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Alumni Honors & Awards

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Alumni Award Winners

Bicentennial Alumni Awards

These ECE alumni awards were bestowed posthumously in 2017, the year of U-M’s Bicentennial

Read about these 12 illustrious alumni

2023

Rick Wallace

ECE Alumni Impact Award

BSE EE ’82
CEO and President, KLA

Rick Wallace serves as the Chief Executive Officer and President of KLA as well as a member of the company’s Board of Directors. He began as an applications engineer at KLA Instruments in 1988, and has held various general management positions throughout his 30+-year tenure with the company. Earlier in his career, he held positions with Ultratech Stepper and Cypress Semiconductor. Mr. Wallace also serves on the Board of Directors of Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK). Mr. Wallace previously served on the Board of Directors of Proofpoint through their acquisition in 2021 by Thoma Bravo, as well as the Board of Directors of SEMI (Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International), including as SEMI’s Chairman of the Board.

Mr. Wallace earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and his master’s degree in engineering management from Santa Clara University.

Olgica Milenkovic

ECE Alumni Distinguished Educator Award

MS Math ’01; PhD EE ’02
Franklin W. Woeltge Professor of ECE, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Olgica Milenkovic is the Franklin W. Woeltge professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and Research Professor at the Coordinated Science Laboratory. She obtained her Master’s Degree in Mathematics in 2001 and PhD in Electrical Engineering in 2002, both from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prof. Milenkovic heads a group focused on addressing unique interdisciplinary research challenges spanning the areas of algorithm design and computing, bioinformatics, coding theory, machine learning and signal processing. Her scholarly contributions have been recognized by multiple awards, including the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, the Dean’s Excellence in Research Award, and several best paper awards. In 2013, she was elected a UIUC Center for Advanced Study Associate and Willett Scholar while in 2015 she was elected Distinguished Lecturer of the Information Theory Society. In 2018 she became an IEEE Fellow. She has served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions of Communications, the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and the IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications. In 2009, she was the Guest Editor in Chief of a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory on Molecular Biology and Neuroscience.

Mo Faisal

ECE Alumni Rising Star Award

MSE PhD EE ’11 ’14
President and CEO, Movellus

Prior to founding Movellus, Dr. Faisal held positions at semiconductor companies such as Intel and PMC Sierra. Faisal received his B.S. from the University of Waterloo, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and holds several patents. Dr. Faisal was named a “Top 20 Entrepreneur” by the University of Michigan Zell Lurie Institute.

Katherine Bouman

CoE Outstanding Recent Alumni Award

BS EE ’11
Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Electrical Engineering and Astronomy, Caltech

Katherine Bouman is a Rosenberg Scholar and Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences (CMS) and by courtesy in Electrical Engineering and Astronomy at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Her research focuses on computational imaging: designing systems that tightly integrate algorithm and sensor design, making it possible to observe phenomena previously difficult or impossible to measure with traditional approaches. Her group at Caltech combines ideas from signal processing, computer vision, machine learning, and physics to find and exploit hidden signals for both scientific discovery and technological innovation.

Prior to starting at Caltech, she was a postdoctoral fellow with the Event Horizon Telescope, which published the first picture of a black hole in April of 2019. She received my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2017. Professor Bouman previously received a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI in 2011 and an S.M. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2013.

Curtis Ling

CoE Alumni Merit Award

MSE PhD EE ’90 ’93
Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer, MaxLinear

Curtis Ling, Ph.D. is a co-founder of MaxLinear and has served as Chief Technical Officer since April 2006. From March 2004 to July 2006, Dr. Ling served as Chief Financial Officer, and from September 2003 to March 2004, as a co-founder, he consulted for MaxLinear. From July 1999 to July 2003, Dr. Ling served as a principal engineer at Silicon Wave, Inc. From August 1993 to May 1999, Dr. Ling served as a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Dr. Ling received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

2022

Linda Zhang

CoE Alumni Merit Award

BSE EE ’96; MSE CE (DBN) ’98; MBA ’11
Chief Engineer, All-Electric F-150 Lightning, Ford

Linda Zhang, is responsible for leading the team delivering Ford’s first ever all-electric F-150 pickup. Zhang assumed this role in September 2018 when development began.
Zhang, who has been with Ford for nearly 25 years, joined the company after graduating with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and moving into the Ford College Graduate program. From there, she worked in manufacturing, product development, finance and corporate strategy, gathering business fundamentals that would serve her well as she worked on programs like Ford Explorer, Escape, Kuga and F-150. The F-150 Lightning program, she said, has been particularly fulfilling – because of her background in electrification and the truck’s prominent position in the Ford portfolio.

Linda Zhang was featured on the cover of TIME Magazine representing the team electrifying the world’s most popular truck in November 2021.

Zhang, 44, also has an MBA from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, she enjoys sports, travel and spending time with her family.

Daniel Siewiorek

CoE Alumni Medal Award

BSE EE ’68
Buhl University Professor of ECE and CS, Carnegie Mellon University

Professor Daniel P. Siewiorek is the Buhl University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He has designed or been involved with the design of nine multiprocessor systems and has been a key contributor to the dependability design of over two dozen commercial computing systems. Dr. Siewiorek leads an interdisciplinary team that has designed and constructed over 20 mobile computing systems. He has written nine textbooks in addition to over 475 papers. He is former Director of the Quality of Life Technology NSF Engineering Research Center and previously served as Director of the Engineering Design Research Center and co-founder of it’s successor organization, the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems. In addition he has served as Department Head of the Human Computer Interaction Institute, Chairman of the IEEE Technical Committee on Fault-Tolerant Computing and as founding Chairman of the IEEE Technical Committee on Wearable Information Systems. He has been the recipient of the AAEE Terman Award, the IEEE/ACM Eckert-Mauchly Award, the ACM SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contributions Award, and the IEEE Computer Society Taylor L. Booth Education Award. He is a Fellow of IEEE, ACM, and AAAS and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Mitchell Rohde

CoE Distinguished Alumni Service Award

BSE MSE EE ’94 ’96; MSE PhD BME ’97, ’00
CEO & Co-founder, Quantum Signal AI, LLC

Mitchell Rohde co-founded Quantum Signal following his graduation from the University of Michigan in 1999. Since that time, he has grown the company from a tiny startup into a powerful engineering research and development organization, building solutions that are in use across many fields and around the world. Rohde has extensive expertise in integrating complex hardware and software systems, and has designed, built, and tested such diverse devices as biomedical instruments, autonomous vehicles, forensic appliances, surveillance systems, and more. Over the past twenty years he has spearheaded and directed dozens of advanced research and development projects and product development efforts for clients in the public and private sectors. Rohde has specific expertise in signal and image processing, robotics, real-time instrumentation, neural interfaces, and measurement systems, and has a wide variety of patents and publications. He also is an avid collector and restorer of arcade games, with over 150 pieces in his unique collection. Rohde is a member of Sigma Xi, NDIA, AUSA, IEEE, Eta Kappa Nu, and Tau Beta Pi.

