Il-Yeol Song, PhD Receives 2015 Peter P. Chen Award

The Entity Relationship (ER) steering committee has announced Drexel University College of Computing & Informatics (CCI) professor Il-Yeol Song, PhD as winner of the 2015 Peter P. Chen Award.

Initiated by Elsevier in 2008 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the journal Data and Knowledge Engineering, the Peter P. Chen Award honors one person each year for his or her outstanding contributions to the field of conceptual modeling.

Song will receive a plaque and a prize of $2,500 sponsored by Elsevier Publishing Company, and also will give a keynote speech at the Entity Relationship International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER2015) to be held October 19-22 in Stockholm, Sweden.

The 2015 selection committee consisted of Stephen Liddle, Antonio Furtado, Carlo Batini, Tok Wang Ling and David Embley.

The selection process was done according to the following five criteria: research, service, education, contribution to practice and international reputation; the committee found Song to be exemplary in all of these dimensions.

In reviewing the qualifications of the nominees, the committee chose Song for his "outstanding scientific contributions and extensive professional services in the areas of conceptual modeling and data warehousing & OLAP."

Song—a Drexel faculty member since 1988—serves as director of CCI doctoral program in information studies. He has received four teaching awards from Drexel, including the prestigious Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award. He is also an affiliated professor in the Department of Computer Science at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) in Korea.

In 2013, Song was named ACM 2013 Distinguished Scientist for his outstanding scientific contributions in the areas of conceptual modeling, data warehousing, and Online Analytic Processing (OLAP).

In 2012, Song was elected as an ER Fellow from the steering committee of the ER International Conference on Conceptual Modeling in recognition of contributions to the conceptual modeling community in research, education, and service.

In addition to his over 190 articles published in books, journals, and conferences, Song’s “ A UML Profile for Multidimensional Modeling in Data Warehouses” (2006) is the most widely cited paper among all the papers published in Data & Knowledge Engineering (DKE) from 2006 to July 2011.

In addition to his world-leading research in conceptual modeling, data warehousing and OLAP, Song’s other research interests include big data technologies and analytics, object-oriented analysis and design with UML, healthcare informatics and smart health. He holds a doctorate in computer science and a master of science in systems sciences degree from Louisiana State University, and a bachelor of science in nuclear engineering from Han-Yang University.


Winners of the Peter P. Chen Award include:
  • 2015 Il-Yeol Song, Drexel University
  • 2014 Antonio L. Furtado, Pontificia Univ. Catolica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • 2013 Carlo Batini, Universita degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Italy
  • 2012 Stefano Spaccapietra, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland
  • 2011 Tok Wang Ling, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  • 2010 John Mylopoulos, University of Trento, Italy
  • 2009 David Embley, Brigham Young University, USA
  • 2008 Bernhard Thalheim, University of Kiel, Germany

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