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Gonzalez and TCE Faculty and Staff Awards

EECS Faculty, Staff, Students Honored

EECS faculty, staff, and students were recently honored at both the TCE Faculty and Staff Awards dinner and the Gonzalez Family Awards banquet.

The EECS faculty and students honored at the Gonzalez Awards banquet were:

The Gonzalez Awards

Computer Engineering

Outstanding Senior: Meghan Brandt

The Smithville, Tennessee native gained internship experience with Texas Instruments and participated in a co-op with NASA Glenn Research Center. Her career goals involve pursuing a master’s degree in mathematics and continuing a PhD program specializing in computer science.

Outstanding Junior: Josh Ward

The Knoxville native will be serving an internship at Cru Headquarters in Orlando, Florida this summer. He plans to use his degree in computer engineering to help others.

Outstanding Sophomore: Neela Barker

The Maryland native is minoring in cybersecurity. Baker served an internship with Intelligenesis LLC, where she worked with AI models, including neural networks and large language models. This summer, she will be working at Northrop Gruman in their Missions Systems sector. Baker wants to pursue a career in secure chip design.


Computer Science

Outstanding Senior: Josephine Rich

Rich has served internships at Acato, Northrop Grumman, and McLauren Aerospace. She’s been recognized in business competitions like Vol Court and the Graves Business Plan events.

Outstanding Junior: Isha Bhandari

The Farragut, Tennessee native is the President-Elect of the Society for Women Engineers and volunteers with Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Bhandari interned with the SULI program at Oak Ridge National Lab, conducting research on software development for Slicer 2. She’s currently interning with the same group, focusing on implementing a new algorithm.

Outstanding Sophomore: Rudra Patel

The Nashville native volunteers with UT’s Hack4Impact to help local nonprofits with software solutions. Patel’s also gained experience at Knoxville Utilities Board, focusing on their outage notification system. This summer, he’ll intern as a cloud engineer at General Electric Vernova in Atlanta, then return to KUB part-time in the fall.

Emma Laymon, Josephine Rich, Neela Barker, Isha Bhandari, Meghan Brandt, Raymond Luberto, Christian Harmon, Rudra Patel, Josh Ward, and Leon Tolbert posing with the awards at the Gonzalez Awards ceremony


Electrical Engineering

Outstanding Senior: Raymond Luberto

The New Jersey native participated in an internship with Rehrig Pacific Company and Energy Transfer, spots where he was primarily focused on learning about working controls and automation equipment. Luberto will be working full-time for Eastman Chemical Company after graduation.

Outstanding Junior: Christian Harmon

Harmon has a strong drive to excel as an engineer and his passion lies in learning, whether through formal education or life experiences.

Outstanding Sophomore: Emma Laymon

The Franklin, Tennessee native is preparing to study in Spain this summer to complete her Spanish minor. Laymon’s future aspirations involve applying her knowledge in electrical engineering and leveraging her study abroad experiences and future internships to tackle real-world problems.


Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistants

Computer Engineering: MD Saif Hassan

Hassan is a second-year international PhD student from Bangladesh. His research focuses on the application of machine learning and quantum machine learning.

Computer Science: Burcum Eken

Eken is from Turkey. She is a PhD student focusing on cyber-attacks on Lane Detection System. Eken is the co-founder of the Cyber Security Research and Development Group at UT. After obtaining her bachelor’s degree, she was an instructor in a project organized with the CISCO-Habitat to bring refugees into society in Turkey.

Electrical Engineering: Sebastian Martinez

Martinez, originally from Chile, is a third-year PhD student with a focus on power system dynamics under the advisory of Associate Professor Hector Pulgar.

Ashley Babjac, MD Saif Hassan, Niu Jia, MD Mazharul Islam, Sebastian Martinez, Burcum Eken, and Leon Tolbert holding their awards at the Gonzalez Awards ceremony


Outstanding Graduate Research Assistants

Computer Engineering: MD Mazharul Islam

Before starting his PhD, Islam worked full-time as a lecturer in several universities in Bangladesh. His research focuses on emerging memory and logic devices for both room temperature and cyrogenic temperatures.

Computer Science: Ashley Babjac

The Texas native is in the final year of her PhD with research interests that involve applications of deep learning and explainable AI for interpretable proteomics. After graduation, she’ll be moving to Germany to complete a postdoctoral fellowship.

Electrical Engineering: Niu Jia

Jia is from Hefei, China. The fourth-year PhD student plans to transition into the industry after graduation and harness her knowledge to turn designs into real products.


Gonzalez Staff Awards

Angie Chance

Dan Morehead


Gonzalez Family Award for Excellence in Teaching

Catherine Schuman


Gonzalez Family Award for Excellence in Research

Hua “Kevin” Bai


The TCE Faculty and Staff Awards

The EECS faculty who won awards at the TCE event were:

Outstanding Service to the College

Mike Berry


Outstanding Contribution to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award

Catherine Schuman


Teaching Fellow Awards

Ahmedullah Aziz

Kevin Bai

Lori Houser, Tracy Smith, Reina Ortega, Charlotte Holland, Angie Chance, Dan Morehead, Melanie Kelley, Markus Iturriaga Woelfel, Don Reed, Michelle Camp, Leon Tolbert, Garrett Rose, Jens Gregor, Scott Wells, Erika Adams, Matthew Luc, and Dwayne Kelley at the EECS Faculty and Staff Awards


Professional Promise in Research Award

Dan Wilson


Research Achievement Award

Fran Li


Translational Research Award

Ahmedullah Aziz

James Plank

Garrett Rose

Catherine Schuman

Dean’s Meritorious Achievement Award

Leon Tolbert

Contact

Rhiannon Potkey (865-974-0683, rpotkey@utk.edu)