Tanya Das

ECE Alumni Rising Star Award

BSE EE ’11
Associate Director, Energy Innovation, Bipartisan Policy Center

Dr. Tanya Das is the Associate Director of Energy Innovation at the Bipartisan Policy Center. She works to strengthen U.S. government initiatives that help innovators go from idea to commercial product. Leveraging her experience in academia and government, she influences policy related to the federal research landscape, energy technology scaleup, the Department of Energy national labs, public-private partnerships, manufacturing, and workforce development in STEM fields.

She previously served the Biden Administration as the Chief of Staff of the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy where she led the implementation of Administration priorities including advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the research enterprise, supporting innovation ecosystems across the country, and advancing U.S. competitiveness in emerging technology areas. Prior to that role, she was a Professional Staff Member on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and an AAAS/OSA-SPIE legislative fellow in the Office of U.S. Senator Chris Coons.

A Michigan native, Dr. Das earned her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara and her B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Vikram Verma

ECE Alumni Impact Award

MSE EE ’89
Board Member, Advisor and Recovering CEO

Vikram Verma has had a distinguished 30-year executive career with leading technology companies. He has been granted eight patents and honored with various accolades, including being named a Tau Beta Pi Williams Fellow and a “Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Verma earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at the Florida Institute of Technology, an M.S.E. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, and the graduate degree of Engineer in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He has attended executive management programs at Harvard Business School, the Haas School of Business at University of California-Berkeley, the Stanford Law School Directors’ College, and the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Verma began his career at Savi Technology, Inc., a leader in radio frequency identification-based tracking and security solutions and a pioneer in the internet of things. He joined Savi as a Design Engineer, while it was pre-revenue. Five years later, as Savi’s Chief Operating Officer, he helped negotiate the acquisition of Savi by Texas Instruments (NYSE : TXN). Verma became President and CEO of Savi post acquisition. During the subsequent merger of Texas Instruments Systems Group with the Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN), Verma, in partnership with leading venture Capital firms from Silicon Valley and Asia, led the management buyout of Savi. Seven years later, Savi was acquired by Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) for over 35X its buyout price.

After integrating Savi into Lockheed Martin, Verma served as the President of Strategic Venture Development for Lockheed Martin. In that role, he was responsible for monetizing existing Lockheed Martin technologies and programs in new global commercial markets. After leaving Lockheed Martin, Verma was appointed as the CEO of Silicon Valley based cloud communications company 8×8, Inc. (NYSE: EGHT) and served in that role until December of 2020. Under his leadership, 8×8 acquired 8 companies, increased its annual recurring revenue from ~$100M to over $500M and added more than $1.5B to its market capitalization.

Verma has served on the board of RAE systems (acquired by Honeywell International (NYSE: HON)), as well as Blackfire (Acquired by ROKU, Inc (NASDAQ: ROKU)). He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Ping Identity (NYSE: PING), the Board of Directors of Cambium Networks (NASDAQ: CMBM), the Board of Directors of Zingtree, Chairman of the Board of Managers for Genesis Digital, LLC and the Advisory Board of Wiliot. In addition he serves on the Board of Trustees of Florida Institute of Technology where he is a member of the Executive Committee and the Presidential Search Committee.

Rhonda Franklin

ECE Alumni Distinguished Educator Award

MSE PhD EE ‘90 ‘95
McKnight Presidential Endowed Professor, ECE, University of Minnesota

Rhonda Franklin investigates design of circuits, antennas, integration and packaging techniques, and characterization of electronic and magnetic materials for communication, biomedical and nanomedicine applications. She has co-authored over 100 conference and journals, 2 book chapters and has 2 patents. She received the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and 3M Untenured Faculty Award. She is an active member of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) and has served as associate editor of MWCL, chaired several IMS TPRC sub-committees, student programs – paper competitions and scholarship committee. She is a co-founder of IMS Project Connect to broaden URM and women participation and is Vice-Chair of MTT-S TCC for Integration and Packaging. She served on the University of Minnesota’s Provost Women Faculty Cabinet, as founding advisor to the IEEE Women in Engineering Affinity group for women undergraduate ECE students, and as Interim Director of ECE Undergraduate Studies. Honors include 2013 Sara Evan Leadership Award, 2017 John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising, 2018 Willie Hobbs More Distinguished Alumni Award ( ECE Department – University of Michigan), and 2019 N. Walter Cox Service Award (IEEE MTT-S). She also is a 2018 Minnesota African American Heritage Calendar Award recipient from the St. Paul, MN community.

2021

Note: Fewer awards were presented in 2021 due to logistical difficulties arising from the pandemic.

Donnell Walton

ECE Willie Hobbs Moore Alumni Lectureship

PhD Applied Physics 1996
Director, Corning Technology Center—Silicon Valley

Dr. Donnell Walton is the director of the Corning Technology Center Silicon Valley. In this role, he leads research and business development efforts to match Corning’s existing and emerging capabilities and opportunities in the western United States, in particular, the Silicon Valley region of California.

Walton joined Corning in 1999 as a senior research scientist in Science & Technology, where he performed and led research in optical fiber amplifiers and lasers. In 2004, Walton led Corning’s research and development efforts to a world leadership position in high-power (kW) fiber lasers. Then in 2006, he managed the Silicon on Glass (SiOG) platform expansion project, which demonstrated non-display applications of SiOG including imagers and photovoltaics. In 2008, Walton joined the Corning® Gorilla® Glass team as a senior applications engineer, where he extended the Gorilla Glass value proposition to form factors larger than handheld devices. In 2010, Walton was appointed manager of worldwide applications engineering for Gorilla Glass.

Prior to joining Corning, Walton was a physics professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he won the National Science Foundation’s Young Investigator (CAREER) Award.

Walton earned a Ph.D. in applied physics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor after graduating summa cum laude with bachelor’s degrees in physics and electrical engineering from North Carolina State University. He completed the Stanford Executive Program at the Graduate School of Business in 2019. He serves on the board of the National Society of Black Physicists, the research advisory board of the IBM-HBCU Quantum Center and the corporate affiliate boards at the Universities of California in Santa Barbara and San Diego. Walton has authored or co-authored 22 U.S. patents and more than 60 technical reports.

