Out with a Bang
by A.J. Kleber
photos by Frank Curran and A.J. Kleber
ECE Day
It’s an annual spectacle on the ninth floor of the Photonics Center in early May: the ECE senior class exhibits the capstone projects they’ve toiled over together for the past year, armed with the array of skills and theory they’ve been studying for the past four. Faculty, peers, and volunteer alumni judges wind their way through tables and posters displaying feats of engineering designed for use in everything from healthcare to motorsports. There’s an element of competition, of course, with a slate of awards at stake, but equally, there’s an air of celebration. These students are ready to take their place as societal engineers in their own right, as Professor Alan Pisano declared in his welcome speech this year; Commencement might be a couple of weeks down the road, but ECE Day is the true site of that transformation.
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Graduate Student Awards
Of course, the season’s laurels were not reserved for undergraduate students alone; an award ceremony was held for ECE graduate students a few days later, recognizing both research acumen and dedicated community service among Masters and PhD students at all stages of their respective programs. Professors Chen Yang and Vivek Goyal, the respective Associate Chairs of the two graduate programs, made the presentations with pomp and enthusiasm.
Two MS Research Awards were given, for best MS Thesis and best MS Project. The former was awarded to Yuan Sui for “Developing a Scanning System for Intraoperative Deep-Margin Assessment of Oral Cancer Tumors Using Elastic Scattering Spectroscopy,” under the advisory supervision of Professor Irving Bigio. Advised by Professor Gianluca Stringhini, Angela Castronuovo’s winning project was “Tracking the Evolution of Android Malware.” Taken together, the two award winners are an excellent demonstration of the significant variety of research topics undertaken by ECE students.
MS students Haochuan Hu, Luis Ivey, Priyank Negi, Yifan Wu, and PhD student Joseph Greene were recognized with ECE MS Community Service Awards for their assistance with this year’s Masters Open House.
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Ashley Antony Gomez was honored as well, for the 2023 Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year Award, presented previously at ECE Day in the presence of some of her former EC 410 pupils.
The ECE Department once again congratulates these award winners, and all of our hard-working, creative, and dedicated students and impending graduates, on the completion of a successful academic year!