EE/CE 2023 Graduate Student Awards

The 2022/2023 academic school year has been a challenging one and we are so proud to celebrate our 2023 graduates!
Columbia University’s Electrical Engineering Department is proud to share the below graduate awards that were given out during our End of Year Luncheon and Awards on May 1st.
The EE Faculty and the Student Affairs Team wished all of our graduating students a big congratulations during our End of Year Luncheon and Awards.
Edwin Howard Armstrong Memorial Award
Awarded annually by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering to one outstanding candidate for the M.S. degree 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.
Hongzhe Jiang
Hongzhe received the MS degree in Feb. 2023 and joined the group of Prof. Peter Kinget as a first year PhD student. He is recognized for outstanding achievements during his MS degree including the First Prize for the Best Project in the VLSI Design Lab class awarded by the Apple engineers.
Eli Jury Awards
For outstanding achievement by a graduate student in the areas of circuits, systems and communications, and signal processing.
Eric Hiroshi Pollmann
Eric is a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Ken Shepard and will be graduating this spring. Eric has been working on developing implantable optoelectronics for brain interfacing.
Anthony Joseph Rizzo
Anthony was a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Keren Bergman. His thesis was on “Highly Parallel Silicon Photonic Links with Integrated Kerr Frequency Combs.” He is now with the Air Force Research Lab. He received the Millman award a couple of years ago.
Electrical Engineering Collaborative Research Award
To be given to PhD candidates who make a superb contribution to a collaborative research effort.
Matthew Hoyin Jahnes
Matthew is currently a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Matthias Preindl. He supported numerous collaborative projects within and outside of Prof. Preindl’s lab, including the Formula SAE team.
Adriaan Johannes Tal
Adriaan earned his PhD degree in October 2022 under the supervision of Prof. Ken Shepard. He worked on a very interdisciplinary and collaborative project on the design of optoelectronic devices for interfacing to the brain. He is currently at Apple.
Master of Science Award of Excellence
Awarded to the MS students with the highest GPAs.
Abhishek Arora
Abhishek was an MS student who graduated in February 2023.
Yang Chen
Yang was an MS student who graduated in February 2023.
Oliver Andrew Durnan
Oliver is an MS/PhD student who received the MS in February 2023. He is now a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. John Kymissis.
Yinsen Jia
Yinsen was an MS student who graduated in February 2023.
Mao Li
Mao was an MS student who graduated in May 2022. He is now a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Mingoo Seok.
Lei Lyu
Lei was an MS student who graduated in May 2022.
Karl Jacob McNulty
Karl was an MS student who graduated in February 2023. He is now a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Michal Lipson.
Shivam Ojha
Shivam was an MS student who graduated in February 2023.
Arvind Kanesan Rathna
Arvind was an MS student who graduated in February 2023.
Yifan Shao
Yifan was an MS student who graduated in February 2023.
Haoming Sun
Haoming was an MS student who graduated in February 2023.
Rentao Wan
Rantao was an MS student who graduated in February 2023. He is now a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Mingoo Seok.
Yuankai Xu
Yuankai was an MS student who graduated in May 2022.
Yi Yang
Yi was an MS student who graduated in February 2023.
Zixun Zhao
Zixun was an MS student who graduated in October 2022.
Yihan Zhu
Yihan was an MS student who graduated in February 2023.
MS Research Award
This award is presented to MS candidates who make a superb contribution to a research project.
Manuel Jenkin Jerome
Manuel is a MS student that is earning his MS degree this Spring. He has been doing the MS Research Specialization with Prof. Christine Hendon. His project is focused on exploring the use of compressed sensing for optical coherence tomography imaging.
Leoni Lu
Leoni was a BS/MS student. She earned her MS degree this February 2023. She worked on research in the areas of mmWave and full-duplex under the supervision of Prof. Gil Zussman. She is currently with Qualcomm.
Jacob Millman Awards - For Outstanding TA’s
Awarded to graduate students who demonstrate outstanding performance as a Teaching Assistant.
Petar Barac
Petar is currently a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Peter Kinget. He was an excellent lead TA for the very demanding class, VLSI Design Lab, taught by Prof. Kinget.
Youssef Amr Fahmy
Youssef is currently a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Preindl. He has been an excellent TA in Prof. Debasis Mitra’s class - ELEN E6767, “Internet Economics, Engineering and the Implications for Society''.
Jingping Nie
Jingping is currently a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Fred Jiang and Prof. Matthias Preindl. She TAed several classes including ELEN 6908: Embedded AI, EECS 4764: IoT -- Intelligent and Connected Systems, (both by Prof. Jiang) and ELEN 6767: Internet Economics, Engineering, and Society (by Prof. Debasis Mitra) with overall excellent performance. As a side note, she was recently named Apple Scholars in AI/ML.
Graduate Service Award
Awarded by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering to an Electrical Engineering graduate student who has made significant contributions to the Department and community at large.
Petar Barac
Petar is currently a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Peter Kinget. Petar is the chair of our Graduate Electrical Engineering at Columbia (GEEC) and as such has made significant contributions to the graduate students community.
EE Ambassadors
The Electrical Engineering Ambassadors represent a cross-section of promising master’s and doctoral candidates in EE.