COLLEGE PARK , Md. —

WHAT
On Monday, September 19, Edward Miller and James Plummer will be honored for their pioneering contributions to technology development and the nation's security. Miller and Plummer, alumni of the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering, will be inducted into the Clark School's Innovation Hall of Fame as part of the ceremonies to dedicate the university's new Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building.

Miller and Plummer worked on the top-secret Corona Project (1959 to 1972). The Corona Project created the field of satellite surveillance, providing vital photographic information that permitted the United States to gauge the nuclear threat posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War and pursue more effective foreign policies. As part of the project, Miller and Plummer lead the first successful recovery of a man-made object from earth orbit.

Together with others involved in the Corona project, Miller and Plummer helped lay the groundwork for the many earthward looking satellites that now provide a vast array of scientific and security information about the Earth, its processes and its people. Miller and Plummer were among the five engineering leaders of the Corona Project who received this year's Charles Stark Draper Prize from the National Academy of Engineering. One of the world's preeminent awards for engineering achievement, the Draper Prize cited the group "for the design, development, and operation of Corona , the first space-based Earth observation system."

WHO
Induction ceremony speakers: Nariman Farvardin , dean of the Clark School of Engineering, George Dieter, Innovation Hall of Fame committee chair and a former dean of the Clark School, and Marilyn Berman Pollans, a former associate dean of the school and the widow of alumnus Stanford Berman who conceived the idea for a Clark School Innovation Hall of Fame. In 1986 Stanford and Marilyn Berman provided an endowment to help create the Innovation Hall of Fame.

WHEN

• Innovation Hall of Fame Ceremony: 1:30 to 2:00 p.m.
• Symposium on Engineering Innovation: 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.
• Guided Tours of the New Kim Engineering Building: 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (no tours 11:30 to 12:30)
• Kim Building Dedication Ceremony and Recognition Event: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

####

Return To Press Releases