The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has honored graduate and undergraduate students with awards and scholarships, celebrating excellence in academics, leadership, research and more.
Research led by a UC Davis Ph.D. student shows that AI models can maintain response quality while using far less energy on existing hardware. The work received the Best Paper Award at MLSys 2026, a leading machine learning and AI systems conference.
In its first year, the UCOP Early Career Faculty Research Excellence Awards seek to advance the university’s commitment to the scholarship and creative activity of early career faculty across all 10 UC campuses. Engineering professors Hyoyoung Jeong and Jie Zheng help make up the inaugural cohort.
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has established the Ding Prize for Scholarly Excellence in Electrical and Computer Engineering to recognize the top graduating student in electrical or computer engineering. Vivian Nguyen, a computer engineering student, is the award’s first recipient.
The Outstanding Staff Award celebrates individuals who consistently perform above and beyond expectations with exceptional service, innovative approaches, community engagement and commitment to the college's community core values and diversity, equity and inclusion.
The College of Engineering at the University of California, Davis, has selected electrical engineering student Hari Rakul Ambethkar to receive its highest honor for a graduating senior, the M.S. Ghausi Medal. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has also identified Ambethkar to receive its Outstanding Senior Award.
Pranav Rawat had a moment of clarity when he took “Circuits I” at UC Davis. With circuity, he finally found a way to create physical models of the systems he had toyed with in his head his whole life.
For a master’s thesis describing a processing framework that achieved a 32 million-times improvement in speed and energy efficiency over NVIDIA, the College of Engineering celebrates Sagar Sajeev, a recent electrical and computer engineering alum.
For innovative research on chips that can sustain high speeds without sacrificing power or signal amplification, a feat necessary for realizing the wireless networks of tomorrow, Phat Nguyen has received the Zuhair A. Munir Award for Best Doctoral Dissertation in Engineering at UC Davis.
Pranta Saha, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical and computer engineering, was selected in recognition of his work to advance the future of semiconductor devices, technology, design and manufacturing through scalable quantum technologies.
