Celebrating the Class of 2021
Spring 2021
Bachelor of Science
- William Abrams
- Yousef Alabdulhadi
- Anna Anderson
- Aldana Awedh
- Jeremy Bagwell
- Abdoul Bah
- Igor Bakov
- John C. Biegel
- Grace Butler
- Madison Chodikov
- Karston Christensen
- Tyler Scott Davidson
- Brodie Deysher
- Emily Rose DiTommaso
- Jinyang Du
- Joseph Dunbar
- Samuel Elting
- Erika Ervin
- Rebecca Jingyi Fairbanks
- Olivia Filkoski
- Yonatan Ermias G
- Jimmy Gammell
- Travis Hardesty
- Forrest Robert Hargett
- Zachary Hayden
- Fionnuala Heatley
- Rachel Hecht
- Natalie Hellman
- Vanessa Van Scyoc Hernandez
- Kaiyuan Hou
- Mason Huyge
- Daniel Jin
- Ibraheem Khan
- Shaswat Pd Koirala
- Davis Landry
- Reiko Matsuda-Dunn
- Darin Thanh Tam Meeker
- Quincy Moreno Moreno
- Andrew Murfin
- Elena Murray
- Tyler Nichols
- Dylan Oh
- Isaiah Pisani
- Ryan Douglas Prince
- Levi Rakes
- Dustin Ramsay
- Linda Palacios Rivera
- Perrin Ruth
- Peter Shearon
- Diyou Shen
- Ryan Spencer
- Sofia Springer
- Stefan Stroessner
- Soham Tamhane
- Nahum Tariku
- Justin Thwaites
- Ellora Tummala
- Asher P. Voris
- David Wade IV
- Yiyan (Gaukas) Wang
- Jeremy Webb
- Chase Williams
- Tashi Wischmeyer
- Shaylah Wood
- Jiselle Y. Ye
- Arash Yousefzadeh
- Chengkuan Zhang
Minor in Electrical Engineering
- Phillip George Stenzel
Master of Engineering
- Curtis Crockett
- Martin Paul Lennartz
- Srivatsa Raghunath
- Forest Speed
Master of Science
- Stephen C. Bowen
- Aiswarya Rachel Cherian
- Bryan Cisneros
- Martin M. Deng
- Prayag Desai
- Kishor Satish Gaikwad
- Brooke Hathaway
- Andrew Jeseritz
- Dhruva Koley
- Abhishek Satish Kulkarni
- Joe Lopez
- Ashwin Karthik Muralidharan
- Saket Penurkar
- Rahul Ramaprasad
- Sakshi Ranjan
- Aditya G Rao
- Steve Rizor
- Geoffrey Sasaki
- Prem Ankitkumar Shah
- Pavan Shiralagi
- Abhijeet Dutt Srivastava
- Gitanjali Suresh
- Suraj Bajrang Thite
- Pratyush Verma
- Xinmiao Xu
- Vesta Zhelyaskova
Doctor of Philosophy
- Jose Antonio Estrada
- Kyle Jackson Goodrick
- Sahithi Kandala
- Sakshi Singh
Summer 2021
Bachelor of Science
- Xavion Cowans
- Martin Diaz
- Bradley Yuska
Master of Engineering
- Maxwell Keene Maurice
- Morgan Che Defang Tilong
Master of Science
- Sharan Arumugam
- Akshita Bhasin
- Rucha Sunildutt Borwankar
- Atharv Sandeep Desai
- Aaksha Prasad Jaywant
- Sarayu Managoli
- Shrinithi Palaniappan
- Kushagra Pandey
- Shamanth Kudaligi Pranesharao
- Harsh Rathore
- Vaidehi Salway
- Yash Shah
Doctor of Philosophy
- Yucheng Gao
- Jian Xing
Undergraduate Student Award Winners
Jimmy Gammell
Undergraduate Research Award, Undergraduate Chair's Award and College of Engineering and Applied Science Research Award
In addition to winning the department's Undergraduate Research Award, Jimmy is also one of the recipients of the College of Engineering and Applied Science's Research Awards. His research has been conducted at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where he has worked since summer 2018 with his supervisor, Adam McCaughan, and the principal investigator of the group, Sae Woo Nam. He published and presented one of his projects at the 2020 International Conference on Neuromorphic Systems. The project is significant in that it contributes to progress toward the creation of a neuromorphic computer, whereby deep learning could be efficiently implemented in a distributed architecture with analog components, inspired by biological brains. He will attend Purdue University this coming fall to pursue a graduate degree in neuromorphic computing.
