By Denise Brehm
Civil & Environmental Engineering

Department head Professor Patrick Jaillet presented David Gonzalez-Rodriguez with the School of Engineering’s Graduate Student Extraordinary Teaching and Mentoring Award for 2008 in an informal ceremony in Jaillet’s office this morning.

In his letter to the dean nominating Gonzalez-Rodriguez for the award, Jaillet said, “The department’s internal nomination process was competitive, but David emerged as the clear winner, with nominations from students and from faculty members Ole Madsen and Roman Stocker that were simply exceptional and represent endorsement of the highest level. David not only received extraordinarily high praise as an undergraduate TA, but also as a mentor of fellow graduate students.”

In announcing the award, Dean Subra Suresh referred to Gonzalez-Rodriguez as a “talented and dedicated young teacher and mentor.”

Gonzalez-Rodriguez has twice served as a teaching assistant in 1.060 Engineering Mechanics II. In 2007, he won the department’s Maseeh Award for excellence as a teaching assistant.

He is a Ph.D. candidate in fluid mechanics and coastal engineering working with Madsen on development of a mathematical model to predict sediment transport by waves and currents near the shoreline. “Besides my work on coastal engineering, I am generally interested in studying fundamental fluid mechanics problems using the tools of applied mathematics,” Gonzalez-Rodriguez states on his website.

Gonzalez-Rodriguez is recipient of several awards for his civil engineering academic work in Spain, as well as a silver-medal winner of the Spanish Olympiad of Mathematics in 1997, and first-place winner of the Galician Olympiad of Mathematics in 1996. The School of Engineering award includes a $2,000 cash prize, a certificate and a medallion.