Walton will be delivering his ECE Dr. Willie Hobbs Moore Distinguished Alumni Lecture on November 4th, 2021.

Dr. Donnell Walton honored with the 2021 ECE Willie Hobbs Moore Distinguished Lectureship >

2020

Navin Shenoy

ECE Alumni Impact Award

BSE EE ’95
Executive Vice President and General Manager of Data Platforms Group at Intel Corporation

Shenoy leads the worldwide organization that develops the company’s data center platforms, which is a business that spans servers, networks, and storage across all customer segments. He is responsible for the group’s product lines and business strategies, which encompass traditional business models as well as innovative solutions that help drive the industry transformation toward cloud computing, virtualization of network infrastructure, and the adoption of artificial intelligence.

Before assuming his current role in 2017, Shenoy served as general manager of Intel’s Client Computing Group. During his tenure in that position, he had responsibility for profit and loss, business strategy, and product development across notebooks, desktops, tablets, two-in-one devices, and home gateways. Earlier in his Intel career, Shenoy was general manager for Intel Asia Pacific, where he was responsible for all sales, marketing, and enabling of Intel products in the region. He also previously held leadership roles in Intel’s PC and tablet business units and in the CEO’s office, including three years as technical assistant to former Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini.

Navin Shenoy, Intel’s Executive Vice President, awarded ECE’s highest Alumni Award Honor >

Katherine Herrick

ECE Alumni Merit Award, 2020

BSE MSE PhD EE ‘93 ‘95 ‘00
Senior Fellow and a Chief Engineer at Raytheon Company

Herrick is a Senior Fellow and Chief Engineer at Raytheon Company, which specializes in defense, civil government, and cybersecurity solutions. She joined Raytheon right after completing her doctoral degree in 2000.

Herrick’s honors include the 2008 Outstanding Young Engineer Award of the IEEE MTT-S, the 2008 National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering, and the 2007 Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems President’s Award. She is a Senior Member of IEEE, has published over 50 technical papers, and holds several patents in the areas of antennas, RF MEMS packaging, and microwave circuits. She serves on the ECE Advisory Council.

Raytheon’s Dr. Katherine Herrick is the 2020 ECE Alumni Merit Award winner >

Tara Javidi

ECE Distinguished Educator Award

MS EE:S; MS Applied Mathematics; PhD EECS (Advisor: Demosthenis Teneketzis)
Professor of ECE and founder and Co-Director of the Center for Machine-Integrated Computing and Security at the University of California, San Diego

Javidi joined UCSD in 2005, and her current research interests are in theory of active learning, information acquisition and statistical inference, information theory with feedback, stochastic control theory, and wireless communications and communication networks.

Javidi received the 2018 and 2019 Qualcomm Faculty Award for her contributions to wireless technology. She was selected as a Distinguished Lecturer of the Information Theory as well as Communications Societies of IEEE. She was awarded a National Science Foundation early career award (CAREER) in 2004, and the Presidential and Ministerial Recognitions for Excellence in the National Entrance Exam, Iran, in 1992. She was also a recipient of the Rackham Barbour Scholarship at Michigan.

Prof. Tara Javidi awarded ECE’s Distinguished Educator Award for her excellence in information and system theory education >

Jian-Ming Jin

ECE Distinguished Educator Award

PhD EE ’89 (Advisor: Val Liepa)
Y. T. Lo Endowed Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Director of the Electromagnetics Laboratory and Center for Computational Electromagnetics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Executive Dean of the Zhejiang University-University of Illinois Joint Institute

Jin joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993. He was appointed as the first Henry Magnuski Outstanding Young Scholar in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1998 and later as a Sony Scholar in 2005. His name appeared 26 times in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s List of Excellent Instructors, which is chosen by the students.

He is a Fellow of IEEE (elected 2001), the Electromagnetics Academy, Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES), and the Optical Society of America. He was a recipient of the 1994 National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, the 1995 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, the 2014 ACES Technical Achievement Award, the 2016 ACES Computational Electromagnetics Award, and the 2017 IEEE Harrington-Mittra Computational Electromagnetics Award, and served as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer to promote research and education in the field of computational electromagnetics.

Prof. Jian-Ming Jin awarded ECE’s Distinguished Educator Award for his excellence in electromagnetics education >

Scott Hanson

ECE Alumni Rising Star Award

BSE MSE PhD EE ’04 ’06 ’09
Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Ambiq Micro

Hanson is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Ambiq Micro, a startup semiconductor company that works to advance ultra-low power electronics for next generation Internet of Things. The company was founded based on technology Hanson developed with his doctoral advisors and co-founders, Professors Dennis Sylvester and David Blaauw. As of 2020, the company reports that over 100 million devices worldwide have been embedded with an Ambiq chip.

The company has received numerous accolades and awards for its technology, including a 2021 BIG Innovation Award from the Business Intelligence Group, and it was named 2021 IoT Semiconductor Company of the Year by the IoT Breakthrough Awards.

Entrepreneur Dr. Scott Hanson awarded 2020 ECE Alumni Rising Star Award >

Adrienne Stiff-Roberts

ECE Willie Hobbs Moore Alumni Lectureship

MSE EE; PhD Applied Physics
Jeffrey N. Vinik Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of Graduate Studies for the University Program in Materials Science and Engineering at Duke University

Stiff-Roberts’ current research interests include organic and hybrid thin-film deposition by resonant-infrared matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation (RIR-MAPLE); materials characterization of organic and hybrid thin films; and the design, fabrication, and characterization of organic and hybrid optoelectronic devices, especially infrared photodetectors, photovoltaic solar cells, and multi-functional sensors.

She is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2006), the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2007), the IEEE Early Career Award in Nanotechnology of the Nanotechnology Council (2009), and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2009).

