ECE Undergrads Honored with Awards

The A. James Clark School of Engineering held its annual undergraduate Honors and Awards Ceremony on April 29, 2009 at the Stamp Student Union, recognizing excellence in academics, leadership, and service across all disciplines of the college. Eight students in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department were presented with awards.

The ECE Department’s Outstanding Academic Performance Award, which is presented to juniors for academic excellence, was presented to Elizabeth Armour Edwards Kenyon, an Electrical Engineering major. Elizabeth has maintained a 4.0 grade point average while serving as a Clark School Ambassador, Leader of ECE, and Undergraduate Teaching Fellow for ENEE 140. She participated in the Inventis program, earned her University Honors Citation and participated in a Study Abroad experience at the University of Sydney. She interned at NIST and Wabtec Railway Electronics and will participate in the Computer Security Scholar summer reu program through WIE this summer.

Jason Vernon Callender received the ECE Department’s Service Award, an award presented to a student who has shown commitment to service to his fellow students. Jason is currently the President of the ECE Undergraduate Student Council where he also served as Vice President in his junior year. He is also a Clark School Ambassador and Leader of ECE. He is also active in IEEE and the Primannum Honor Society. He earned his University Honors Citation. For two summers, he interned with Constellation Energy. After graduation he will begin work with Accenture, as a Systems Integration and Technology Analyst.

Recognized for their outstanding academic performance as seniors, Ali Faghih, Ameer Osama Abutaleb, Anqi Fu, David Andrew Crawford, and Renfei Luo all received the ECE Department’s Chair’s Award.

Ameer Osama Abutaleb has maintained a 4.0 while majoring in Electrical Engineering. He earned his University Honors Citation and is a member of the Muslim Students Association. He has done research in Cochlear Modeling and Josephson Junction Modeling as well as Surface Reconstruction work in the NIH Computational Biology and Engineering Laboratory. Ameer plans to study Medicine at the University of Maryland at Baltimore after graduation.

Ali Faghih has maintained a 4.0 gpa while majoring in Electrical Engineering. He earned his ECE Honors Program Citation and is a member of Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu honors societies . He has interned at NIST and conducted research in plasmonics for several semesters. Ali plans to attend MIT to pursue a PhD in Electrical Engineering focusing on the fields of optimization and photonics after graduation.

Anqi Fu has maintained a 4.0 while majoring in Electrical Engineering and Economics, along with a Math minor. She interned at NIST and NRL and participated in the MERIT-BIEN REU program where she won the Best Paper Award. She was a member of the Hinman CEO”s program, Student Honor Council, Engineering Student Council and the HKN, TBP and PKP honor societies. She plans to pursue graduate study in either Engineering or Business after graduation.

David Andrew Crawford has maintained a 3.91 while majoring in Computer Engineering. He interned at Pelago and JHUAPL. He served as an Undergraduate Teaching Fellow for ENEE 132 and studied abroad at the City University of Hong Kong. He is a member of the Hinman CEO’s program. and was part of the team that won first place in the Young Alumni Division of the Maryland Business Plan Competition. His career plans are not finalized.

Renfei Luo has maintained a 3.91 while majoring in Computer Engineering. He interned at Microsoft for 2 summers and completed research in Computational Thermal Analysis. He has served as the Vice President of Eta Kappa Nu and Chief Technical Officer of IEEE. He served as an Undergraduate Teaching Fellow for ENEE 244. He plans to join Microsoft after graduation.

The recipients of the International Engineering Consortium’s William L. Everitt Student Award were: Phil Luo and Anqi Fu.

In additional to these award recipients, the following Eta Kappa Neu (HKN) students were also recognized with awards by the ECE Department:

HKN - Outstanding Senior Award for Spring 2009: Phil Luo

HKN – Outstanding Senior Award for Fall 2008: Alexander Cramer

HKN – Outstanding Electee for Spring 2008: Avi Bardack

HKN – Outstanding Electee for Fall 2008: Nicholas Asendorf

See more photos of the award winners at: http://www.ece.umd.edu/News/images/09_05_Undergrad_Awards/

Published May 8, 2009