March 2023 Five10 Report

Engineers Week (eWeek) began with our 11th Annual Engineering Art Show in the Healthcare Innovation and Design lab hallway (which featured work from current students, an alumnus, faculty, and staff), along with the 10th anniversary of the student-run Hack-4-Humanity. These were followed by the kick-off celebration in SCDI, with staff distributing our eWeek t-shirts designed by Rebecca Walters '23 (Mechanical Engineering). eWeek continued with its themed week, including Wellness Wednesday, where staff, faculty, and students gathered in the Heafey atrium to enjoy a night of pancakes, waffles, games, and karaoke. eWeek concluded with our 5th Annual School of Engineering Research Showcase, where over 35 research groups exhibited their research posters to hundreds of guests. Special thanks go out to everyone who made this year’s National Engineers Week a huge success!

Family Weekend: This year's largest Family Weekend on record included approximately 230 engineering families who participated in a variety of Engineering events, such as STEM facility tours, two special faculty lectures by Bill Lu and Silvia Figuiera, a Research Showcase, a Meet the Dean Reception, a Making the Most of Your First Year Workshop hosted by Peer Advisors, and a Senior Design Capstone Project Showcase. Additionally, families had the opportunity to participate in various Family Weekend events, including a Gala for families of seniors, various informational workshops on internships and study abroad opportunities for STEM students, and additional program tours and community events.

School of Engineering participated in the 2nd Annual Golden State Warriors STEAM Fest at the Chase Center on Mar. 4th. We had students representing SWE, SHPE, NSBE, ACM-W, Maker Club, HMI2 Lab/ECE Department, EWB, ASCE, and special guest "Inspector Planet" Tracy Fanara, sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Learning (OML). Over 10,000 attended, with an estimated 8-8.5k that came through the tabling experiences. 

Senior Design: Save the date for the School of Engineering's 53rd Annual Senior Design Conference. This year's conference will be held on Thursday, May 11. We have 76 projects that will be presented in 18 sessions by 228 engineering seniors! Stay up to date by visiting our Senior Design web page. Judges' registration is now open through April 12.

Engineering Faculty Awards: Every year, the School of Engineering honors the top faculty for both teaching and research. This year's award recipients include:

Kurt Schab (Electrical and Computer Engineering) and Xiang Li (Computer Science and Engineering) for the Researcher of the Year Award

Ralph Morganstern (Applied Mathematics) for the Gerald E. Markle Award

Bill Lu (Bioengineering) for the Award for Teaching Excellence

Amr Elkady (Computer Science and Engineering) for the Adjunct Lecturer of the Year Award

Department of Computer Science and Engineering for receiving the new Dean’s Special Recognition Award.

Congratulations to all! Read more about the award winners here.

Kai Lukoff (Computer Science and Engineering) receives the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI). Each year, the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI) bestows a prestigious honor on outstanding research conducted by recently graduated Ph.D. students in the Human-Computer Interaction field in recognition of their exceptional achievements.

Lukoff's research aims to give people greater control over the time they spend with digital technology. His dissertation from the University of Washington, Designing to Support Sense of Agency for Time Spent on Digital Interfaces, focuses on addressing frustrations with technology by studying interfaces that can promote a greater sense of user agency. By analyzing the YouTube app and developing a new app, SwitchTube, Lukoff demonstrates designs that can enable such agency. Congratulations, Kai!

Whitham Family Collaborative Scholarship Awardees: This year, two of the three cross-disciplinary research teams that received the scholarship include faculty and staff from the School of Engineering. Congratulations to: Track 1 Research Team: Kai Lukoff (Computer Science and Engineering), Amy Lueck (English), and Lee Panich (Anthropology), for their project titled “The Ohlone Augmented Reality Campus Tour” and Track 2 Research Team: Iris Stewart-Frey (Environmental Studies and Sciences), Ed Maurer (Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering), Allan Báez Morales (Frugal Innovation Hub), and Qiuwen Li (Art & Art History), for their project titled “Creating an app for climate change forecasts, information, and adaptation in Central America through science, technology, and the arts.” Congratulations to all of the scholarship awardees!

Research Showcase Winners: Congratulations to all of this year’s research showcase poster winners!

Undergraduate Category:
First place: “Symmetry on Higher-Rank Tensor Material Properties,” Student Author: Jo Espiritu, Advisor: Robert Marks
Second place: “Autonomous Underwater Vertical Profiler,” Student Authors: Steven Reimer, Rebecca Walters, Jeffrey Ke, Jenny Huynh, Anshuman Sahu, Katie Ott, Advisor: Chris Kitts
Third place: “Machine Vision to Identify Messenger Molecules Interaction between Mammalian Cells and Gram-positive Bacteria,” Student Authors: Colette Caspar, Maiya Fujiwara, Brandon Pang, Advisor: Jonathan Zhang

Master’s Category:
First place: “Multi-robot Collaboration & Multiple Drive Motion Control of an Autonomous Agricultural Rover,” Student authors: Michael Aboh, James Forman, Advisor: Chris Kitts
Second place: “Antenna Circuit Model Synthesis and Transient AnalysisStudent," Author: Vikram Naidu, Advisor: Kurt Schab
Third place (tie): “Binary Classification in Ultrasound Breast Imaging,” Student author: Leo Wei, Advisor: Yuling Yan

“Enhanced Immersion for Mindfulness Practices with Virtual Reality and Neurofeedback,” Student Authors: Soren Madsen, Ginger Freeman, Timothy Tong, Advisor: Julia Scott

Ph.D./Post-doc Category:
First place: “Adaptive Sizing Algorithms for Improving Swarm Scalar Field Adaptive Navigation,” Student Author: Shae Taylor Hart, Advisor: Chris Kitts
Second place (tie): “Application of Haralick Texture Analysis to Differentiate Suspicious Prostate Lesions from Normative Tissue on Low-field MRI,” Student Author: Dang Bich Thuy Le, Advisor: Yuling Yan

“Integration of Capillaric Strain Sensors Toward Recognition of Human Movements,” Student Authors: Hudson Gasvoda, Nick Cmager, Rana Altay, Advisor: Emre Araci

Third place (tie): “CLP: A Platform for Competitive Learning,” Student Author: Arpita Vats, Advisor: David Anastasiu

“The impact of symmetric tilt grain boundaries with various axes of misorientation on void formation in Through Silicon Via (TSV),” Student Author: Armin Shashaani, Advisor: Panthea Sepehrband

Kristi Bowers ’97 (MBA) was recently featured during the School of Engineering’s Lunch with an Entrepreneur. She is the co-founder and CEO of Grape.ag, a SaaS and AI vineyard agricultural technology company. Kristi also manages Kings Mountain Vineyards, an award-winning Santa Cruz Mountains AVA winery. In addition, she serves as a Trustee for Santa Clara University. She has been on the boards of various non-profit organizations, such as The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, The Basic Fund, Cristo Rey San Jose Jesuit High School, the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Education Foundation, and the 49er Foundation. During the event, Kristi discussed her experiences with starting her own company, obstacles, her role as a trustee, and her love for baking pies.

Day of Giving 2023: Mark Your Calendars for SCU’s 10th Annual Day of Giving on April 12, 2023. Every gift counts towards helping us to continue to Engineer with a Mission. Keep a look out for emails and messaging as we get closer and Go All In for SCU!