Contact:
Julia Kent
jkent@cgs.nche.edu
(202) 223-3791

Washington, DC – The Council of Graduate Schools / ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards, the nation’s most prestigious honor for doctoral dissertations, were presented to Björn B. Brandenburg and Junjie Chen at an awards ceremony during the CGS 52nd Annual Meeting. Dr. Brandenburg completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last year. Dr. Chen earned his doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011.

Bestowed annually since 1982, the awards recognize recent doctoral recipients who have already made unusually significant and original contributions to their fields. ProQuest, the world’s premier dissertation publisher, sponsors the awards and an independent committee from the Council of Graduate Schools selects the winners. Two awards are given each year, rotating among four general areas of scholarship. The winners receive a certificate, a $2000 honorarium, and travel to the awards ceremony.

“The work of these two extraordinary scholars represent the highest standards of intellectual rigor and indisputably, represent significant contributions to their respective fields,” said Mary Sauer-Games, ProQuest Vice President of Information Solutions.

The 2012 Award in mathematics, physical sciences and engineering was presented to Dr. Brandenburg for “Scheduling and Locking in Multiprocessor Real-Time Operating Systems.” His dissertation research addresses real-time and embedded systems that individuals use on an everyday basis, as in cars and computers, often without the awareness that these systems exist. The dissertation addresses questions key to resource-allocation for real-time operating systems (RTOSs), a project that allowed Dr. Brandenburg to develop a new multicore RTOS called LITMUS (LInux Testbed for MUltiprocessor Scheduling in Real-Time Systems).  Dr. Brandenburg is currently a tenure-track faculty member at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, where he is Head of the institute’s real-time systems group.
 

[Photo caption: The 2012 CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards. From left to right; Mary Sauer-Games, Sheryl Tucker, Bonnie Melhart, Steve Matson, Bjorn Brandenburg, David Holger, Venkat Allada, John Roberts.]

Dr. Chen received the 2012 Award in social sciences for his dissertation, “When the State Claims the Intimate: Population Control Policy and the Makings of Chinese Modernity.” His research, an ethnographic study, examines the “human experience of China’s post-socialism and associated globalizing efforts as they are reconfigured in the seemingly intimate space of reproduction.” More specifically, Dr. Chen’s work explores the reproductive practices of peasants in northeast China, analyzing the ways in which these practices “intersect with the politics and policies of biomedicine and technology, as well as with those of gender, class, kinship, and ethnic identities.”  Dr. Chen is currently a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University as well as a research affiliate at Columbia’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

[Photo caption: The 2012 CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards. From left to right; William Buttlar, Larry Lyon, Zhen Chen, Junjie Chen, Isaac Chen, Lynne Pepall, Marlene Coles, Mary Sauer-Games, John Roberts.]

More information about the CGS / ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award is available at www.proquest.com/go/scholars or at www.cgsnet.org.