2025 Fellowships Highlight Columbia Electrical Engineering Student Achievements

Each year, Columbia Engineering’s Department of Electrical Engineering recognizes outstanding graduate students with competitive fellowships that support their research and academic journeys. The 2025 recipients represent the breadth of the department’s expertise—from secure telecommunications and photonic circuits to biomedical optics and brain-computer interfaces. Meet these students:

Blavatnik Fellow
Kaden Du
Kaden is a first-year M.S./Ph.D. candidate joining the Bioelectronic Systems Lab under Professor Ken Shepard. A graduate of Northeastern University in Electrical and Computer Engineering, he has worked on circuits for wireless power transfer and has industry experience ranging from steerable antenna technology to power electronics. At Columbia, Kaden is developing wireless circuits in biological contexts, advancing implant and imaging technologies.

Wei Family Foundation Fellows
Zichen Qian
Zichen is a first-year Ph.D. student in the VLSI Lab advised by Professor Mingoo Seok. She completed her B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering at Columbia, where her research focused on nonvolatile memory applications in in-memory computing. She has also interned at Applied Materials. Her current research explores analog/mixed signal and digital circuits design.

Isabel Song
Isabel is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Lightwave Research Laboratory, advised by Professor Keren Bergman. She earned her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and previously interned at MIT Lincoln Laboratory analyzing laser frequency noise. At Columbia, she is developing silicon photonic integrated circuits for efficient optical interconnection networks.

Avanessians Doctoral Fellowship for Engineering
Danyang Cheng
A second-year Ph.D. student in the Structure Function Imaging Laboratory under Professor Christine Hendon, Danyang earned her B.Eng. from Xidian University and her M.S. from Columbia. She has been recognized with the Nikola Tesla Electrical Engineering Scholarship, the MS Research Award, and the MS Award of Excellence. Her research focuses on biomedical optics for diagnosis and therapy, optical system design, and physics-informed data-driven analysis.

Chiang Chen Fellowship
Yuesheng Ma
Yuesheng is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Neural Acoustic Processing Lab, advised by Professor Nima Mesgarani. She holds a B.Eng. in Automation from Xi’an Jiaotong University and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia, graduating with M.S. EE Honors. Her research explores next-generation brain-computer interface devices to aid the hearing impaired.

Higgins Fellowship
Harris Ransom
Harris is a first-year M.S./Ph.D. student co-advised by Professors Ethan Katz-Bassett and Gil Zussman. He completed his B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rutgers University, where he researched secure information systems and cyber-physical systems. At Columbia, he is a member of the Systems and Networking Lab and the Wireless and Mobile Networking Lab, where his work focuses on secure, resilient, and performant telecommunications.

Izzo Family Fellowship
Ryan Baum
Ryan received his B.S. (2024) and M.S. (2025) in Electrical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara, where he developed an optical test setup to characterize high-power heterojunction phototransistors. Now a Ph.D. student in the Lightwave Research Laboratory, his research centers on scalable silicon photonic integrated circuits.

Dean’s MS Academic Excellence Fellowship
Austin Gnecco (Computer Engineering)
Austin is a first-year M.S. student in Computer Engineering. A graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, he has researched radiation-tolerant embedded systems for CubeSats. He is also an electronics engineer at Sandia National Laboratories and is now focusing on computer architecture and hardware accelerator design.

Logan Po
Logan is a first-year M.S. student in Electrical Engineering. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.E. in Electrical Engineering from The Cooper Union, where he refined analog circuits for audio processing and wireless communication. His current interests are in semiconductor devices for high-frequency applications.

Srika Chagarlamudi
Srika is a first-year M.S. student in Electrical Engineering. She earned her B.S. from UCLA, where she worked at the Secure Systems and Architectures Lab. She has also interned at AMD and Cadence Design Systems. At Columbia, she is continuing her research in digital and analog integrated circuits.

Gabriel Tetrault
Gabriel is a first-year M.S. student in Electrical Engineering. He earned his BEng from Imperial College London, where he researched energy harvesting and fluxgate sensors. His research interests include mixed-signal IC design, unconventional semiconductors, and novel memory devices.

Engineering for Change MS Fellowship
Topher Lloyd R. 
Topher is a first-year M.S. student in Electrical Engineering. He received his B.S. from the University of Utah, where he researched DL-based optimization for diffractive optical elements and was recognized as an NAE Grand Challenges Scholar. At Columbia, he is pursuing research in computational and applied optics while serving as a CA and Team Manager for the Men’s Lacrosse team.