Honorary Doctorates Named
KTH has announced the recipients of honorary doctorates for 2011:
—Professor Liam Bannon, University of Limerick, Ireland.
—Professor Jean M.J. Fréchet,, University of California Berkeley, USA.
—Professor Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, New York, USA.
—Stockholm County Governor Per Unckel, Sweden.
Each year KTH awards honorary doctorates in recognition of exceptional contributions to science, the arts and public policy.
About this year's recipients:
Professor Liam Bannon, Director, Interaction Design Centre, University of Limerick, Ireland.
Professor Bannon has had tremendous influence on the development of the fields of Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Supported Co-operative Work (CSCW). He participated in establishing the first European CSCW conference in 1989 and was founding editor in 1992 of CSCW: The Journal of Collaborative Computing.
Deeply involved in introducing HCI studies to developing countries, Professor Bannon has won renown for helping establish the field as a research discipline in India.
Liam Bannon has been called “the leading advocate for the Scandinavian tradition of user-centred design outside Scandinavia.” He has had a profound impact on the Scandinavian tradition of HCI and Interaction Design.
He has served on several occasions as a doctoral dissertation opponent at KTH, as a scientific consultant to the Graduate School for Human–Machine Interaction, and advisor on the formation of professorships in Interaction Design and Media Technology. Throughout his career, he has inspired students with his insightful discussions and lectures.
Professor Jean M.J. Fréchet, Henry Rapoport Chair of Organic Chemistry, University of California Berkeley, USA.
Jean M.J. Fréchet is head of Materials Synthesis, Materials Science Division and Director of the Organic and Macromolecular Facility for the Molecular Foundry and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
His research lies at the interface between organic chemistry and polymer chemistry, in the broad area of nanoscience and nanotechnology. He has authored more than 800 scientific papers, holds some 70 U.S. Patents, and is listed 16th on the Hirsch index rating of the world’s living chemists.
In June 2010, Professor Fréchet took an 18-month leave of absence from his positions at Berkeley to serve as acting Vice President of Research at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.
In the 1990s, Professor Fréchet led a graduate course in polymer chemistry at the Department of Chemical Engineering at KTH. Since then he has mentored many of the department’s young researchers, parlaying his enthusiasm, charisma and deep scientific knowledge into a never-ending source of inspiration.
Professor Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University in New York and visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Professor Sassen is the author of several books, including The Global City, The Mobility of Labor and Capital, and Globalization and Its Discontents, and she is co-editor of Digital Formations: IT and New Architectures in the Global Realm. She has written for The New York Times, The Financial Times and The International Herald Tribune.
As a leading researcher in globalisation, immigration and new technology, Professor Sassen is one of the most respected and widely cited social scientists of our time. Her co-operation with the KTH School of Architecture and the Built Environment began in 2004. She contributed to the project “Sustainable Urbanism & Beyond: Rethinking Cities for the Future”, slated for publication in 2012. Based at KTH, the enormous project includes 80 senior researchers worldwide.
Saskia Sassen will continue to contribute to research at the KTH School of Architecture and the Built Environment through a number of major initiatives. Her studies focus on globalisation, immigration, global cities, new technologies and changes within the liberal state — work that aligns well with KTH’s research programmes and educational platform.
Per Unckel, Stockholm County Governor, Sweden.
Serving as Governor of Stockholm County from 2007 until his death in September 2011, Per Unckel is credited with devoting boundless energy to the promotion of higher education and top-quality research. He was involved in a number of strategic research initiatives benefiting Swedish universities and colleges, not least KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Unckel’s interests were both informed and eclectic, spanning architecture, urban planning, transport modernisation, environmentally sound materials, innovative energy systems, and medical research.
Per Unckel was chairman of the Stockholm Science City Foundation (SSCi), whose mandate is to attract to the region companies and researchers active in life sciences and medicine.
He also served as chairman of the newly formed foundation Flemingsberg Science, which works to stimulate co-operation in research and training among Karolinska Institute, KTH, Karolinska University Hospital and Södertörn University.
In recent years, Unckel also contributed to the establishment of the Science for Life Lab (SciLifeLab), a national centre for large-scale research in molecular biosciences. KTH Royal Institute of Technology is the host university for SciLifeLab.
Kevin Billinghurst; kb2@kth.se