NOTES ON PEOPLE (03/02/97)

NOTES ON PEOPLE

Wedding bells for Woronowycz

KYIV - Viktoria Punchak and Roman Woronowycz were married on January 25, at the Orthodox Monastery of St. Feodosius in Kyiv. Mr. Woronowycz, a staff editor for The Ukrainian Weekly, is currently stationed in Kyiv. Ms. Punchak is a paralegal for Modul, a Kyiv-based law firm.

The couple met at a political seminar in the Carpathian Mountains three years ago when Mr. Woronowycz was on his first tour of duty in Ukraine for The Ukrainian Weekly. They maintained a long-distance relationship until August 1996, when the groom returned to Kyiv.

The bride's parents are Volodymyr and Liudmilla Punchak of Kyiv. The groom's parents, Myron and Ann Woronowycz, who were present at the wedding along with the groom's brother George, hail from Warren, Mich. Also present were the couple's relatives from Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk, and a host of Ukrainian and foreign journalists stationed in Kyiv.

The couple spent their honeymoon cruising the Nile River in Egypt. Mr. Woronowycz is a member of UNA Branch 76.

Romankiw cited for inventions

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y. - Dr. Lubomyr Taras Romankiw was recently named fellow by the largest international association of electronic scientists and engineers, the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers, which has a membership of over 320,000. The citation specifies his contribution "For invention of the magnetic thin film inductive head, the magnetoresistive inductive merged head and for major contributions to the science and technology of electrochemistry."

This award follows numerous other national and international awards that Dr. Romankiw has received, especially during the last 10 years. The most prestigious among them is the IEEE Morris H.H. Liebman Award given annually to only one scientist for pioneering work in electronics; also, the Perkin Gold Medal, the highest honor given annually to one person whose inventions resulted in innovations in the chemical industry and had a major impact on society.

The inventions for which Dr. Romankiw was recognized created a magnetic thin film head industry with annual revenues around the world approaching $2.5 billion; the thin film magnetic heads that he pioneered made possible extremely high density recording on magnetic disks and tapes, and today are a part of every computer manufactured in the world.

At present, Dr. Romankiw is head of the Center for Electrochemical Technology and Microfabrication at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. For his successful research, he received 10 IBM Outstanding Invention and Outstanding Contribution Awards, and 24 Invention Achievement Awards.

Dr. Romankiw holds 47 international patents and has 120 published inventions. In 1986 he was named an IBM Fellow, and in 1987 he became a member of the IBM Academy of Technology. In 1992 he was elected to the Academy of Engineering Science of Ukraine.

Dr. Romankiw is co-author of four books, editor of six volumes of The Electro-Chemical Society's Proceedings on Electrochemical Technology on Electronics and Magnetics, and author of 130 scientific papers. He is a board member of numerous scientific associations, as well as the Shevchenko Scientific Society, and an advisor to university science and engineering programs at Pace, Tulane and Columbia. Since 1995 he has been a member of the board of directors of the USAID sponsored Environmental Education Technology Transfer Program (which he initiated and helped organize) at the University of Connecticut and Ukraine.

For several decades, Dr. Romankiw has been a leading Plast activist in Canada and the U.S. He began his work as a youth counselor, then headed the Edmonton Plast branch and later the international Plast bodies the Supreme Plast Bulava and the Supreme Plast Council. He is vice-president of the Supreme Plast Bulava and is in charge of liaison with the international scouting movement. Dr. Romankiw is a member of the Siromantsi Plast fraternity and UNA Branch 174.

Stamford woman is 100 years old

Anna Ahafia Kohut of Stamford, Conn., celebrated her 100th birthday on January 19, making her one of the oldest members of the Ukrainian National Association. Mrs. Kohut, a member of UNA Branch 350 (St. Michael the Archangel), and a parishioner of St. Vladimir Church, celebrated her centennial with family, friends and well-wishers at an open house function at her home.

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