Kurt Becker Receives Honorary Degree from the University of Innsbruck, Austria

Kurt Becker, Poly’s newly appointed Associate Provost for Research and Technology Initiatives & Dean of Sciences and Arts, was one of three honorees to receive the title of Honorary Professor at the Leopold-Franzens University (LFU) Innsbruck, Austria in a ceremony held on March 6, 2007. The LFU Innsbruck is one of the top three universities in Austria and was recently ranked among the top 200 universities worldwide (Shanghai ranking). According to the by-laws of the LFU “the title Honorary Professor at the Leopold-Franzens University Innsbruck may be awarded to an individual of outstanding scholarly achievements who has made significant and sustained contributions to the university over a period of at least ten years”.

In his laudatio, Vice-Rector for Research Tilmann Märk stated that “... Prof. Becker has maintained a close and mutually beneficial research collaboration with the Institute for Ion Physics at the LFU Innsbruck for 15 years, which has resulted in more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, many of them in high-impact journals ... he has co-supervised three PhD students at the LFU and served as external examiner on the thesis committees of three other PhD students ... he has been instrumental in securing competitive funding for collaborative research projects with the LFU ... he has delivered numerous lectures over a span of 15 years including specialized seminars, general colloquia, short-courses for students, and public lectures for general audiences at the LFU ...”