A team of Intel Corporation computer experts that included Illinois Wesleyan graduate Jeff Morriss has won the European Inventor Award 2013 for the development of Universal Serial Bus (USB) technology that is used to easily connect computers to other electronic devices. Morriss was part of the five-member Intel team that developed the USB. After majoring in physics at Illinois Wesleyan, Morriss earned a master’s degree from Northwestern University before joining Intel. Ajay V. Bhatt led the Intel team, which included Morriss, Shaun Knoll, Shelagh Callahan and Bala Cadambi.

The award is Europe’s most important prize for innovation and is presented annually by the European Patent Office to outstanding innovators in five categories for their contributions to technological, social and economic progress. The USB team won in the category “Non-European Countries.” The 2013 winners were announced May 28 in Amsterdam.

I received my PhD in Psychology, speciality in Organizational Psychology, in July, 2012, from Walden University. My dissertation was “The Effects of Age and Emotional Labor on Decision Making”. It is one of the few, possibly only, dissertation using nuclear power plant supervisors as the population of interest.

The Illinois Woman’s Press Association presents the Communicator of Achievement award each year to a member who has exhibited outstanding communication skills. This year’s Communicator of Achievement is Marianne Wolf-Astrauskas, IWPA’s immediate past-president. She will be Illinois’ nominee for the National Communicator of Achievement Award presented by NFPW at its Salt Lake City confab.

During the awards ceremony of the Mate E. Palmer Professional Communications Contest, Wolf-Astrauskas  took two 1^st place honors, two 3^rd place awards and two Honorable mentions for her writing.

Wolf-Astrauskas, who also serves as executive board secretary of the National Federation of Press Women (NFPW), has been a historian, storyteller, author, editor, administrator, recruiter, collaborator, mentor, listener, and volunteer for and to IWPA members over the years. Her 30+ years of award-winning professional experience include working for an Illinois U.S. Senator and the City of Chicago in administrative capacities. Wolf-Astrauskas is also a long-time alumni regional board member for her alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University, where she was a member of Epsilon Chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma, in which she develops networking and support programs for IWU’s students and alums.

Following her two terms as IWPA president, Wolf-Astrauskas plans to continue her research on the history of the IWPA and NFPW and publish her findings in book form sometime in 2014.