An ongoing list of 2024 accolades and research awards received by Baskin Engineering faculty, students, and staff.
A paper authored by electrical and computer engineering undergraduate students Ruhai Lin and Ridger Zhu has been selected for the Best Paper Award at the 17th IEEE International Symposium on Embedded Multicore/Many-core Systems-on-Chip (MCSoC 2024). The students are advised by Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Jason Eshraghian.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering Sung-Mo (“Steve”) Kang, was invited to be a Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA). This recognizes Kang as a top scientist with outstanding achievements in the area of Memristive Artificial Neural Networks.
Minghao Xie, a computer science and engineering Ph.D. student along with Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Chen Qian and Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Heiner Litz, received a Best Paper Award at the 2024 ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing for their work: En4S: Enabling SLOs in Serverless Storage Systems
Professor Emeritus of Biomolecular Engineering Mark Akeson has been named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Akeson is the co-inventor of nanopore sequencing, a revolutionary method for reading DNA and RNA that has enabled some of the most significant advances in the genomics field.
Adjunct Professor of Computational Media Aviv Elor (B.S., Robotics Engineering, ’19; Ph.D., Computational Media, ’21) and alumnus Ash Robbins (B.S., Robotics Engineering, ’18; Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering, ‘24′) were named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Healthcare category for their virtual reality physical rehabilitation startup, Immergo Labs. The team was recently awarded a large NSF grant to grow the company.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Dustin Richmond, was awarded funding from the National Science Foundation to study Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) in cloud computing. FPGAs, used to speed up tasks like machine learning and encryption, can unintentionally leak data between users. The project aims to understand and prevent these leaks to improve cloud security and advance FPGA research and education.
The inaugural Baskin Engineering Inspiration Award was presented to Associate Teaching Professor David Bernick during the 10th anniversary celebration of the UCSC iGEM program. This award recognizes individuals whose exceptional contributions uplift their fields and positively impact the broader community.
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering and Genomics Institute affiliate Richard (“Ed”) Green is one of 10 finalists recognized with a Santa Cruz Works 2024 Titans Award — for his work as a visionary scientist and entrepreneur. Green has been instrumental in founding Cantata Bio, Claret Bioscience, and Astrea Forensics—Santa Cruz-based companies advancing DNA extraction and sequencing technologies.
Department Chair and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Jose Renau received a Google Academic Research Award, recognizing his work using Gemini and Google’s open model family to solve systems and infrastructure problems.
Kamran Hussain, an undergraduate electrical engineering student, received the Shenoy Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Neuroscience (SURFiN) from the Simon’s Foundation. This funding will allow Hussain to conduct research at Stanford University on Speech Neuroprosthetics — brain chips that can decode speech in people who are fully paralyzed from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or spinal cord injuries. Currently, he is working in the Neuroprosthetics Translational Lab at Stanford.
Anuj Kumar, who completed his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in June 2023 with Professor Pascale Garaud and is currently the Morrey Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at UC Berkeley, was awarded the Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award in Fluid Mechanics of the American Physical Society. This award recognizes one exceptional early-career scientist each year who has performed original doctoral thesis work of outstanding scientific quality and achievement in the area of fluid dynamics. Kumar was awarded this prize for “deep insight into the Navier-Stokes equations using novel analytical methods, establishing rigorous bounds for optimal turbulent transport, and bridging applied mathematics with fluid flow physics.”
Marcella Gomez, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion was recognized in the Atlas of Inspiring Hispanic/Latinx Scientists — underscoring Gomez’s individual achievements as well as her vital contributions to UC Santa Cruz and the broader academic and research community.
John Dzimianski, a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Biomolecular Engineering department, received the 2024 Outstanding Postdoc Award for his important contributions to research at UC Santa Cruz.
Emily Lovell, a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Computer Science and Engineering department, received the 2024 Outstanding Postdoc Award for her important contributions to teaching and research at UC Santa Cruz.
Lovell won the Empowering Educator Award from GitHub for her work mentoring students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and teaching open source as a way to support broader participation in computing.
Marcell Rommel, a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Forsberg Lab, received the Pre-Meeting Workshop Best Poster Presentation award at the International Society of Experimental Hematology Conference.
Lise Getoor, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, received the ACM SigKDD Innovation Award — recognizing outstanding contributions to the field of knowledge discovery in data and data mining, which have significantly advanced both theoretical understanding and the development of commercial systems.
Yi Zhang, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and team won the Test of Time Award for their 2014 paper “Explicit Factor Models for Explainable Recommendation based on Phrase Level Sentiment Analysis” at the ACM SIGIR 2024 Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval in Washington, DC. This year, one award was selected from full papers presented at the conference 10-12 years ago. The team were early pioneers of work on explainable AI in the field.
Samantha Gorman, Assistant Professor of Computational Media received a 2023-24 Excellence in Teaching Award, highlighting exemplary and inspiring teaching.