Yiyan 'Gaukas' Wang
Outstanding Accomplishment Award
Gaukas has excelled in all aspects of his undergraduate degree. He has maintained a strong GPA, demonstrating academic excellence. He has served as a TA for Concurrent Programming twice, and went above and beyond to help students in these classes, even going as far to schedule private debugging sessions for students who were struggling. He has done graduate-level research Joseph Izraelevitz’s lab while an undergraduate, co-authoring two (unfortunately rejected) submissions to top tier venues. He has also participated in Eric Wustrow's research group, working on a novel robust censorship circumvention technique, for which he has made independent contributions.
Xavion Cowans
Outstanding Accomplishment Award
Nominator Arielle Blum first met Xavion when he took ECEN 2440 in the spring 2020 semester, at the start of the pandemic. Arielle observed as Xavion persevered in juggling his school work and a job as a security guard at Walmart, where he worked throughout his undergraduate career to finance his degree. He is truly an exemplary student and one of the best TAs Arielle has ever had, with charisma, leadership and keen intelligence. He loves to spread his passion for embedded systems. In addition to his work within the department, Xavion has also volunteered as a panelist for College of Engineering & Applied Science transfer student events and was a peer mentor for summer experience programs and an Engineering First-Year Symposium. Xavion likes sharing advice with people who will be traveling a path similar to his. As the oldest sibling out of three, he’s used to making the mistakes first and passing down that knowledge so they (students or siblings) can take a different route. Upon graduation, he wants to work on developing embedded systems, and we’re positive he will be successful in his career.
William G. Abrams
Outstanding Service Award
Will was nominated for his active participation with the department’s curriculum committee. Will has gone above and beyond expectations with his desire to help the department improve the curriculum and take into account the voices of the students. Will takes the time to talk to his peers, bring their thoughts and concerns to the committee, and advocate for changes that will help future students. He also is willing to share his thoughts and give constructive criticism. He’s never afraid to speak up and share his opinions. He shares new and creative ideas on how to make improvements and is humble if we aren’t able to move forward with every idea. He’s willing to stay late to keep talking about courses and, in his free time, has created multiple documents for us outlining his thoughts. Will is also a double major in computer science and has used his knowledge of that department to further enhance his contributions to ECEE. Will is always excited about his course work, and you can see the enthusiasm when talking to him. Will has been an absolute asset to the curriculum committee and has helped us keep in touch with the thoughts and concerns of our students.
Fionnuala Heatley
Outstanding Service Award
Fi is well known by faculty and staff in the department and has served as the vice president of the IEEE student chapter during fall 2020 and spring 2021. She’s been part of the new IEEE board, who gained their positions when the entire previous board graduated. She’s been a dedicated member and leader, helping IEEE rebuild their membership and get students involved despite the challenges of COVID-19 and Zoom fatigue. Some of the events that Fi has taken the lead on are an Altium workshop, a business card workshop and an embedded game design workshop that will occur in a couple of weeks. That workshop involved working with Texas Instruments to get kits for students. Additionally, Fi organized a Women in Industry event where an alumni working at Keysight gave a talk on navigating the workplace and her role as a project manager. Fi has had a strong positive influence on our undergraduates as an ELA for Embedded Software Engineering and through attending department events to talk with new students about the department and answer questions. She also helped with the initial proposal for the upcoming undergraduate peer mentor program by giving feedback from a student perspective.
