The University of Kansas has a couple of outstanding students nominated for the Winston Churchill Scholarship, a new National Academy of Inventors member, a recent graduate who just tacked a Schwarzman Scholarship to her record-breaking list of honors and other students heading to the National Moot Court Competition — to mention just a few recently announced accolades.

Here’s a roundup of significant honors and awards KU News announced in December, that we haven’t previously published.

Moot Court: KU law students Ashley Billam, Olathe, and Sam LaRoque, Shawnee, will represent KU at the National Moot Court Competition Jan. 30 through Feb. 2 in New York. The pair advanced to nationals after winning the regional competition in November.

Research award: Professor of special education Kathleen Lane is the 2017 recipient of the Kauffman-Hallahan Distinguished Researcher Award, announced by the Division for Research of the Council for Exceptional Children. The award honors researchers who, over the course of their careers, have made outstanding scientific contributions in basic or applied research in special education.

Lane’s research focuses on students with emotional and behavioral disorders, including a major emphasis on practices that enable schools to prevent learning and behavior problems in students who have emotional and behavioral disorders or who are otherwise at risk.

Schwarzman Scholar: Ashlie Koehn, who graduated from KU in 2016, is one of 129 men and women named to the second class of Schwarzman Scholars. The scholarship provides money for one year of master’s level study at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Koehn’s name may sound familiar — she is the only student in KU’s history to have won the Truman, Udall, Boren and Gilman scholarships, which she won in a two-year time span. She was also the student who, while studying abroad in Kyrgyzstan in spring 2015, found out she won the Truman via a Skype call from Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little.

H.O.P.E. Award: Associate professor of mechanical engineering Robert Sorem — who also advised the Jayhawk Motorsports Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) racing team — won the 2016 Honor for the Outstanding Progressive Educator (H.O.P.E.) Award. He received the award, given annually by the senior class through the Board of Class Officers, at halftime of the homecoming football game.

Science fellows: Alice Bean, distinguished professor of physics and astronomy, and David Darwin, distinguished professor and chairman of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). They’ll be honored during the 2017 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston.

Bean received the honor for her contributions to particle physics, undergraduate research and her creation of outreach including policies around climate change and the “Quarked!” project, self-dubbed “an entertaining method of introducing the world of subatomic physics to kids and adults.” Darwin was honored for contributions to the field of concrete structural behavior and durability, particularly for bond and anchorage of reinforcement, and cracking and corrosion control.

Connected World Pioneer: Connected World magazine named professor of design Gregory Thomas a leader in Internet of Things (IoT) and machine to machine (M2M) computing by naming him to its list of 2017 Pioneer Award winners. Thomas is founder and director of KU’s Center for Design Research.

One example of his work: Thomas designed the WellCar (now known as the CareCar) by fitting a Ford Transit Connect van with equipment a nurse practitioner can use to test patients at their homes. M2M technology transmits results to a clinic where doctors can evaluate them in real time.

Churchill nominees: KU students Christopher Rooney, Hays senior in physics and astronomy, and Kevin Tenny, Leawood senior in chemical engineering, are KU’s nominees for the Winston Churchill Scholarship, which provides one year of study at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Finalists will be selected and interviewed in January, with scholars announced shortly thereafter. 

Rooney is studying the large-scale structure of the universe through high-performance computing. Tenny’s research goals are focused on electrochemical engineering. They were selected to compete for the scholarship by a committee coordinated by the University Honors Program.

National Academy of Inventors: Raghunath Chaudhari, the distinguished professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, has been named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. The third-ever KU professor to get the honor, he’s scheduled to be inducted in April 2017 in Boston.

Chaudhari, deputy director for KU’s Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis, researches catalysis, reaction engineering, multiphase reactors and kinetic modeling. According to KU’s announcement, his research has led to many discoveries, including a smart, energy-efficient method for turning plant sugars into the building blocks for plastics, paints, fibers and many other everyday items. His prolific research has generated 282 publications, three books and 71 patents. 

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• I’m the Journal-World’s KU and higher ed reporter. See all the newspaper’s KU coverage here. Reach me by email at sshepherd@ljworld.com, by phone at 832-7187, on Twitter @saramarieshep or via Facebook at Facebook.com/SaraShepherdNews.