Abdelrahman Elfikky, Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate student received a 2023-24 Excellence in Teaching Award, highlighting exemplary and inspiring teaching.
The UC Santa Cruz Research Mentoring Institute has been named a recipient of the Insight Into Diversity magazine 2024 Inspiring Programs in STEM Award, demonstrating an outstanding commitment to access, diversity, and inclusion in STEM fields.
Jason Eshraghian, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering received the 2024 IEEE Nanotechnology Magazine best paper award for his work: “Memristor-Based Binarized Spiking Neural Networks: Challenges and applications.”
Eshraghian was awarded the 2024 PIEEE Best Paper Award for his work: “Training Spiking Neural Networks Using Lessons From Deep Learning.”
Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Christopher Vollmers was awarded the 2024 Kinnex Full-Length Prize as part of the Human RNA SMRT Grant — for his proposal: generating a tissue-level annotation of the human genome.
Benedict Paten, Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering has been selected as a 2024 Falling Walls Science Summit Finalist for his work creating the first human pangenome reference.
Luca de Alfaro, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering was elected as Foreign Member to the Turin Academy of Sciences — one of the oldest academies of sciences in Italy. Previous foreign members have included Charles Darwin, Leonhard Euler, and Carl Friedrich and there are currently only 25 foreign members in the physical, mathematical, and natural sciences.
Alumna Anne Sullivan (Computer Science, Ph.D., ’12) was inducted as a Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA) Fellow. This is the highest academic honor for a games-focused researcher. While at UCSC, she was advised by Professor of Computational Media Michael Mateas.
Ali Shariati, Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering was awarded a Large Grant from the UCSC Faculty Senate Committee on Research (COR) for his work: Generation of CRISPR-programmed Human Embryo Models.
Dustin Richmond, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering was awarded a Large Grant from the UCSC Faculty Senate Committee on Research (COR) for his work: Repurposing DRAM for Neuromorphic Computation.
Alex Pang, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering was awarded a Large Grant from the UCSC Faculty Senate Committee on Research (COR) for his work: VIP Navigation Assistant.
Katia Obraczka, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering was awarded a Large Grant from the UCSC Faculty Senate Committee on Research (COR) for her work: Towards AI Democratization Through Decentralized Edge Intelligence.
Sri Kurniawan, Associate Professor of Computational Media was awarded a Large Grant from the UCSC Faculty Senate Committee on Research (COR) for her work: Community-Engaged Culturally-Sensitive Development of Virtual Reality Stories of Fire Management by Karuk Native American Community.
Sangwon Hyun, Assistant Professor of Statistics was awarded a Large Grant from the UCSC Faculty Senate Committee on Research (COR) for his work: Next-Generation Statistical Gating and Characterization of Immune Cells in Health and Disease.
Ten distinguished undergraduate projects received Baskin Engineering Dean’s Awards for their outstanding contributions to engineering research. Three of these projects also received Chancellor’s Awards, given to the most outstanding Dean’s Awards projects.
Nathan Altice, Associate Teaching Professor of Computational Media, received a 2023-24 Distinguished Teaching Award, for his role in promoting inclusive teaching methods and driving transformative change in the teaching culture within the Computational Media department.
David Haussler, Distinguished Professor of Biomolecular Engineering received the Chancellor’s Lifetime Achievement in Innovation Award, highlighting his incredible career in computer science and biology, including his role in the first sequencing of the human genome, his invention of the UCSC genome browser, and his mentorship and training of many people along the way.
Holger Schmidt, Distinguished Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Narinder Kapany Chair of Optoelectronics, received the award of Innovator of the Year for his work on highly sensitive devices called optofluidic chips.
Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Daniel Kim, moved on to the Elite 8 in STAT Madness, a contest to find the best innovation in science and medicine.
Assistant Professor of Computational Media Christina Chung and colleagues, received the CHI 2024 Best Paper (Top 1%) Award for their research on a card-based design tool to bridge academic research and design practice for social resilience.
Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Human Computer Interaction Norman Makoto Su, along with colleagues, received a CHI 2024 Honorable Mention (top 5%) for the team’s paper on video interventions to educate users about targeted advertising on Facebook.
Tallyrus, a web application for essay grading developed by Baskin Engineering student Vikyath Nardasi and UC Davis students Ashwin Chembu and Gautham Pandian, placed first in the 2024 Student Creativity Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Slug Tank competition.
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Colleen Josephson won the 2023 VMware Early Career Faculty Award, recognizing her as a leader of the next generation of exceptional faculty members.
Josephson was nominated and selected as a finalist in the 2024 Best of Sensors Awards program in the Rising Star category.
Josephson, along with Electrical and Computer Engineering Ph.D. student John Madden and ECE alumnus Stephen Taylor were part of the team who produced Terracell, which was announced as a Fast Company honorable mention in the sustainability category.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Leilani Gilpin received the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) 2024 Young Investigator Program award.
