Starting this year, the UC Davis College of Engineering is proud to recognize four outstanding graduate students with the College of Engineering Graduate Student Awards.
These awards honor the achievements and contributions of engineering graduate students for their research and service. Nominations were open to any M.S. and Ph.D. student enrolled in a graduate program in the college. Each award recipient will receive a $500 scholarship and their name will be added to a permanent display located in the Kemper Hall lobby.
Since Yolo County issued a shelter-in-place order on March 18 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, life has changed dramatically for the College of Engineering’s students, graduate student teaching assistants (TAs) and faculty members. In keeping with Aggie spirit and pride, our community demonstrated tremendous flexibility and resilience in transitioning spring quarter classes online and have immersed themselves in the virtual environment to create a robust remote learning experience this fall.
Materials science and engineering distinguished professor emeritus and College of Engineering dean emeritus Zuhair A. Munir was recognized for his lifetime achievements in the field of ceramic engineering with the 2021 James I. Mueller Memorial Award from the American Ceramic Society (ACerS) Engineering Ceramics Division. He will be honored at the 45th International Conference on Advanced Ceramics and Composites, where he will deliver the Keynote Plenary Lecture virtually on February 8, 2021.
Materials science and engineering associate professor Marina Leite thinks machine learning is key to the next big breakthrough in renewable energy. With a new three-year grant from the National Science Foundation, Leite will use machine learning techniques to study perovskite solar cells, a class of highly efficient but volatile devices, to find the optimal conditions to run them reliably.
Each year, the UC Davis College of Engineering recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated excellence in teaching, research and community. Faculty members are nominated by their respective departments and are selected by the college’s faculty awards committee. These four professors will receive awards honoring their exceptional accomplishments during the virtual Celebration of Faculty Excellence on October 20, from 5-6 pm.
Starting this year, the UC Davis College of Engineering is recognizing one outstanding teacher and teacher’s assistant (TA) from each department with the Best Teaching and Best TA awards.
Engineering alumnus and Inneos CEO Brian Peters ‘88 is a successful leader, businessman and entrepreneur in the optics industry, but he wouldn’t lead with that. In his 25 years in business, Peters takes the most pride in leading companies with an inspired community of colleagues who have helped him carve out his place in Silicon Valley.
Louie Zhong is a fourth-year materials science and engineering student at UC Davis and plans to continue his research as he pursues his M.S. in materials science and engineering at Stanford University after graduation.
A big part of Louie’s UC Davis experience was being an undergraduate researcher in assistant professor Roopali Kukreja’s lab, where he studied how materials behave on ultrafast timescales as short as a picosecond. Their research and materials can potentially be used for next-generation memory devices, which will have a major impact on computing down the line.
Ian Phillips is a fourth-year materials science and engineering student finishing his undergraduate degree at UC Davis.
Becoming an engineer was a natural choice for Ian. He grew up working on cars with his dad, giving him a love of hands-on work and problem solving that he’s taken with him throughout his time at UC Davis, from studying semiconductors and ceramics at UC Davis and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to teaching shop tools at the UC Davis D-Lab.
When Yolo County issued a shelter-in-place order on March 18, the College of Engineering’s graduate student teaching assistants (TAs) and faculty members had less than two weeks to transition their spring classes online. While spring 2020 will be remembered as anything but a normal quarter, innovation in teaching and community among students and TAs have helped keep the college running and make the best of the situation.