Alumna Prof. Adrienne Stiff-Roberts honored with the Willie Hobbs Moore Distinguished Lectureship >

2019

Nicolaos Alexopoulos

CoE Alumni Medal Award

BSE MSE PHD EE ‘64 ‘67 ’68 (Advisor: Chen-To Tai)
Vice President for Academic Programs and University Relations, Broadcom Foundation

For five decades, Dr. Nicolaos G. Alexopoulos has been a leader in academic administration, electrical engineering research, and engineering outreach. Under his 11 years of leadership as UC-Irvine’s dean of engineering, the school more than doubled enrollment and faculty, and nearly tripled research expenditures. He helped establish the National Fuel Cell Research Center, Integrated Nanosystems Research Facility, Center for Engineering Science in Design, Biomedical Engineering department and the first-named school on campus. Recently, the school and donors created the Nicolaos G. and Sue Curtis Alexopoulos Presidential Endowed Chair. Previously, during nearly 30 years at UCLA, as EE department chair he established the nation’s first High-Frequency Electronics Research Center with a $3 million gift from Hewlett Packard. He has served as editor-in-chief of Electromagnetics and authored more than 270 journal and conference papers. Ten of his journal publications have been published in volumes of the most significant contributions in the field. He and his students have received three Best Paper Awards from IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation. He is the former principal investigator of two STEM programs focused on underrepresented students in California. Since 2008, he has served as a vice president at Broadcom Corporation, and more recently, the Broadcom Foundation. Dr. Alexopoulos was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2007 for “contributions to microwave circuits, antennas, and structures for low observable technologies, and for contributions in engineering education.”

Engineering education trailblazer and industry innovator honored for by Michigan Engineering

Richard Bergman

ECE Alumni Impact Award

BSE EE ’86
Executive Vice President, Computing and Graphics Business GroupAMD

Rick Bergman is AMD executive vice president of Computing and Graphics with responsibility for the Company’s high-performance PC, gaming and semi-custom businesses. Bergman brings over 30 years of industry experience including significant business leadership experience.

Previously, Bergman was president and CEO for Synaptics, a leading developer of human interface solutions including touch, display, IoT and biometrics solutions, from October 2011 to March 2019. Prior to that, he served in a series of senior executive positions at AMD, where he was senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s Product Group from May 2009 to September 2011, and senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s Graphics Product Group from October 2006 to May 2009. During his time at AMD, Bergman was responsible for delivering microprocessors and graphics chips to AMD customers across server, client, embedded and game consoles, and for driving the technology that put a graphics chip and processor on a single piece of silicon. Until AMD acquired ATI in 2006, Bergman was senior vice president and general manager of ATI’s PC Group.

Additionally, he has held senior management positions at S3 Graphics, Texas Instruments and IBM and was a board member of Maxwell Technologies from 2015 until it was acquired by Tesla in May 2019.

Bergman holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Colorado’s Executive MBA program.

Leading through High Performance Technology

Karen Fireman

COE Distinguished Alumni Service Award

BSE CE 1980; MBA Ross School of Business 1985
Fireman & Associates

Karen has over 25 years of experience in finance working for fortune 500 companies as well as small startup companies. She has held C-Suite positions including Chief Technology Officer of ManTechCyber, Chief Financial Officer of Columbus Properties, and Chief Compliance Officer of Columbia Partners. She was Economist for BP-Amoco’s Gulf of Mexico Shelf, Assistant Vice President and Asset/Liability Officer of USF&G, Compliance Director of Freddie Mac, and Industrial Base Team Lead for Naval Sea Systems Command.

Karen is currently head of the External Advisory Board of the Michigan Institute of Data Science. She was a member of the College of Engineering Alumni Board, and Vice Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Council. She has been an Investment Board Member for several charitable endowments and has provided financial advice to multinational institutions and the city of Columbia, MD.

Bridge-builder for academia and industry wins distinguished alumni service award

Steven W. McLaughlin

ECE Distinguished Educator Award

PhD EE:Systems 1992
Dean, Georgia Institute of Technology

Steve joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech in September 1996. From 2012-2017, he served as the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. From 2007-2012, he was Vice Provost for International Initiatives and Steven A. Denning Chair in Global Engagement. Dr. McLaughlin’s research interests are in the general area of communications and information theory.

In 2014, Dr. McLaughlin co-founded CREATE-X, a campus-wide effort to instill entrepreneurial confidence in students and help them launch companies. He co-founded Whisper Communications in 2009. He is a past President of the IEEE Information Theory Society, a Fellow of the IEEE, and a recipient of the PECASE.

Dawson Yee

COE Alumni Merit Award for ECE

MSE EE 1987
System Engineer – Azure Hardware, Quantum Computing, Microsoft

Prior to his current position, Dawson was Hardware System Engineer & Architect for Hololens. From 2009-2013, he was the Hardware Systems Architect and Engineer for both Xbox 360 Kinect and Xbox One Kinect. The first Kinect for Xbox 360 became the best-selling product in consumer electronics history. He joined Microsoft in 1998, working on projects such as Microsoft Surface (aka Interactive Table) before becoming Director of Devices for Microsoft’s Unified Communications Group, and joined the Xbox team in 2008. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was at Intel for 10 years working on Mobile systems, Xeon processor, Intel Architecture Labs, Server systems, Desktop systems. He started at Intel as the motherboard design engineer for an 80386SX-16 MHz system. Yee is author of more than 80 granted and pending patents.

2018

Samuel H. Fuller

CoE Alumni Medal

Fuller earned a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from U-M in 1968. He is an electrical engineer, computer scientist, teacher, mentor, author, business leader and lifelong innovator, his nominators say. He is currently CTO emeritus and distinguished scientist at Analog Devices, Inc, a multinational semiconductor company where, as CTO, he created a product strategy connecting the physical world to the power of the digital world that include sensors, silicon and software.

Prior to ADI, Fuller was the vice president of research at Digital Equipment Corporation. There he founded and led the firm’s global research organization, fostering disruptive innovations including the development of RISC computers, the Altavista search engine, the advancement of networked computing, and the commercialization of Ethernet in partnership with Xerox PARC, Intel and 3COM. He also developed collaborative projects with leading research universities. He was a co-founder of Project Athena at MIT that deployed advanced, networked workstations, resulting in the development of the X Windows System for workstations and the Kerberos authentication system that is widely deployed today, including by U-M.

In 1991, Fuller was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to computer architecture, performance evaluation, and creative leadership in research management.

Computing visionary honored by Michigan Engineering

Ruba Borno

ECE Alumni Rising Star Award (2018-19)

MSE PhD EE 03′ 08′
Vice President, WW Channels & Alliances at AWS

Ruba Borno is the Vice President, Worldwide Channels & Alliances for Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. Central to the success of AWS and its customers, Ruba leads the AWS Partner Organization (APO), a global team responsible for recruiting, enabling, buying and selling with over 100,000 companies in more than 150 countries, within the AWS Partner Network (APN). APO is customer-obsessed, providing the most innovative programs and services to its diverse partner community of Global System Integrators (SIs), Regional and National SIs, Solutions Providers, Distributors, Data Providers, Service Providers, Consulting Partners, and Independent Software Vendors to build and scale their businesses. She is also responsible for AWS Marketplace and AWS Data Exchange, helping customers move quickly and responsibly to the cloud by making it easy to find, subscribe, and govern third-party software, data, and professional services.