Soham M. Tamhane
Outstanding Colleague Award
Soham is always willing to explain things that I don't understand and help me with labs and assignments. It's not just about getting the right answer, it's about the understanding, and Soham embodies this.
Grace E. Butler
Outstanding Colleague Award
Grace deserves this award for her willingness to help and stand up for others, and for her contributions to a positive learning environment. Grace is an amazing student, classmate and friend.
Reiko Matsuda-Dunn
Outstanding Colleague Award
Reiko is a great student who contributes to a positive learning environment by asking relevant questions, assisting others and supporting her classmates.
Mason Huyge
Undergraduate Chair's Award
Mason has demonstrated overall academic excellence.
Justin Thwaites
Undergraduate Chair's Award
Justin has demonstrated overall academic excellence and, after three hard years, is excited to take on new opportunities in industry.
Graduate Student Award Winners
Kyle Goodrick
Best Thesis
Systematic Optimization of DC Distribution Architectures
Kyle came up with an original way to formulate a problem of designing complex DC power conversion and distributions systems, with numerous applications including mobile, server, data center, telecom automotive and medical. Based on the original problem formulation, he very effectively applied combinatorial optimization techniques and to demonstrate large improvements in the system figure of merit compared to the state of the art. The improvements have been verified by convincing simulations and laboratory experiments on elaborate system prototypes. He implemented his optimization approach in code, which has been shared with an industry sponsor (Lockheed Martin), and they have provided very positive feedback about usability and features. His journal paper has recently been published in the IEEE Journal of Selected and Emerging Topics in Power Electronics, a leading journal in the area. Additionally, he has had four conference papers, one of which received a competitive student award.
Misha Sinner
Outstanding Research Award
For demonstrated excellence in research
This award recognizes the graduate student who has demonstrated a continual striving for excellence in the area of research. Misha, who will be wrapping up his PhD studies with us this summer, has made contributions that span theoretical development, complex simulation evaluation and extensive experimental testing. He has been the lead or a major contributor on seven refereed conference papers and three journal papers that are in press, with three more journal papers that he has submitted or is submitting over the next couple months. This is all a culmination of his hard work over the previous few years.
Zhe Feng
Outstanding Service Award and Outstanding Teaching Award
For outstanding contributions to the department community and demonstrated excellence in teaching
Zhe has served on the department's climate committee as the graduate student ambassador, worked with the ECEE Graduate Student Association, and served on the social events committee. He has helped organize and host numerous social events for graduate students, as well as a series of work-life balance seminars. In addition to this, he is also the TA lead, helping train new TAs and assisting SAs/ELAs by providing help throughout the year. Zhe has also worked as an SA for ECEN 3300, ECEN 4/5632 and many other courses. He demonstrated good teaching skills with students, taking full advantage of all tools available and being innovative with office hours. He also went out of his way to help his fellow TAs, SAs and ELAs, making sure that they had the resources they needed to be successful.
Neeraj Prakash
Outstanding Service Award
For outstanding contributions to the department community
Neeraj has served on the graduate committee, providing a voice for his fellow students in issues that concern the graduate student body. He has also worked on the ECEE Graduate Student Association. He has provided special insight on a number of issues, all while working on his degree.
Amy Robinson
Outstanding Service Award
For outstanding contributions to the department community
Amy has taken the initiative in the Optical Society of America student chapter to help organize a new seminar series that pulled in speakers from the Front Range and across the country. She is also co-leading Women in ECEE and playing an active role in the department.
Gaeron Friedrichs
Outstanding Outreach or External Service
For service contributions to the field or outside the department
Gaeron has worked very closely with Centaurus High School to develop electrical and computer engineering courses to enhance their engineering core curriculum. He has developed classes, prepared demonstrations and developed a fellowship, using much of his own time and resources to help spark a love for electrical and computer engineering in the next generation.