June 2018 Five10 Report

Congratulations to our Engineering Seniors for their participation in the 48th Annual Senior Design Conference, May 10. Find a list of session winners here. A big thank you to the many School of Engineering faculty advisors and staff members who contributed to the day's success and to the 100+ alumni who returned to campus to judge the presentations.

Juliana Trujillo '20 (bioengineering) was accepted in the prestigious Summer@Station1 program, where she will be working on a research project with the United Therapeutics Corporation Organ Manufacturing Group in Cambridge, MA, addressing the lack of supply for donor organs through the manufacture of transplantable organs.

Water Resources Engineering students spent May 18 pulling trash out of a 1-mile segment of the San Tomás Aquino Creek in Santa Clara, capturing mostly plastics waste that has washed into storm drains and deposited along creeks. Part of National River Cleanup Day, the effort removed over 45,000 pounds of trash from 64 miles of Santa Clara County waterways.

Prashanth Asuri (bioengineering and bioinnovation and design) co-organized a mini-conference on Innovations in Healthcare with panels on IT and Healthcare, New Product Innovation and Development, and Path to Healthcare Entrepreneurship. Students connected with top Silicon Valley talent including product managers, senior engineers, doctors, and VCs to learn more about entrepreneurship and career opportunities in the healthcare sector. Read more here.

Jes Kuczenski (engineering) received an SCU Sustainability Champion Award in Academics, honoring her leadership in integrating sustainability in her ENGR 110 course and for using the campus as a living lab. She and her students have collaborated with the Center for Sustainability on a number of projects for campus sustainability initiatives, the Forge Garden, and at SCU's school garden sites.

Nam Ling (computer engineering) was renewed as Guest Professor for Tianjin University, China, for 2017-2019. Tianjin University is a top university in China and is the oldest institution of higher education in China.

Tonya Nilsson (civil engineering)  was named the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship's "Innovative Professor of the Year."  Passionate about pedagogy and interactive learning methods, she is an ASCE ExCEED Mentor and Master Teacher--one of a handful who teach “Demonstration” classes at national workshops. This year, she will present a Demo class at West Point!

Tokunbo Ogunfunmi (electrical engineering) is serving as Guest Editor for a Special Issue, "Algorithms and Architectures for Machine Learning-based Speech Processing," of the journal, Circuits, Systems and Signal Processing.

Aleksandar Zecevic (electrical engineering) has published a trilogy on interdisciplinary aesthetics: The Beauty of Nature and the Nature of Beauty; Ten Dialogues about Art and Beauty; and The Many Faces of Complexity: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Beauty. These will serve as texts for a new class he developed, ELEN 161: The Beauty of Nature and the Nature of Beauty.

Tenure and Promotion: Congratulations to our faculty who received tenure and promotion to the rank of associate professor: Yi Fang (computer engineering), Bill Lu (bioengineering), Hisham Said (civil engineering), and Panthea Sepehrband (mechanical engineering)! And a big shout-out to alumnus Anh Tran, S.J. '85, M.S. '90 (electrical engineering), also awarded tenure and promotion in the Jesuit School of Theology.

Bioengineering alumnae Blake Williams '12, M.S. '14 and Elyse Shimomura '13, M.S. '15 have both recently been promoted to the rank of "Scientist" with leadership roles in their Bay Area biotech companies, Medikine, Inc., and Sutrovax, respectively. These alumnae were among the first to graduate from both the B.S. and M.S. bioengineering programs.

Chokri Sendi, Ph.D. '16 accepted a tenure-track position in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alaska, Anchorage (UAA). Chokri received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Santa Clara University under the supervision of Mohammad Ayoubi.

Tina Panontin ’83 BSME receives the 2018 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award! Dr. Panontin led a distinguished 34-year career at NASA-Ames Research Center (ARC), contributing to major space flight programs, flagship science programs, low cost lunar science missions, biological space experiments, and more. Currently Professor of Practice with the College of Engineering at San Jose State University, read more about her accomplishments here.

Hemant Thapar ’73 BSEECS, ’75 MSEECS receives the 2018 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award! Innovator and entrepreneur, Dr. Thapar has founded startups that delivered many “industry firsts” in controllers for data storage and data recovery and system-on- a-chip technologies. He has given generously to SCU as an adjunct lecturer in Electrical Engineering, and as a current advisory board member for the School of Engineering. Read more here.

A delegation of six emerging leaders from Israel, nominated by the U.S. Department of State to participate in the International Visitor Leadership Program, met with School of Engineering faculty, students, and alumni to discuss SCU's Tiny House and Solar Decathlon houses. The group toured Refract House, SCU's 3rd Place winning entry in the 2009 U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon competition.

Mary Coady joins the School of Engineering as the new Director for Corporate and External Relations. Mary has an extensive background in industry and non-profit sectors, with experience spanning higher education, technology and medicine. She led the communications and marketing strategy for Stanford University School of Medicine’s successful $1 billion fundraising campaign.

State of the School Address: At a luncheon attended by Senior Design Conference alumni judges, campus administrators, faculty, staff, and friends of the School of Engineering, Dean Al Ortega delivered the 2018 State of the School Address. Find it here.