Prior to joining AWS, Ruba held several leadership positions over the course of her six-year tenure with Cisco, a leader in IP-based networking technologies: Vice President, Growth Initiatives and Chief of Staff to the CEO (2015-2018); Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Managed Services (2018-2020); and SVP and General Manager of Cisco’s Global Customer Experience (CX) Centers (2020-2021), where she led a team of 18,000 engineers to deliver Cisco’s full services portfolio including technical, professional and managed services, as well as customer success, and supply chain and logistics.

Before that, Ruba was a principal with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and a leader in BCG’s Technology, Media, & Telecommunications, and People & Organization practices. She is also a member of The Forum of Young Global Leaders, an organization that seeks to drive public-private cooperation in the global public interest in alignment with the World Economic Forum.

Ruba holds a Ph.D. and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, where she was an Intel Ph.D. fellow at the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center for Wireless Integrated MicroSystems. She has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Ruba has served on the Board of Directors at Experian since 2018.

Rhonda Franklin

ECE Willie Hobbs Moore Alumni Lectureship

Rhonda Franklin (MSE PHD EE ’90 ’95) is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She teaches applied electromagnetics and her research focuses on developing design techniques for high speed electronic integrated circuit integration, integrated packaging, miniaturization, and novel material characterization for RF applications in communication systems and bio/nano-medicine. She has co-authored over 75 refereed conferences and journals papers.

In 1996, she joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago as an assistant professor. In 1998, she joined Minnesota in the same role. She is a 1999 NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) awardee, and was invited to participate in the National Academy of Engineering – Frontiers of Engineering programs in the US (1999) and Germany (2003, 2006). She is an active member of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society in microwave education, conference planning and technical sessions.

Alumnus Rhonda Franklin honored for her accomplishments with the Willie Hobbs Moore Award

A Q&A with Rhonda Franklin – Connecting Diverse Students

Zachary J. Lemnios

ECE Alumni Impact Award

Zachary Lemnios (BSE EE ’76) leads Physical Sciences and Government Programs, globally across IBM Research, to extend fundamental scientific understanding and breakthroughs that enable the future of information technology. Strategic initiatives include quantum computing, neuromorphic devices and architectures, molecular imaging, silicon nanophotonics, and magnetic memory technology. This team have been responsible for leading technical breakthroughs across the industry and many of IBM’s major awards, including: Nobel Prizes, Kavli Prizes, and the Millennium Technology Prize.

Prior to joining IBM, Mr. Lemnios served three terms in high level civilian leadership in the Department of Defense with detailed and extended interactions across the whole of US government and with leaders across US allied nations. Mr. Lemnios was confirmed as The Honorable Assistant Secretary of Defense (Research & Engineering) by the United States Senate. In this position, Mr. Lemnios was the Chief Technology Officer for Department of Defense and shaped the Department’s technical strategy to support the President’s national security objectives and the Secretary’s priorities. He launched Department and international initiatives in large data analytics, decision support, engineering education, electronic warfare, cyber, autonomy, advanced propulsion, hypersonics, and rail gun concepts as future capabilities for the nation. Mr. Lemnios also served as the Chief Technology Officer of MIT Lincoln Laboratory and led the development of advanced technologies in support of national security.

Zachary Lemnios: Helping to shape the new Frontier in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Isaac R. Porche III

ECE Willie Hobbs Moore Alumni Lectureship

Isaac Porche (PHD EE:S ’98) is a senior engineer at the RAND Corporation, where he serves as the Director of the Acquisition and Development Program in the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC).

He has led research projects for the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Joint Staff, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He has served on the U.S. Army Science Board supporting a number of its cyber-related panels. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University.

Dr. Porche’s areas of expertise include cybersecurity, network and communication technology, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems, data mining, modeling and simulation, cybersecurity, rapid acquisition processes, and operations research techniques. In 2016, he presented testimony on emerging cyber threats and implications before the House Homeland Security Committee, Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies. His latest RAND publication, Cyber Power Potential of the Army’s Reserve Component, focuses on how to train, manage, and develop the Army’s cyber force. He is the author of the forthcoming book Cyberwarfare 101: Technology, Tactics, and Techniques for Information-age Conflict (Artech House, 2019).

Inaugural ECE Willie Hobbs Moore Alumni Lecture: Dr. Isaac R. Porche III

The Art of Cyber War with Isaac Porche

Dowson Tong

ECE Alumni Merit Award

Dowson Tong (BSE CE ’94; also MS EE ’97 from Stanford) is Senior Executive VP, President of Cloud & Smart Industries Group, and Chairman of Tencent Music Entertainment Group at Tencent.

Since October 2008, he has led the research and development of Tencent’s social networking platform and value-added services. Dowson currently oversees Tencent’s QQ messaging and Qzone social networking platforms, Tencent Music Entertainment Group and Tencent Cloud. He also co-leads Tencent’s social advertising business.

Prior to joining Tencent, Dowson worked at Sendmail Inc., where he led the development of operator-scale email and messaging systems, and at Oracle, where he worked on the development and testing of the Oracle Server and Oracle Applications.

Dowson Tong, VP of Tencent, talks to students

2017

Hannah Goldberg

ECE Alumni Rising Star Award

Hannah Goldberg (BSE MSE EE ‘03 ‘04) is a senior systems engineer at GomSpace, a commercial provider of Cubesat components, platforms, and solutions located in Aalborg, Denmark. At GomSpace, Hannah is currently the technical lead in the development of a constellation of communications satellites.

Prior to GomSpace, Hannah was one of the first few technical employees at Planetary Resources, where she worked on projects to advance the technologies leading to asteroid prospecting and mining. She was the lead systems engineer for Planetary Resources’ first few Cubesat missions.

Hannah also previously worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the Guidance, Navigation and Control hardware group. There she worked on various microspacecraft research and development projects. She was avionics lead for the Mars Science Laboratory radar field test team, testing aspects of the landing system on platforms such as helicopters and an F-18. At JPL, Hannah also worked on the instrument calibration team for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions (both OCO and OCO-2).

Hannah received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2003 and 2004. During her time at Michigan she was involved with the Student Space Systems Fabrication Laboratory and the Icarus satellite project.

Hannah Goldberg interview: Nanosatellites and cubesats in Space

Hannah Goldberg: Crazy About Asteroids (2013)

Andrew Farah

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Andrew Farah is currently Chief Technology Architect for Autonomous Vehicles at General Motors. He started his General Motors career in 1984 as a Product Engineer in the Electrical/Electronics Group with the Buick Motor Division in Flint, Michigan. He has also worked for Johnson Controls in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as Manager Electrical/Electronic Vehicle Systems Engineering for their Battery Division.

