiating the accreditation of the Agricultural Engineering program at Njala University and the development of Assuring Quality Higher Education in Sierra Leone, a project funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID).
In other international activities, Professor Cooke has provided leadership or participated in international work on drainage and water quality in Brazil and India. In addition, he has mentored and traveled with students working on Engineers Without Borders projects in Cameroon and Malawi. He has also supervised students working on semester-long water quality projects in Cameroon.
Described by colleagues, collaborators, and students as a highly intelligent and extremely thoughtful engineer and scholar with a true passion for improving the quality of life for people around the world, Professor Cooke’s contributions have been recognized through many prestigious awards, including the 2021 ACES Faculty Award for Global Impact, 2020 ACES Senior Faculty Award for Excellence in Extension, and 2020 Gunlogson Countryside Engineering Award from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers for outstanding contributions nationally and internationally in enhancing the performance, water quality, and monitoring of drainage and rainfall harvesting systems. Additionally, Professor Cooke received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award for the 2020-2021 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. He was named the 2014 Mentor of the Year by the Njala University Society for Academic Advancement and was named an Honorary Lifetime Member and received the Silver Shovel award for outstanding contributions from the Illinois Land Improvement Contractors Association.
Charles C. Stewart International Young Humanitarian Award Recipient
Anna Fairbairn
Anna is the Deputy Country Director at One Acre Fund Tanzania. One Acre Fund is a social enterprise that provides financing for smallholder farmers for agricultural inputs and training on best agricultural practices to over 1 million farmers in six countries in East Africa. In Tanzania, Anna’s team distributes $15 million of agricultural inputs to 75,000 clients across 360 villages in the Southern Highlands.
Anna works with the 400+ person field extension team who deliver training on best agricultural practices. Anna also works with the research and development team who identify new agricultural products to scale to farmers and execute One Acre Fund’s impact evaluations. During her tenure at One Acre Fund, the team has scaled and distributed 3.5 million fruit, timber, and soil improving tree seedlings as well as 32MT of hybrid sunflower seed, driving a total additional profit for One Acre Fund farmers of $1.2 million. In seasons to come, she hopes to scale soil testing as an offering to clients and continue to advance One Acre Fund’s agroforestry and integrated soil fertility management interventions as key climate change adaptation strategies for One Acre Fund clients.
Anna received a MSc in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Illinois in 2017 and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Illinois in 2011. As part of her graduate work, Anna was a Borlaug Fellow at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Tanzania where she completed a year of field research examining farmers’ perceptions of fertilizer quality. In between her studies, also spent four happy years working at the University of Illinois Education Abroad Office
Illinois International Graduate Achievement Award Recipient
Hanwei Wang
Hanwei Wang earned his B.S. degree in mathematics and physics from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 2019. He worked as a research intern at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Hong Kong in 2018. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is interested in applying his knowledge in physics to biomedical engineering and consumer electronics by inventing technologies and products that can benefit people’s life. His work broadly covers the topics of wireless power transfer, nanophotonics, and biomedical imaging.
Hanwei has always been curious about the physical world and passionate about investigating those mystical phenomena. He demonstrated a strong interest in physics since middle school and became fascinated by the elegant equations related to those physical laws. He began his research career as a high school student by participating in the Chinese Young Physicists Tournament, a competition for young Chinese physics enthusiasts to solve real-world physics problems. Due to his outstanding performance, he was selected as one of the national team members and obtained the first gold medal for China in the 2014 International Young Physicists Tournament. From then on, he started to show his talent in innovation and leadership. Later, he received the highest honor of Shing-Tung Yau Science Award, which led him to be directly admitted to Tsinghua University. During his undergraduate study, he kept his interest in research and technological innovation. He participated in multiple research projects related to spectroscopy, condensed matter physics, phased-array antenna, and wireless power transfer. As an undergraduate student, he published 6 academic articles, one of which was published in IEEE Transactions on Industry Electronics, being one of the best journals in the field. He also received the highest honor for technological innovation from Tsinghua University.
When Hanwei joined the University of Illinois, he sought to extend the physical principle of metamaterials to low-frequency magnetic fields, so they can be used for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), wireless power transfer, and transcranial magnetic stimulation. He developed a theory with temporal coupled-mode theory and demonstrated its application in both MRI and wireless power transfer. His work was selected as a cover page of the journal VIEW and reported in the news release of Holonyak Micro & Nanotechnology Lab, Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois public account, and the website of Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry. Besides his research in magnetic metamaterials, he also built up an optical force microscopy system to characterize the near-field forces given by nanoantennas and nanoparticles. His works were published in top journals such as Nature Nanotechnology, Nanophotonics, and Photoacoustics. The technologies he developed resulted in two patents and more than 10 publications. His achievements have been widely recognized by numerous fellowships including Hong, Mccully, and Allen Fellowship, Yee Memorial Fund Fellowship, and Mavis Future Faculty Fellowship. He is also one of the finalists of the Illinois Innovation Award and Andrew T. Yang Research Award.
