ECE Celebrates 2026 Student Awards
Undergraduate Awards
Outstanding Senior Awards
The most prestigious awards given by the department recognize students for their excellent contributions to the intellectual environment of ECE. Recipients are both outstanding academically and active in the ECE community through research, outreach or other activities.
Outstanding Senior Award in Electrical Engineering and the M.S. Ghausi Medal
The M.S. Ghausi Medal is named after the College of Engineering's third dean, Mohammed S. Ghausi, and is the highest honor bestowed upon one outstanding graduating senior in the College of Engineering.
Outstanding Senior Award in Computer Engineering
Department Citation Awards
Citation awards are given to students in recognition of exemplary academic achievement. Recipients are all in the top 10 of their class and active beyond the classroom.
- Roderick Brown
- Travis Fonte
- Lars Lundqvist
- Nathan Leung
- Sebastian Najbjerg
- Lev Oleynik
- Luna Park
- Grace Tsiamis
- Nidhi Vadulas
Outstanding Leadership and Community Engagement Awards
These awards are given to undergraduate students who worked to improve the ECE community over the past year and throughout their careers at UC Davis.
- Keira Patel
- Nidhi Vadulas
- Nayana Vallamkondu
Outstanding Undergraduate Lab Assistant Awards
These awards are given to outstanding undergraduate lab assistants who are passionate about their role, answer students' questions in detail and go beyond assigned duties to ensure student success.
- Michael Duran — ENG 100, Electronic Circuits and Systems: Debugs circuits and equipment with ease and explains the theory so clearly that students truly understand it.
- Nicholas Bianez — EEC 113, Power Electronic Circuits: Shows up to lectures he was told he could skip, out of genuine commitment to the students he supports.
- Luna Park — EEC 180, Digital Systems II: Earned the top score of about a hundred students in the course and now guides others to find the fix themselves.
- Dhilan Patel — EEC 1, ECE Emerge: Has a gift for breaking down lab concepts so first-year students can immediately grasp them.
- Pedro Zapata Gutiérrez — Undergraduate lab support in EEC 1 and EEC 10: Keeps the undergraduate labs running, from building load cell scales for EEC 1 to repairing EEC 10 robots and has greatly improved component storage along the way.
Outstanding Senior Design Project Awards
Professor Anh-Vu Pham’s EEC 134AB (Design of RF/Microwave Systems)
- Project title: FMCW Radar
- Team members: Kaiken Ancheta, Allison Kuan, Pranav Rawat, Megha Mishra
Professor Rajeevan Amirtharajah’s EEC 136AB (Electronic Design Project)
- Project title: HomePad — A Modular Smart Home Controller
- Team members: Hari Rakul Ambethkar, Calvin Dao, Thu Htet, Camryn Shu, Nicholas Xu
Professor Chen-Nee Chuah’s EEC 174ABY (Applied Machine Learning Senior Design Project)
- Project title: Multispectral Imaging and Alignment Pipeline for Plant Trait Analysis (co-sponsored by Mason Earles, associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering)
- Team members: Heaven Berhe, Hyunwoo Chong, Tara Dhanoya, Lars Lundqvist
Professor Avesta Sasan’s EEC 175AB (Internet of Things Senior Design Project)
- Project title: Automatic Sorting System
- Team members: Christopher Chan, Dorian Chiu, Zicheng Huang, Sebastian Najbjerg
Graduate Awards
Established in memory of Professor Anil K. Jain, this award is given to a graduate student who has made seminal contributions to the field of signal processing and computer vision.
- Melisa Gulseren
Established in the memory of Khadar B. Shaik, Ph.D. ’14, this award recognizes a graduate student who has advanced to candidacy and has shown great promise for intellectual contributions to the field of electrical and computer engineering.
- Chenye Yang
Northrop Grumman Graduate Fellowship in Signal Processing and Telecommunications Fund
This award recognizes a graduate student conducting research in the field of signal processing and telecommunications.
- Conor King
Richard and Joy Dorf Graduate Student Award in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Established by the Dorf Family Foundation, this award recognizes the outstanding research achievements of a graduate student and their promise to produce many more intellectual contributions in the field of electrical and computer engineering.
- Matthew Benson
Smita Bakshi Digital Learning & Teaching Award
Established by donors in 2020, this award recognizes teaching assistants in ECE who have made exceptional innovations in the use of technology or developed digital material to improve the curriculum and learning outcomes for students.
- Basheer Ammar
Soohoo-Lee Endowment Fellowship
Established to honor Professor Soohoo, the first chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering, this award recognizes ECE graduate students who have deep ties to the Chinese American community and show interest in pursuing leadership roles in academia or industry.
- Derek Li
Graduate Leadership Award
Given to the chair of the ECE Graduate Student Association.
- Lisa McPhillips
Shu Lin Graduate Student Conference Travel Fund
This fund honors the legacy of Professor Emeritus Shu Lin by supporting graduate students attending information systems conferences.
- Haodong Liang
Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award
- Basheer Pierre Ammar
Campus Scholarships and Fellowships
Ding Prize for Scholarly Excellence in ECE
The Ding Prize recognizes the graduating senior with the highest cumulative GPA. If the highest-GPA student is also the recipient of the College of Engineering's Ghausi Medal, the Prize goes to the ECE student with the second-highest cumulative GPA.
Fred Fuchslin Memorial Scholarship
This scholarship was created in memory of Fred Fuchslin, who earned his Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering at UC Davis in 1983, to encourage other engineers who desire to use engineering for the betterment of mankind.
- Nicholas Patino
Global Leadership Scholarship for Electrical and Computer Engineering Students
This scholarship supports a student in the department's Integrated Degree Program who has pursued study, research or work abroad, reflecting the belief that ECE students with advanced degrees should contribute both technical expertise and leadership.
- Lars Lundqvist
The Eugene S. Martin Memorial Scholarship
Mary Brence Martin created this scholarship in memory of her husband, Eugene S. Martin, to support incoming first-year students who demonstrate financial need and are California residents from San Joaquin County or Santa Clara County.
- Dayanna Alvarado
Robert Murdoch Memorial Scholarship
This scholarship was established in memory of Robert Murdoch, who graduated from UC Davis with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and developed new technologies at Intel while working there as a computer engineer.
- John Kekoa Olive
Arthur and Julia Suran Scholarship
Jerry Suran, senior lecturer emeritus, and his wife, Helen, established this scholarship in honor of Jerry’s parents. Suran is known for his groundbreaking work in transistor and integrated circuit technology and for developing General Electric’s implantable cardiac pacemaker.
- Hari Rakul Ambethkar
- Brent Doyle
- Lawrencedel Legaspi
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