Returning to GM, he subsequently held several leadership positions in the Product Development and Program Management organizations, including Engineering Group Manager of Vehicle Propulsion Engineering for the EV1 Electric Vehicle. In 2001, Farah was named GMNA Director Electrical Development & Validation, and later was responsible for all GM Europe Aftersales Engineering activities as GME Director Aftersales Engineering, located in Rüsselsheim, Germany. In 2007, he was named Vehicle Chief Engineer (VCE) for the Chevrolet Volt.

Won-Pyo Hong

ECE Alumni Impact Award

Dr. Won-Pyo Hong (MSE PHD EE ’84 ’88) is President of Samsung SDS, a global information technology and services company employing more than 10,000 individuals. He is an established authority and industry leader in IT, mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) space. As President and Chief Marketing Officer of Samsung Electronics, he played a critical role in positioning Samsung as the world’s premiere handset manufacturer and global brand. As Head of Global Product Strategy for the Mobile Communications Business, Dr. Hong introduced the GALAXY franchise to Samsung’s mobile portfolio and established it as the most popular and advanced line of Android products. He managed GALAXY’s design and product specifications, and was responsible for spearheading several industryleading innovations like Super-AMOLED displays, multi-core processors, and LTE-A connectivity.

Dr. Hong is the inaugural recipient of the ECE Alumni Impact Award, which is the highest honor bestowed on ECE alumni by the department.

Kunle Olukotun

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

Kunle Olukotun is the Cadence Design Systems Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University and he has been on the faculty since 1991. He is well known as a pioneer in multicore processor design and for leading the Stanford Hydra chip multiprocessor (CMP) project which developed one of the first chip multiprocessors with support for thread-level speculation (TLS). Olukotun founded Afara Websystems to develop high-throughput, low-power multicore processors for server systems. The Afara multicore processor, called Niagara, was acquired by Sun Microsystems and Niagara-derived processors now power all Oracle SPARC-based servers.

Olukotun currently directs the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Lab (PPL), which seeks to proliferate the use of heterogeneous parallelism in all application areas using Domain Specific Languages (DSLs). Olukotun is an ACM Fellow and IEEE Fellow. Olukotun received his PhD in computer science and engineering from the University of Michigan.

2016

Nader Behdad

ECE Alumni Rising Star Award

Behdad (MS PhD EE ’03 ‘06) is Associate Professor and Harvey D. Spangler Faculty Scholar in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Behdad has tackled some of the toughest problems in antenna research, designing electrically-small antennas, antenna arrays, microwave metamaterials, and antennas for biomedical applications.

Greg Joswiak

CoE Alumni Society Merit Award Winner for CSE

Joswiak (BSE CE ’96) is Vice President of iOS, iPad, and iPhone product marketing for Apple Inc.He began at Apple in June 1986, just two years after the introduction of the Macintosh computer, in Apple’s newly formed support organization for the Mac. In 1997, he went on to lead product marking for the Powerbook line – a responsibility that grew to encompass all portable products and eventually all hardware products. Over the years his responsibilities grew to include the iPod, iPhone, and iOS operating system.

Meera Sampath

CoE Alumni Society Merit Award Winner for ECE

Sampath (PhD EE:S ’95) is Vice President for Innovation and Business Transformation for Xerox, Corp. In 2009, she became the first director of Xerox’s Research Innovation Hub in India where she was responsible for overseeing its creation as well as guiding its research agenda and establishing Open Innovation partnerships. She is a leader in defining Xerox Innovation Group’s expansion strategy in emerging markets. Meera’s dissertation helped launch a new area of research – the diagnosis of discrete event systems.

Michael Stonebraker

CoE Alumni Medal Award Winner

Michael Stonebraker (MSE EE ’66, PhD CICE ’71) is a researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) who has revolutionized the field of database management systems (DBMSs) and founded multiple successful database companies. He was recently named the 2014 recipient of the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) A.M. Turing Award, often referred to as “the Nobel Prize of computing.”

W. David Tarver

CoE Alumni Society Service Award Winner

W. David Tarver (BSE MSE EE ’75, ’76) founded Telecom Analysis Systems Inc., a technology company he sold 12 years later for $30 million. Author of “Proving Ground: A Memoir,” David is a lecturer in the Center for Entrepreneurship and founder of the Urban Entrepreneurship Initiative. He is a member of the ECE Council.

2015

Ashraf Dahod

CoE Alumni Society Medal Award

Ashraf Dahod (BSE EE 72) is co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Altiostar Networks, Inc. He is a serial entrepreneur, founding five companies prior to Altiostar Networks, including Starent Networks, which was sold to Cisco for $2.9B in 2009. He received master’s degrees from Northeastern University, Stanford University and Harvard University (MBA).

Garlin Gilchrist

CoE Recent Engineering Graduate Award Winner

Garlin Gilchrist (BSE CE/CS ’05) is the City of Detroit’s first ever Deputy Technology Director for Civic Community Engagement. His job is to open up the city’s public data and information for the consumption and benefit of all Detroiters. A Detroit native, Garlin created Detroit Diaspora, and was formerly the National Campaign Director at MoveOn.org. He also co-hosted The #WinReport on “The Good Fight,” an award winning, nationally syndicated radio show that was one of Apple’s Best of 2013.

Michael Rhodin

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

Michael Rhodin (BSE Comp. & Comm. Science ’84) is Senior Vice President for Watson, one of IBM’s most significant innovations in the company’s 100-year history. Watson is charged with accelerating a new class of software, services, and apps that think, learn, and will fuel a diverse cloud-based ecosystem of enterprises, tech companies, and entrepreneurs.

Before heading up Watson, Mike led IBM’s Software Solutions Group delivering industry-specific solutions in high-growth areas such as Business Analytics, Smarter Commerce, Smarter Cities, and Social Business. In his 30-year career at IBM, Mike held a number of general management positions including the Software business where he led the introduction of IBM’s social business platform, which IDC has deemed #1 for four years in a row. Mike joined IBM in 1984 after graduating from Michigan. He currently serves on the CSE Division’s National Advisory Board.

Rick Wallace

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Rick Wallace (BSE EE ’82) serves as the CEO and president of KLA-Tencor Corporation as well as a member of the company’s board of directors. He began as an applications engineer at KLA Instruments in 1988, and has held various general management positions throughout his 27-year tenure with the company. Earlier in his career, he held positions with Ultratech Stepper and Cypress Semiconductor.