Hanwei is enthusiastic about contributing to scientific and engineering communities through providing education, mentorship, and services of a high standard. He volunteered to be a teaching assistant in advanced courses such as digital image processing and integrated circuit theory and fabrication. He was nominated by his students for the Olesen Award and selected as an excellent teacher in 2020. He has mentored over 10 undergraduate students. Most of the students were greatly inspired and decided to continue their studies in graduate schools. He has served as a mentor in Illume Research for 3 years. His students were admitted to top universities around the world including Imperial College London and Cambridge University. Hanwei also pays attention to providing peer review services of high quality. He serves as a reviewer for top journals in the field including IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics and Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics. He is a trusted reviewer of the Institute of Physics, which is an honorable recognition offered to the top 15% of reviewers in the field. He wishes his enthusiasm and efforts could result in useful technologies and valuable contributions to society that will have a long-lasting benefit to our lives.
Recipient Biographies
Madhuri and Jagdish N. Sheth International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement Recipient
Bambang P S Brodjonegoro
Professor Bambang Brodjonegoro started his career as an academia in Universitas Indonesia, as a lecturer, researcher, and faculty dean. The opportunities to contribute to his country as the Minister of National Development Planning and Minister of Finance have established Prof. Brodjonegoro's career firmly in integrating Indonesia's research, technology, innovation, development planning, financing, and economic stabilization. He currently serves as the Minister of Research and Technology/Chief of the National Research and Innovation Agency of the Republic of Indonesia.
He has also actively participated in numerous local and international organizations, as well as several Indonesian companies. Those experiences have shaped his career and afforded him various essential soft-skills which benefit his work within the Republic of Indonesia and globally. He has received numerous honors and awards for this work. Learn more about Prof. Brodjonegoro.
Prof. Brodjonegoro earned his Master's and Ph.D. in Urbana and Regional Planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1997. He received his Bachelor's in Economics from the Universitas Indonesia in 1990.
Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement Recipient
Dr. Peter Goldsmith
Dr. Peter Goldsmith is the Professor and Director, Food and Agribusiness Management Program, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Goldsmith graduated in 1995 from the Ohio State University with a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics. From 1995-1999 he worked as an Assistant Professor, McGill University in Montreal and is currently a Professor of Agribusiness Management in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois. In addition to his Ph.D., Dr. Goldsmith has received an MBA in Finance, and undergraduate degrees in Dairy Science and Political Science. He is a leading scholar within the field of Agribusiness Management and is a Fellow of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association.
In addition to teaching Food Marketing, Dr. Goldsmith developed the world’s first course on agrifood supply chain management and blockchain applications. His research interest is global agro-industrial marketing and strategy specifically looking at intellectual property management, agricultural development, biotechnology, and supply chain management within soybean-livestock energy value chains. Dr. Goldsmith, having worked extensively in Mato Grosso, Brazil and Argentina, is one of the world’s leading soybean economists with unique expertise in low latitude soybean production and agro-industrial development. Dr. Goldsmith serves as the Director and Principal Investigator of USAID’s Feed the Future Lab for Soybean Value Chain Research, a $20m research enterprise that operates in 27 countries.
Before embarking on a career in academia, Dr. Goldsmith worked in the dairy industry as the assistant general manager of a cooperative and as a herdsman; and as a large animal specialist in the U.S. Peace Corps in South America.
Charles C. Stewart International Young Humanitarian Award Recipient
Gloria Yen
Gloria Yen received a B.M. in Music History from the University of Illinois in 2011 before earning an M.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. Her commitment to working alongside marginalized communities has led her to the fields of human development and disability studies, black oral history, and most recently, immigrant integration. As Director of the New American Welcome Center (NAWC) at the University YMCA, she has the great privilege of leading a mighty team of relentless advocates in pursuit of equitable access, economic opportunity, and meaningful belonging for immigrants in Champaign County where every 1 in 9 residents is foreign-born.
Gloria’s built upon a long legacy of welcoming at the University YMCA by cultivating strategic collaborations and programming to help address community-identified needs-- playing a central role in securing over $1 million in funding to support resource navigation initiatives, immigration legal services, access to justice, and community-bridge building efforts. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Gloria mobilized emergency rapid response efforts, using innovative outreach and service strategies to raise and distribute over $160,000 in emergency financial assistance, create a multilingual COVID-19 resource guide, and advocate for the inclusion of immigrant communities, regardless of status, in local and statewide relief efforts.
As a US DOJ Partially Accredited Representative, Gloria provides immigration legal representation for low-income and indigent persons in Champaign County. Gloria is also an appointed member of the Illinois Social Services Advisory Council and serves on the Champaign County Regional Planning Commission’s Community Action Board.
