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The 2023 Duncan Fraser Award Committee along with the IFEES Executive Committee is pleased to announce Uriel Cukierman as the 2023 Award recipient.
Dr. Cukierman’s remarkable career spanning over four decades is marked by his unwavering commitment to STEM education and engineering innovation. His parallel career as an Electronic Engineer and entrepreneur, along with his pivotal contributions to networking systems, showcases his multidimensional impact. His global leadership, from chairing the Microsoft Research Latin-American Advisory Board to his roles in iNEER, GEDC, IFEES, and IGIP, has elevated engineering education on a grand scale.
The 2024 Global Award will be presented at the IFEES annual awards dinner during the World Engineering Education Forum (WEEF) in Sydney, Australia from December 2 – 5, 2024. The award recipient will receive a one-time monetary prize of US $1,000, an award, a travel stipend for an economy round-trip ticket, and lodging at our WEEF 2024 conference hotel in Sydney.
The latter days of apartheid were the backdrop for the beginning of Fraser’s career. In an increasingly diverse classroom, Fraser was devoted to the success of all students–particularly those from poor educational backgrounds. After a series of trial and error early in his career, Fraser successfully adapted methods that he learned through the literature on minority engineering programs in the USA to develop collaborative study groups, which led to a breakthrough with his students.
Soon after, Fraser was invited to design the UCT’s engineering programs and helped overhaul the curriculum. He became a mentor to many academic staff members and spearheaded the UCT’s Centre for Research in Engineering Education. Fraser’s work expanded beyond South Africa’s borders following a fortuitous meeting with FUnso Falade at the Global Congress on Engineering Education in Poland in 1998. Together, they began the formation of the AEEA, which was formally established in 2006. Two years later, the UCT became the first institution to hold an IFEES Summit in Africa, which deepened the relationship between IFEES and the AEEA. Fraser would have been proud to see the progress in engineering education in Africa. Those who knew Fraser often commented on his humility, which was inspired by his spiritually-driven character. For Fraser, any glory achieved goes to God; he felt that his passion for Africa, for students and for engineering education were gifts from God. This is what made Duncan Fraser an excellent educator, who cared more for the empowerment of students than his own position of power.
Dr. Cukierman’s remarkable career spanning over four decades is marked by his unwavering commitment to STEM education and engineering innovation. His parallel career as an Electronic Engineer and entrepreneur, along with his pivotal contributions to networking systems, showcases his multidimensional impact. His global leadership, from chairing the Microsoft Research Latin-American Advisory Board to his roles in iNEER, GEDC, IFEES, and IGIP, has elevated engineering education on a grand scale.
Dr. Uriel Cukierman has dedicated himself to STEM education since his earliest youth. He was only 21 years old when he began his teaching experience in a technical vocational school. He developed, in parallel, a very prolific professional activity, first as an electronic technician and, later on, as an electronic engineer; this activity fed his pedagogical practices with solid technical grounds. He was always interested in linking the practical engineering profession with the technical aspects learned by his students in classrooms and labs. This early education activity led to a very prolific academic life spanning 42 years at the secondary (high school), undergraduate and graduate levels, both in public and private institutions, and which promises to continue for many years to come.
His beginnings occurred in a public technical vocational school and then continued in an international education organization (ORT) in which he was appointed to create and direct the Electronic Department. During these years, Uriel developed a parallel and part time professional activity as an Electronic Engineer and entrepreneur, founding a small private firm specialized in multimedia which, during those years, was a technological boom.
During this period of time, and while he was still an engineering student, he began his academic activity at the university as a student teaching assistant. In this position, he was voted by his peers to represent them in the Department Council. Uriel earned his Professional Engineer Degree in 1988.
In 1993, after 12 years of continuous teaching in the secondary level, he resigned his previously mentioned position at the secondary school and decided to dedicate full-time to his own firm.
In 1997 he decided to dedicate himself entirely to the University life by performing both academic and professional activities there. The academic activity was mainly lecturing and, in his professional role, he led the creation of the University Data and Communication Networking System. It is important to notice in this point, that the National Technological University, in which he has been working for the last 38 years, is the biggest engineering university in Argentina with almost 80,000 students distributed in 30 campuses all over the Argentinean country. Hence, the Networking System previously mentioned is an important Wide Area Network (WAN) which supports several services such as Internet access, web and mail services, voice and video communications, etc. In this position he was the person in charge of connecting Argentina, for the first time ever, to the Advance Performance Network, namely Internet2®.
Eventually, Uriel became the ICT Secretary (position equivalent to vice-chancellor reporting directly to the Chancellor) since 2012, when he was appointed as the Engineering Dean at the private University of Palermo. During this period (1997-2012) he was the founder of the first National Educational Videoconferencing Network and the Global Virtual Campus, an LMS system that is still serving tens of thousands of students and faculties in all the UTN campuses. It was during this period that he also participated in the Executive Committee of the National Interconnection Network in the position of Secretary and also in the National Distance Education Network in the position of co-coordinator. Both networks serving the whole university system in Argentina.
In 2001 Uriel was selected as one of the seven LA members of the Microsoft Research Latin-American Advisory Board and, eventually, became its chair. This activity was probably the first important milestone in his involvement in engineering education in the international field. In 2006 he became a Leadership Council member at the International Network for Engineering Education and Research (iNEER) and, afterwards, a Technical Committee member of the Latin American and Caribbean Collaborative ICT Research Federation Virtual Institute. He has been a member of the GEDC Executive Committee between 2013 and 2016 and also a member of the IFEES Executive Committee between 2013 and 2019, including the position of President and VP of Capacity Building member.
Currently he is a member of the International Association for Engineering Pedagogy (IGIP) and the President of the Argentinian section of this organization. He is also a founding member of the Institute for Engineering Education in the Argentinian Academy of Engineering.
In 2012 he organized and co-chaired one of the most successful World Engineering Education Forums (WEEF) which took place in the city of Buenos Aires in Argentina.
In 2016 he founded the Center for Educational Research and Innovation (CIIE) at UTN and he has been its Director since that moment on. He is currently also a member of the Argentinean Engineering Deans Federation (CONFEDI) where he has had an active role in the development of the new engineering accreditation standard.
Uriel has also been appointed as a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico, USA. Also, recently awarded as “Distinguished Educator” by the IOEM, “Honorary Professor” by the Universidad Ricardo Palma in Lima, Peru and International Engineering Educator Honoris Causa and Senior Member by IGIP (Austria).
He has served as a lecturer in seminars, courses and other specialized activities throughout Argentina and around the world. Wrote and published several original technical documents in different newspapers, journals and magazines in Argentina and in other countries. Produced four books about Learning Technologies and Engineering Education, one of which was published by Pearson. Authored five book chapters and more than 70 academic and scientific papers in refereed journals and conferences. He is also the Editor in chief of the International Journal of Online and Biomedical Engineering (iJOE).
We are honored to announce that our Rising to the Top book series has added TWO new volumes!
Rising to the Top provides an intimate and inspiring look into the experiences that have shaped the lives and careers of women engineering leaders from around the world. By openly sharing their personal journeys in these pages, the authors hope to not only inspire the next generation of engineering leaders, but also provide valuable insight into the challenges facing women engineers around the world, and the opportunities that are theirs for the taking.