EE/CE 2022 Undergraduate Student Awards

April 28, 2022

Awarded by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering to one outstanding graduating senior and one outstanding candidate to honor the late Edwin Howard Armstrong, professor of Electrical Engineering and inventor of wideband FM broadcasting, the regenerative circuit, and other basic circuits of communications and electronics.

Qingyuan Zeng

Qingyuan has worked at the Kymissis lab for two years, and I spend most of my time studying various types of optoelectronic devices.

He mainly worked on two research projects, i.e., building a soil pH sensor and characterizing a position-sensitive device (PSD). The pH sensor can measure the soil pH level via an optical sensor which monitors the color variation of a chemical pH indicator. The PSD utilizes a 2D GaN photodiode to extract the location of incoming light based on the photo-lateral effect.

He is going to enroll in the MS program at Caltech starting in the fall semester.

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

Michael McGrath

Michael transferred into Columbia University as part of the combined program.  His degree at Columbia is in Electrical Engineering and he will receive a BA from The College of the Holy Cross in Physics.  In Fall 2021, Michael was inducted into Tau Beta Pi, Engineering Honor Society.

During the pandemic he interned with the Yale University BioMed department where he assisted with research on a medical image processing algorithm that could be used by doctors to help diagnose their COVID-19 patients. For the senior design project his team developed object avoidance and autonomous landing systems from drones.

After graduation Michael will be continuing on at Columbia in the MSEE program and he has accepted a full-time position with John’s Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory working in the Air and Missile Defense Sector.

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

Cade Gleekel

Cade studied closest with Professor Kinget and Professor Vallancourt; they have both been fantastic teachers and mentors to him and he cannot thank them enough. His relationship with Professor Kinget began last semester in his first class with him. Kinget helped him for months as he went through all rounds of the interview process with SpaceX. Towards the end of this process Professor Kinget asked Cade to work in his Analog Integrated Circuits lab this summer with his PHD students, and he has accepted. On a similar note, he has decided to pursue his Master’s in EE at Columbia over further exploring SpaceX, for the next few years at least! “I couldn’t turn down an opportunity to continue my education at Columbia, in this department. As a member of the 3+2 program, I feel I have only breached the surface of all the school and department has to offer over the last two, incredible years. I am thrilled to be returning in the fall.

Professor Vallancourt has also been a great mentor to me, I’ve had a class with him every semester since my second and he has been instrumental to exposing me to the information that I’ve fallen in love with since being here. Recently, we have worked closely on my senior capstone project, a fully analog switched capacitor audio equalizer, similar conceptually to work he did for his PHD thesis,” Cade said.

As he moves into the next chapter of his education, he finds himself pulled strongest towards digital communications and circuits, specifically their analog implementations; he finds that the challenge and range of analog design combined with the innovation and potential of digital systems is what excites me most, and he looks forward to pursuing it further with the University, department, and faculty!

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

Callan Hall

Callan is from South Africa and was recruited by Columbia to play on the varsity Squash team which he has been a part of for the last four years. In Summer 2021 he worked as a research intern in Professor Bergman's Lightwave Research Laboratory. In the lab, Hal mainly worked on designing and implementing an FPGA based Digital to Analog Modulator to be used for thermal control in one of the other projects. His next step after graduating in May is to complete an MS in Electrical Engineering in the Fall semester. After that he hopes to stay in NYC and work in industry as a hardware engineer.

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

Ji Ku

Ji studied within the signals and system concentration, and he worked with Dr. Alex Nectow focusing on deep learning for analyzing animal movement. Before he focused on research on topics such as robotics using magnetic rotation and artificial photosynthesis. He will be working at Samsung Electronics in South Korea after graduation.
 

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

Alexander Liebeskind

Alexander Liebeskind is a senior majoring in Computer Engineering, with a minor in Political Science and Applied Mathematics.

In his time at Columbia, Alexander has worked as an EMT for CUEMS, as a medical responder during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a researcher at the Programming Systems Lab, and as a software engineer at an image processing startup. He also holds a fellowship at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and has published numerous papers in journals including JAMA Network Open and the International Journal of Surgery on computer science for education, demographic disparities in arthroplasty efficacy, and robotic surgical devices. His writing has been featured in USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, while his crosswords have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times.

Within the Columbia Computer Engineering department, Alexander serves as a Lab Assistant for Electronic Circuits Laboratory under Professor Vallancourt. He has also collaborated with fellow CE undergraduates Nikhil Mehta and Evan Tilley on projects for Programming Languages and Translators and Computer Architecture.

He was inducted into Tau Beta Pi his junior year and awarded the Tau Beta Pi Scholarship for 2021-2022.
 

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

Nikhil Mehta

Nikhil is excited to graduate this spring with a major in Computer Engineering from the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Throughout his tenure as an undergraduate, he has done his best to obtain a breadth of knowledge in electrical and computer engineering to serve as a foundation to acquire a depth of knowledge in cryptography and cyber security, all the while maintaining responsible scholarship as a member of the Columbia community.

He has used his technical skills developed in the classroom to further the mission of national security. Nikhil conducted research at Air Force Research Laboratory to develop deep learning models on remote sense imagery specialized for space-based neuromorphic architecture. Last summer he interned at the Air Force Research Laboratory once more and focused on offensive and defensive cyber warfare operations. Before that, he worked in Professor Modi’s sustainable engineering lab where he researched the efficacy of existing solar powered irrigation systems in sub-saharan Africa. After graduating he will continue his focus on nation security by interning at In-Q-Tel working in engineering and cyber. Nikhil will pursue a master’s degree in Computer Science and Computer Security at Columbia’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Outside the classroom, I have done my best to be a leader in his community. He serves as the Editor-In-Chief of the Columbia Federalist, Columbia’s satirical newspaper. He is also the Academic Affairs Representative on the Engineering Student Council where he has successfully lobbied for the P/D/F and P/F uncover policies and the creation of new minors for SEAS undergraduates.