Wallace currently serves on the boards of directors for NetApp, Inc., a data management solutions company and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, an organization focused on issues, programs and campaigns that affect the economic health and quality of life in the Silicon Valley.

Wallace earned his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and his Master of Science degree in engineering management from Santa Clara University.

2014

Peter Lee

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

Peter Lee is Corporate Vice President, Head of Microsoft Research. Previously, he was the head of the Transformational Convergence Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the chair of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on software security and reliability.

Babak Parviz

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Babak Parviz is the Vice President of Amazon. Previously, he led development of Google Glass, the wearable computing system that is nearing wide public release, and worked on potentially life-changing glucose monitoring contact lenses.

2013

Steve Mollenkopf

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Steve Mollenkopf is chief executive officer of Qualcomm Incorporated. Mollenkopf began his Qualcomm career as an engineer and, for more than 20 years, has helped define and implement Qualcomm’s strategy and technologies. He also serves on the company’s board of directors.

2012

Krisztian Flautner

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

Formerly ARM’s R&D head, Kristztian Flautner now leads the British semiconductor and software design company’s Internet of Things division to build a world of connected devices that sip nanowatts of power, with chips as small as specks of dust. Krisztián is currently appointed to U-M as a visiting scholar.

Daniel Moloney

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Daniel Moloney is Former President of Motorola Mobility. During his 29 years at Motorola, he has been at the forefront of key technological breakthroughs that include building some of the biggest cable systems in the U.S., pioneering digital TV and HDTV, introducing analog set-tops with third-party applications, and launching home automation’s first commercial-scale deployment.

2011

Mark Abel

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

Mark Abel is the Associate General Manager of Software Services and Director of Pathfinding at Intel. In his over 20 years at Intel, Mr. Abel’s teams have won or shared Intel’s highest honor, the Intel Achievement Award, seven times for the creation of new technologies and new businesses for Intel, including the invention and delivery of technologies that have shipped in over a billion PCs

Syed Ali

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Syed Ali is Chairman, President, CEO, and Founder of Cavium Networks. Cavium successfully offloaded all the heavy computational work for Internet security onto silicon, which had not been done before.

Peter S. Fuss

Alumni Society Medal

Peter Fuss is the former President of Tellabs International, Inc., which he established in 1987 as a subsidiary of Tellabs, Inc. Tellabs International is responsible for all Tellabs operations outside of North America.Tellabs, Inc. is a leading international manufacturer of voice and data communication equipment.

2010

Frederick “Rick” W.W. Bolander

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Rick Bolander is co-founder and Managing Director of Gabriel Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm that seeks to build innovative, profitable and sustainable companies in the technology and cleantech sectors. During his venture career, he has been involved in more than 50 venture deals and has led over $100 million in early-stage financings.

Timothy Howes

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

Timothy Howes is the co-inventor of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP),[1] the Internet standard for accessing directory servers. The main purpose was to handle situations that the X.500 protocol suite could not address.

Nick N. Yang

Alumni Society Recent Engineering Graduate Award

Nick Yang works as an investor, and has a long history as a successful entrepreneur. He was the founder and first president of the China Leading Young Angel Investor Association. Yang co-founded theKongZhong Corporation, and served as Vice Chairman of its Board of Directors. He also co-founded the successful company ChinaRen Inc.

2009

Usama Fayyad

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

Usama Fayyad is Yahoo!’s chief data officer and executive vice president of Research & Strategic Data Solutions. Fayyad is responsible for Yahoo!’s overall data strategy, architecting Yahoo!’s data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing the Company’s data analytics and data processing infrastructure.

Ernest S. Kuh

Alumni Society Medal

Ernest Kuh received his SM in EE from MIT in 1950, and his PhD in EE from Stanford University in 1952. He worked for Bell Telephone before returning to California as a faculty member at UC-Berkeley. He went on to serve as Chair of the EECS department, Dean of the College of Engineering, and is currently the William S. Floyd Emeritus Professor in Engineering.

Jerry Levin

Alumni Society Distinguished Service Award

Jerry Levin is Chairman and CEO of JW Levin Partners LLC, which specializes in rebuilding branded consumer products and service companies. Levin charted the course for American Household, Inc. (formerly Sunbeam), as the company’s chairman and CEO.

Nino Masnari

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Nino Masnari is Dean Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State University. He was previously a faculty member (1969-1979) and Director of the Electron Physics Laboratory (1977-79) at The University of Michigan.

Michael S. McCorquodale

Alumni Society Recent Engineering Graduate Award

Michael McCorquodale was recently named General Manager, Silicon Frequency Control Business Unit, Communications Division, for Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (ITD). Formerly he was CTO and founder of Mobius Microsystems.

Kevin O’Connor

Alumni Society Distinguished Service Award

Kevin O’Connor helped create DoubleClick Inc., a technology company that develops powerful tools which advertisers, direct marketers and Web publishers use to plan, execute and analyze marketing programs. O’Connor co-founded DoubleClick in 1996 in his basement with two people; the company soon grew into a global corporation and was acquired by Google in 2008.

2008

John Seely Brown

Alumni Society Medal

John Seely Brown is a researcher who specializes in organizational studies with a particular bent towards the organizational implications of computer-supported activities. During the 1980’s, he was an influential director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and later chief scientist at Xerox Corp.

Randal E. Bryant

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

Randal Bryant is Dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He has conducted pioneering research on methods for verifying digital hardware, and more recently, software as well.

Mehdi Hatamian

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Mehdi Hatamian is VP of Engineering for DSP Microelectronics, Broadcom Corporation, and a recognized expert in high-speed VLSI signal processing, image processing and compression, full-custom and low-power circuit and architecture design, Gigabit Ethernet transceiver design, high-density deep sub-micron CMOS design, and biomedical electronics.

2007

Lee Boysel

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Lee Boysel headed the team that created the first single-chip CPU microprocessor. The legacy of his work is packaged into every computer, car, toaster and virtually anything else controlled by a silicon chip.

Nancy Benovich Gilby

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

Nancy Benovich Gilby is the U-M School of Information’s first Ehrenberg Director of Entrepreneurship. In this position, she is developing the school’s entrepreneurial curriculum for the new Bachelor of Science in Information program.

Alan Steremberg

Alumni Society Recent Engineering Graduate Award

Alan Steremberg is co-founder and President of Weather Underground, Inc., a highly successful venture supplying many newspapers and television stations with their weather forecasting data.

2006

George I. Haddad

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

George Haddad is a Professor Emeritus in U-M EECS. His long career at EECS included time as director of both the Solid-State Electronics Laboratory and the Center for High-Frequency Microelectronics and two terms as department chair.

