Brock LaMeres, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Montana State University’s Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering, has received the Bhagawandas and Rajani Lathi Award for Excellence in Engineering Textbooks from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The award recognizes his book, “Embedded Systems Design using the MSP430FR2355 LaunchPad,” which was published in 2020.
The honor includes a $10,000 prize and a travel allowance to attend the Frontiers in Engineering Education conference, where the award is presented. The announcement was made in October.
To qualify for this recognition, textbooks must be in their first edition for at least five years prior to the award year and must show significant impact within engineering education. According to the IEEE website: “Any textbook winning the award must have clearly made an impact in its field of instruction through adoption at institutions of higher education, user reviews, citations in scholarly works, or through similar bibliographic metrics.”
The citation for LaMeres’ textbook states: “[LaMeres’] textbook covers the hardware and software used in embedded microcontrollers, which are the most ubiquitous technologies in digital systems and the modern world. The textbook builds foundational knowledge first before diving into an example-rich presentation of the material designed for the reader to code along using an inexpensive, but powerful, development board.”
David Dickensheets, head of MSU’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, commented on LaMeres’ achievement: “This award recognizes an engineering textbook based on the impact it is having through people reading and using it. While this excellent textbook is serving our own lucky students, students around the world are also benefiting from Professor LaMeres’ scholarship, dedication and skill in teaching engineering. It’s a wonderful example of how excellent faculty like Brock LaMeres elevate education and scholarship at MSU while extending the influence of the institution beyond the State of Montana.”
Springer, publisher of LaMeres’ book, reports that it is available at 230 libraries worldwide and has been downloaded 62,000 times since its release. The book has been adopted by several universities including Montana State University; California State University, Northridge; Monmouth College; North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University; Norwich University; University of South Florida; and State University of New York at Albany.
