Awards and Recognition

University of Utah electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Benjamin Sanchez Terrones has been awarded an R21 grant from the National Institute of Health for his work involving tongue cancer patients. The grant will fund a collaborative project between Sanchez Terrones and Katherine Hutcheson from the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and will also support Ph.D. student Nathan Hansen, a member of the Sanchez Terrones’ lab.

University of Utah electrical and computer engineering Ph.D. candidate Xiang Huo and teammate Samantha Eddy, an architectural studies senior and member of the Navajo Nation (Diné Bikéyah), earned second place — and $10,000 — in the inaugural Wilkes Center Student Innovation Prize. Their project, “Decarbonize the Diné: A Prefabricated Solar-Driven Communal Solution with Passive Survivability,” proposes a holistic, modularized solution to decarbonize the tribal land.

University of Utah biomedical engineering Ph.D. student Nicholas Witham has earned first place — and $20,000 — in the inaugural Wilkes Center Student Innovation Prize. His project, “Renewable Energy and Carbon Capture with Thermomotive Biopolymer Textiles,” proposes employing a class of materials that would expand and contract along with the Earth’s daily temperature cycles.

The University of Utah electrical and computer engineering department would like to congratulate this year’s recipients of the John and Marcia Price College of Engineering Awards! Each award is chosen via nomination from peers, staff and faculty within the College.

University of Utah Electrical and Computer Engineering professor and chair Florian Solzbacher has been nominated and elected as the 2023-2024 Western ECEDHA Chair.

In a rare and remarkable achievement, three University of Utah electrical and computer engineering students have been awarded highly competitive and prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) fellowships. Connor Olsen, Elaine Wong, and Henry Crandall are among this year’s recipients of this coveted national award.

Aaron Wang, a senior at Skyline High School and research assistant in the Utah NeuroRobotics Lab, has been awarded the General Sterling Scholarship, the top award for high school students in Utah. Wang was selected from a pool of thousands of applicants for his outstanding academic achievements and involvement in university level research.

In the recent 24-hour climate hackathon held by the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy, three University of Utah electrical and computer engineering Ph.D. students have won the second-place prize for their proposed solution that integrated innovative technology with an emphasis on energy equity and accessibility. The topic of the hackathon was Urban Heat. Teams were tasked with developing creative and community-centric solutions to the urban heating issue within the 24-hour time period.

In this high-tech era, wearable devices such as smartwatches have proven to be invaluable companions for the health conscious. But a new study from the University of Utah shows that for a small group of people, some of these electronic fitness gadgets could possibly be risky to their health — even potentially deadly.

University of Utah electrical and computer engineering USTAR associate professor Rajesh Menon has been recognized as a 2023 Fellow of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. He is one of 83 new SPIE fellows elected for 2023.