A current resident of Historic East Urbana (#urbanalove) and self-proclaimed foodie, you can find Gloria enjoying the Urbana Farmer’s market, trying new recipes (@gloria.yen) and watching YouTube videos of street food vendors across the world.
Illinois International Graduate Achievement Award Recipient
Sital Uprety
Born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, Sital Uprety was always cognizant about water and sanitation issues in his surroundings. Sital had first-hand opportunities to experience and learn about public health issues, water supply, and sanitation in his home country. Soon after he completed high school, Sital moved to Columbia, Missouri, and pursed B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering. He participated in water-related research since his freshman year and spent a summer in Texas A&M University researching improving wastewater efficiency.
Sital started his graduate program at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) in 2014, and about a year after Sital joined the program in Illinois, Nepal was struck by a devastating earthquake on April 25, 2015. Sital, along with his colleagues, organized a benefit concert featuring young and local bluegrass/folk musicians and raised close to $5000. Besides, through other fundraising events, he was able to raise close to $11,000. The raised fund was used to buy filtering units and distributed them to vulnerable families in Nepal. Such water filtering units are vital in preventing diarrheal diseases in families living in temporary housings, often in unsanitary conditions. The rest of the raised funds were used to start an initiative, Supporting Educational and Environmental Development in School (SEEDS) with a local non-profit, Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO). For his research, Sital continued to work on the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) issues in Nepal but geared towards understanding how a newly introduced adaptation, response, and relief may prevent the spread of waterborne pathogens under stress caused by natural disasters, including earthquakes.
In addition to his efforts with earthquake relief and related research, Sital has also been involved in mentoring undergraduate students and exposing them to international research. Since 2014, he has led four two-month-long research trips to Nepal, consisting of undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds, and has engaged them in research projects in a complex environment with limited resources. Under his mentorship, students were responsible for collecting and processing water/sanitation samples, testing for different water quality parameters on-site, and DNA/RNA extraction of collected samples. Some students were also conducting surveys and focus group discussions with study participants. Undergraduate students on these trips learned a lot about these trips, and many expressed how it changed the way they look at things. Sital has always been proactive about student learning and thus always involves them in challenging yet interesting tasks. During these trips, Sital also hired local students with similar majors and got them paired for field visits and lab research. This provided a valuable opportunity for local students to participate in international research and learn about the sector's latest methodologies, which are often not taught in Nepal.
Motivated by his field trips, Sital and his colleague, Nora, designed and got funded ($15,000) for a graduate seminar (CEE 598 DEV) Interdisciplinary training for engineers and scientists: Bridging the gap for sustainable International Development Projects. The seminar trained graduate students on community assessment methods and appropriate technology selection, implementation practices, and management and development of long-term monitoring tools for evaluation and project sustainability. This course motivated graduate students to take initiatives in transitional research. He invited several national and international experts with different backgrounds to share their experiences, insights into their work, and answer students' queries.
Sital has been recognized with several prestigious fellowships, including National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, Japan Society for Promotion of Sciences (JSPS) Fellowship, and several other travel fellowships. Sital recently started a new position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Sciences and Technology (Eawag) as an Eawag Postdoctoral Fellow in Zurich, Switzerland. During this 2-year long fellowship, he will be working with Sanitation, Water, and Solid Waste for Development (Sandec) in studying the association of human behavioral response and water microbiome in flood-prone regions of Nepal.
Illinois International Undergraduate Achievement Award Recipient
Sophie Isolde Luijten
Sophie is a junior majoring in Global Studies and Spanish, with a concentration in Environmental Sustainability and Social Responsibility. She is dedicated to promoting climate justice and sustainable development. As a research assistant at the Safe Global Water Institute, she studied water potability and wastewater treatment in the pursuit of alternative water resources under the guidance of Dr. M.J. Plewa. She has engaged in immigrant advocacy as a Spanish Translator for the Immigration Project, where she translated letters of support for low-income immigrants, and as Integration Plan Intern at the New American Welcome Center, where she researched equitable community planning strategies in the development of a citywide immigrant integration plan. Additionally, she has contributed to service projects with the Hunger and Homelessness Project and Habitat for Humanity. On campus, Sophie serves as a Global Studies Leader, mentor for the Campus Honors Program, youth leader in the YMCA Climate Solutions Summit Team, and is a Chancellor’s Scholar, James Scholar, Bailey Scholar, and Dean’s List honoree. This summer, she was granted a Summer Research Award from the Campus Honors Program to research women’s empowerment strategies in the Global South under the guidance of Dr. Valeria Bonatti. Most recently, Sophie published her research paper, "Climate Change and Women’s Security: Case Study in Mozambique," in the HRI Environmental Humanities research publication, Defining Environments: Critical Studies in the Natural World. In February, she will present this research at the Seventeenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability, at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Through her coursework and extracurriculars, she aims to better understand connections between poverty, sustainability, and immigration to help create a more inclusive and robust society.