2023 ECE Undergraduate Awards Announced

The Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department congratulates the following 2023 Honors and Awards recipients for excellence in academics, leadership, and service across all disciplines of the college:

The ECE Chair’s Award in Computer Engineering in recognition of outstanding academic performance is awarded to Leopold Betholet, Agustin Jauregui, and Mani Pabba

Leopold Bertholet is a senior pursuing a double degree in computer engineering and mathematics. He is a Banneker/ Key scholar and a member of the ACES Cybersecurity Honors Program. Leopold served as a teaching assistant for the Calculus I and II courses at the University of Maryland and received the math department’s Higginbotham Award. He also interned for the nuclear engineering firm Orano, where he worked on blockchain database development. After graduation, Leopold plans to join a wireless security startup to work on mathematics and digital communications.

Agustin Jauregui is a senior Mechanical Engineering and Computer Engineering double major with a 3.98 GPA. He performed research with the Mechanical Engineering department’s Computational Dynamics Laboratory under the direction of Dr. Balachandran and interned with I.B.M. and M. C. Dean. Outside work, Agustin has been on the executive board of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and is a leader at the Catholic Student Center as the president of the Thomistic Institute, a philosophy club. After graduation, Agustin will work as a Quantitative Researcher at Polyphonic Capital.

Augustin Jauregui is also awarded the ECE Service Award in Computer Engineering in recognition of exceptional leadership and service to fellow students and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Mani Pabba is a senior computer engineering student and statistics minor with a 4.0 GPA. He is a Banneker/Key Scholar and a member of the Advanced Cybersecurity Experience for Students (ACES) honors program. Mani has been an undergraduate teaching assistant for introductory Java for the past 6 semesters and has worked as an undergraduate researcher at the MEMS Microfluidics laboratory for multiple semesters. He has interned at Amazon Web Services for the last two summers and will be working there full time after graduation.

The ECE Chair’s Award in Electrical Engineering in recognition of outstanding academic performance is awarded to Lucas Kaplan, Michael Gill and Patrick Kim.

Lucas Kaplan is a senior electrical engineering student and a Banneker/Key scholar. He was a member of the Design Cultures & Creativity living-learning program in the Honors College. He has held professional and research internships at the Laboratory for Microtechnologies, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He spent one semester studying abroad at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in Spain. After graduation, he plans to study the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

Michael Gill is a senior electrical engineering student with a 3.99 GPA. He is a member of the combined B.S./M.S. program within the electrical and computer engineering (ECE) department, focusing on quantum optics. He has been an undergraduate teaching fellow in the department for five semesters. This academic year, he served as a recruiting assistant to aid the department in recruiting teaching fellows for subsequent semesters. Michael has also participated as an ECE peer mentor, and is currently a Clark Ambassador, helping to attract prospective engineering students to the Clark School.

Michael Gill is also awarded the ECE Service Award in Electrical Engineering in recognition of exceptional leadership to fellow students and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Patrick Kim is a senior electrical engineering and physics student with a 3.98 GPA. He is a member of the University Honors Program. Patrick actively researches theoretical and computational plasma physics for nuclear fusion under Prof. Bill Dorland, with a focus on optimizing future fusion reactors. He is a 2022 Goldwater Scholar and was recently selected for the Department of Energy Computational Sciences Graduate Fellowship. Patrick will begin his Ph.D. studies this fall in the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics.

The ECE Outstanding Academic Performance Award in recognition of outstanding academic performance as a junior is awarded to Scott Fleischmann.

Scott Fleischmann is a junior electrical engineering student. He is a member of the Gemstone Honors program, where his team is researching how to use Direct Laser Writing to create nanoscale biodegradable capsules for pharmaceutical usage. Scott is also a member of the QUEST Honors program. In Engineers Without Borders, Scott is currently the lead of the solar pump team, helping to supply a community in rural Nicaragua with reliable access to clean water. He was an Undergraduate Teaching Fellow for Electric Circuits, and is currently an Undergraduate Tutor for the ECE department.

The Center for Minorities in Science and Engineering Service Award is presented to Ameenat Afolabi in recognition of dedicated service to the Center for Minorities in Science and Engineering through commitment to promoting diversity in engineering in the college, the university community, and through the Center’s recruitment, outreach, and retention programs.

Ameenat Afolabi is a Junior Computer Engineering student. She is a member of the Design, Cultures and Creativity Honors program. She is also affiliated with different organizations such as Code: Black which she is the president! She is an aspiring Software engineer with an interest in firmware/embedded systems. This summer she will be interning at Dell technologies as a Software Development IT Intern

The Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute Award is presented to Elijah Taeckens in recognition of undergraduate students with the most outstanding performances on a semester-long ASPIRE engineering research project during the past year.

Elijah Taeckens is a junior electrical engineering student. He is an undergraduate researcher is Dr. Sahil Shah's lab and is working on developing accurate, low power neural decoding systems that will allow users to control prosthetics with their minds. His work last summer led to a publication at the 11th IEEE Conference on Neural Engineering. Elijah is also a member of Team HiveMind, a Gemstone Honors undergraduate research team using neuromorphic technology to study honeybee flight patterns. After graduation, he plans to pursue a PhD in engineering and continue his work on neural decoding.

Madison Radford is awarded The Outstanding Engineering Co-op/Intern Award which is presented to selected students who have demonstrated exceptional work performance, strong academic chievement, and remarkable potential for a successful career while participating in a cooperative education or internship opportunity.

Madison Radford is a computer engineering student who worked at the National Institutes of Standards & Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, MD. Madison’s employer was very impressed with her work and described her as someone that is very deserving of this award. She has the unique quality of being able to listen and absorb the goal of a given activity so that she doesn’t get lost in the details of its implementation. She is professional, independent, and above all, she is curious! Madison enjoys new challenges and is willing to pivot to different activities as the situation demands. She went above and beyond with her projects and they are still using the app she built them today.