EE/CE 2023 Undergraduate Student Awards

Awarded by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering to one outstanding graduating senior who has demonstrated outstanding passion and accomplishment in research. 

Margherita Adriana Firenze

Since her sophomore year, Margherita has been part of the Structure Function Imaging Lab at Columbia headed by Prof. Christine Hendon. She has worked on the Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) breast biopsy project with the goal of identifying cancer using a novel imaging modality. She has developed several machine learning and image processing algorithms to identify cancer and characterize new features. Her work has been featured in numerous conferences, including at SPIE, where she gave an oral presentation. In the fall, she will be starting her PhD at MIT in the EECS (Electrical Engineering & Computer Science) department. There, she plans to develop new computer vision and image processing tools for medical imaging.

Awarded by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering to one outstanding graduating senior who has made significant contributions to the department and community at large.

Ava Kim

Ava Kim is a graduating senior at Columbia University, where she majored in Electrical Engineering. In 2020 after a department round table lunch in which Professor Zukowski brought up memories of a EE centered student club, she was inspired to create one to connect the EECE community. The IEEE student chapter at Columbia University was re-established in 2021 alongside one of her classmates David Xu, and she went on to lead the club through 2022-23. The club is now populated by undergraduates and graduate students alike and not only serves as an advantageous stepping stone for engineering students and their future goals but also a bridge connecting faculty and students. 

Ava has worked under Professor Ken Shepard's PhD student Eric Pollmann in the Bioelectronics Systems Lab, as a hardware and product management intern at Columbia startup Opal Wearables, and as a DRAM intern at Micron. She will be pursuing a masters degree in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University with the same faculty and (most of) the students that made the department her home.

Michael Lee 

Michael Yuanching Lee joined the Columbia Electrical Engineering Department in 2021 as a Combined Plan student after having previously studied Economics at Claremont McKenna College. During his time at Columbia, he deeply enjoyed working on the Airframes team on the Columbia Space Initiative’s (CSI) Rocketry program, Columbia University Lion Dance, and the summers spent in engineering internships at Motiv Power Systems and Atomos Nuclear and Space. For his Senior Design Project, his team worked with the Lightwave Research Lab (LRL) to characterize and provide packaging for an 8x8 photonic-integrated-chip with the support of the LRL’s talented PHD’s. After graduation, he will be returning to Los Angeles to work at IBM.

Awarded by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering to one outstanding graduating senior who has demonstrated outstanding passion and accomplishment in Electronics, Circuits, and Physics

Ourania Stouraiti

Ourania Stouraiti is a graduating senior who has been a leader of Columbia University Formula Racing as the Chief Electrical Engineer of the electric vehicle team, advised by Prof. Preindl. She has been a research assistant at the Bioelectronic Systems Laboratory under Prof. Shepard, and has held multiple teaching assistant positions in the department. In the fall she will begin her studies at Princeton University towards a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Awarded by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering to one outstanding graduating senior who has demonstrated outstanding passion and accomplishment in Information and Systems.

Tess Fallon

Tess Fallon is a graduating senior at Columbia University, where she studied Electrical and Biomedical Engineering. She has done work with Dr. Hod Lipson at Columbia University, designing circuits for more accessible Doppler Ultrasound systems for the ICU. She is presently involved in research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she is finalizing a novel assay aiming to assess filtration status of patient-derived kidneys-on-a-chip. She is also working on a project which explores how biological enzyme networks transduce oscillatory information. Following graduation, Tess is pursuing a PhD through the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) Program.

Awarded each year by vote of the Computer Engineering faculty to an outstanding senior in the computer engineering program.

Tristan Saidi

Tristan Saidi is a graduating senior studying Computer Engineering at Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science.  Outside of the classroom, much of Tristan’s time was spent doing research in fields closely intertwined with Computer Engineering. Tristan started by working for Professor Shepard his sophomore year, developing circuit boards and working on computational tools for neuroscience applications. More recently Tristan has shifted focus to robotics, working under Professor Matei Ciocarlie. His work has centered around computational aspects of robotics, namely physics simulation and optimal control. Beyond graduation, Tristan will be continuing at Columbia and pursuing a PhD degree in Computer Science under Professor Ciocarlie. He will continue his current research, working on effective algorithms and systems for robotic manipulation and dexterity.

David Xu

David Xu is a graduating senior studying Computer Engineering at Columbia University.  During his years, he learned to decipher assembly code and ancient poetry alike. Through Professor Carloni’s seminar, David was able to work with researchers at Fermilab to explore hardware accelerated machine learning for use in quantum computing. After graduation, David will stay in the beautiful city of New York while working at Hudson River Trading.