Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Student Awards

Koray Celik, ECpE graduate student; Soon-Jo Chung, assistant professor of aerospace engineering and electrical and computer engineering and director of the Aerospace Robotics Laboratory; and Arun K. Somani, ECpE department chair and Anson Marston Distinguished Professor, won the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Electro/Information Technology in May 2008. The paper entitled, "Mono-Vision Corner SLAM for Indoor Navigation,"presents a real-time monocular vision-based range measurement method for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) for an autonomous micro aerial vehicle with significantly constrained payload.  The proposed navigation strategy assumes a GPS-denied manmade environment, whose indoor architecture is represented via corner-based feature points obtained through a monocular camera.

Cory Simon, senior in computer engineering, received the Dean’s Student Leadership Award. The award recognizes exemplary leadership by juniors or seniors in one or more major college, university, community, or professional organizations. He also won the university's 2008 Senior Leadership Recognition Award which is presented at the VEISHEA Awards Ceremony.

Kyle Byerly and Matt Swanson, both seniors in computer engineering, received honorable mentions in the Computer Research Association's 2008 Outstanding Undergraduate Award competition. The award recognizes students in North American universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research.

Graduate students Samarjit Das and Daniel Stieler each received a university Teaching Excellence Award, which recognizes and encourages outstanding achievement by graduate students in teaching. Graduate students Vinod Shukla, Vikas Yadav, and Lu Zhang each won a university Research Excellence Award. The award recognizes graduate students at the time of their graduation for outstanding research accomplishments as documented in their theses and dissertations.

Graduate students Baozhen Chen and Chengwu Tao, along with Assistant Professor Santosh Pandey, received the Best Student & Postdoc Paper Award at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and National Institute of Health’s Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative conference on Life Science Systems and Applications in November 2007. The paper was titled, “A Novel Floating-Gate Biosensing Device with Controlled Charge-Modulation.”

Daniel Helvick, Phillip Reusswig, and Hakan Topakkaya, graduate students in electrical and computer engineering, received Iowa State University’s Teaching Excellence Award. The award recognizes and encourages outstanding achievements by graduate students in teaching.

Zhenhui Shen and Changyan Zhou, graduate students in computer engineering, received Iowa State University’s Research Excellence Award. The award recognizes graduate students at the time of their graduation for outstanding research accomplishments as documented in their theses and dissertations.

Laura Janvrin and Vaibhav Kumar, both seniors in electrical engineering, each received the William L. Everitt Award from the International Engineering Consortium. The Everitt Award honors outstanding seniors in electrical and computer engineering with an interest in communications and computers.

Cory Simon, senior in computer engineering, recently won a prestigious Tau Beta Pi senior-level scholarship. Simon, originally from Winterset, Iowa, was one of 135 students selected to receive this award from Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society. Scholarships recognize undergraduate students who exemplify high scholarship, are involved in campus leadership and service, and represent a promise of future contributions to the engineering profession. All winners are members of Tau Beta Pi.

Scott Penick, junior in electrical and computer engineering, was awarded the Live-In Mentor Award. This award recognizes the work of peer mentors working with students in learning communities on campus. It honors peer mentors who demonstrate excellence in team building, programming, interpersonal interaction, leadership, academic assistance, classroom presentations, and/or tutoring. Penick is a peer mentor for the Computer Engineering Learning Community. He works with freshmen computer engineering students who live in Friley Hall’s Lincoln House.