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In Memoriam | Summer 2024

In Memoriam: Faculty & Friends

Notices sorted by graduation date

Ching-hsien Huang of Union City, California, died Dec. 27, 2023. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Tunghai University in Taiwan and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He arrived at UVA in 1967 as a visiting assistant professor of biochemistry. He spent 33 years there and was honored as professor emeritus in 2001. He consistently referenced the Honor Code. During his career, he received many honors for his work in biophysical chemistry, including the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation fellowship and the Avanti Award in Lipids from the Biophysical Society. He raised his children as die-hard Cavalier fans who loved UVA and Charlottesville as much as he did. He was passionate about Chinese history and art, publishing several articles and books after retiring from UVA. Survivors include his wife of 50 years, Laura; his children Tien-tsin Huang (Com ’97) and Tien-wei Huang (Col ’99); and four grandchildren.

K.L. Seshagiri Rao of Avondale, Pennsylvania, died Jan. 14, 2024. After receiving his master’s degree with distinction in philosophy at the University of Mysore in India, he came to the United States in 1962 on a Fulbright Fellowship. He earned his Ph.D. in comparative study of world religions from Harvard University in 1966. He taught at universities including the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Washington and Lee University. In 1971 he joined the UVA Department of Religious Studies as a full professor, where he worked for 25 years teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in comparative religion, Hinduism and Gandhian studies. After his retirement, he and his wife moved to Pittsburgh, where he co-established the India Heritage Research Foundation (IHRF), a research center dedicated to creating an authoritative and scholarly reference in all aspects of Hinduism. Over the next two decades, first in Pittsburgh and then at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, he served as editor-in-chief of the 11-volume Encyclopedia of Hinduism. He authored several books, papers and articles and also edited several books, including four volumes of Religious Traditions of the World. He served as vice president of the World Hindu Federation, Nepal; president of the International Association of Gandhian Studies; and vice president of the Quest Institute in Charlottesville. Survivors include his wife, Saraswati; four sons; a brother; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Roger Alan Rydin of Charlottesville died Jan. 8, 2024. He earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Northwestern University, followed by a master’s and doctorate in nuclear engineering from MIT. His research took him to Ispra, Italy, where he worked at Euratom, the European Atomic Energy Community Lab. In 1970, he accepted a faculty position at UVA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, where he worked for 30 years. He authored Nuclear Reactor: Theory and Design and wrote many articles on reactor dynamics and control, computational methods, reactor measurements, and medical physics. He consulted for the U.S. Army Foreign Science and Technology Center (FSTC), now the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), alongside several of his former UVA nuclear engineering doctoral students. He also collaborated frequently with Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He was a lifetime member of the American Nuclear Society, serving on the Mathematics and Computation Division Executive Committee. After retiring in 2000, he loved attending UVA soccer and lacrosse games, playing with his grandchildren, collecting toy trains, and skiing at Wintergreen. He continued writing and presenting papers until 2018. Survivors include his four children, Gail Rydin (Col ’82), Scott Rydin (Col ’83, Engr ’89 CM), Richard Rydin (Engr ’89, ’92 CM) and Laura Rydin; and four grandchildren, including Ghislain Ventre (Engr ’24).