G. Robert Malan

Alumni Society Recent Engineering Graduate Award

G. Robert Malan co-founded Arbor Networks, a leading provider of network security and monitoring solutions for global networks.

Robert D. Scott

Alumni Society Distinguished Service Award

Robert Scott worked for Procter & Gamble in a career that spanned nearly 30 years and the globe. He worked in virtually every business area within P&G, implementing information systems and integrating new business units.

Daniel P. Siewiorek

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

Daniel Siewiorek is director of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, and Buhl University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

2005

Fred Leonberger

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Fred Leonberger is founder and principal of EOvation Technologies LLC. Leonberger founded the technology advisory firm EOvation Technologies in 2003, after retiring from JDS Uniphase (JDSU) as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer.

Jennifer Rexford

Alumni Society Recent Engineering Graduate Award

Jennifer Rexford is the Gordon Y. S. Wu Professor in Engineering at Princeton University. Her research focuses on computer networking, and in particular network routing, measurement, and management.

John Sanguinetti

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

John Sanguinetti is co-founder and CTO of Forte Design Systems. Sanguinetti has been a pioneer in the field of computer science, particularly in the areas of computer architecture, performance analysis, and design verification.

2004

David J. DeWitt

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

David DeWitt is John P. Morgridge Professor of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Prof. DeWitt conducts research in the area of database system design. He has done seminal work in information mining, and was co-inventor of the “Wisconsin Benchmark,” now used as a standard test for relational database systems.

Tony Fadell

Alumni Society Recent Engineering Graduate Award

Tony Fadell is an inventor, designer, entrepreneur, and angel investor. He served as the Senior Vice President of the iPod Division at Apple Inc., from March 2006 to November 2008 and is known as “one of the fathers of the iPod” for his work on the first generations of Apple’s music player. In May 2010, he founded Nest Labs, which announced its first product, the Nest Learning Thermostat, in October 2011. Nest was acquired by Google in January 2014 for $3.2B. Since early 2015, he is leading the Google Glass division.

Jack L. Walker

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Jack Walker is an acknowledged expert in synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which enables observations of Earth from space. He devised the mathematical formulation and optical processing for the highest resolution form of SAR, known as spotlight mode; his research has had profound implications for the security and defense of the United States.

2003

Eric M. Aupperle (1935-2015)

Alumni Society Medal

Eric Aupperle was the renowned president of Merit Network and a Research Scientist Emeritus at U-M EECS. His work with the computer research network played a contributing role in the development of the Internet.

Michael Stonebraker

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

Michael Stonebraker is world renowned in the area of relational database research and technology. Through a series of academic prototypes and commercial startups, Stonebraker’s research and products are central to many relational database systems on the market today. He is currently an adjunct professor at MIT.

Robert J. Trew

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Robert Trew is an Alton and Mildred Lancaster Distinguished Professor and the Department Head of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University. Dr. Trew has led a varied and distinguished life as a professor, administrator, and public servant.

2002

Kevin O’Connor

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

Larry Page

Alumni Society Recent Engineering Graduate Award

Larry Page is the co-founder of Google, and current CEO of the revolutionary search company’s parent, Alphabet Inc. He invented the PageRank, Google’s best-known search ranking algorithm. As of November 2014, Google has 55,600 employees and operates in more than 40 countries.

Rob A. Rutenbar

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Rob Rutenbar is Stephen J. Jatras Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and Director of the Center for Circuits, Systems, and Software.

2001

Richard L. Crandall

Alumni Society Merit Award – ECE

Richard Crandall (BSE EE ’64; BSE Engin. Math ’64; MSE IoE ’66) has been Managing Partner of Aspen Venture LLC since 2001. He is a Founding Partner and Founding Managing Director at Arbor Partners, LLC and Arbor Venture Partners II, L.P. He has a wide breadth of experience in leading software and technology companies. Among his many other industry honors is the ICP Business Software Review listing as “One of the five Leading Pioneers of the Software Services Industry.”

Bruce Nourse

Alumni Society Merit Award – CSE

Irma Wyman

Alumni Society Medal

Irma Wyman was one of the early few to experiment with a “programmable computer.” She rose to become the first female vice president of Honeywell, Inc., a Fortune 100 company. She retired in 1990 and almost immediately was ordained in the Episcopal Church. After serving the last 10 years as Archdeacon of the Diocese of Minnesota, she is now fully retired.

2000

Fred Gibbons

Alumni Society Merit Award – EECS

Fred Gibbons is founder and CEO of Venture-Concept, a high-tech venture capital firm. In 1981, Gibbons started his first company, Software Publishing Corporation, which produced classic productivity software for first-time users.

Bill Joy

Alumni Society Medal

Bill Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems, and served as chief scientist of the company until 2003. He played an integral role in the early development of BSD UNIX while a graduate student at Berkeley, and he is the original author of the vi text editor.

1999

Bernard Lacroute

Alumni Society Merit Award – EECS

Bernard Lacroute designed VAX, the first 32-bit minicomputer, while working for Digital Equipment. He joined Sun Microsystems in 1983 as its first Executive Vice President of Engineering and helped develop the then-new concept of desktop computers, turning Sun into a multi-billion dollar powerhouse. Today, Lacroute works at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), a high-tech venture-capital firm in Silicon Valley.

James Mellor

Alumni Society Medal

James Mellor worked as CEO and Chairman of General Dynamics Corporation until 1997. General Dynamics has been a major asset to America and its allies, making advances in aerospace and aircraft design; in sophisticated combat systems; in information systems and technology; and in military and commercial marine systems submarines and surface vessels.

1998

Jerry Levin

Alumni Society Merit Award – EECS

John Tishman

Alumni Society Medal

John Tishman was the chairman and CEO of the Tishman Realty & Construction Corporation, a giant in the world of construction and the development of innovative building technologies.

1997

Clement Arrison Jr.

Alumni Society Merit Award – EECS

1996

David Liddle

Alumni Society Merit Award – EECS

David Liddle has spent his career developing technologies for interaction and communication between people and computers in activities spanning research, development, management and entrepreneurship. He joined U.S. Venture Partners in January 2000, after retiring as president and chief executive officer of Interval Research Corporation, a laboratory and new business incubator in Silicon Valley.

1995

Peter S. Fuss

Alumni Society Merit Award – EECS

1994

David Messerschmitt

Alumni Society Merit Award – EECS

David Messerschmitt is an Emeritus Professor of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at U-C, Berkeley, where he also served as Department Chair. He is a renowned researcher in the field of telecommunications, and author of several textbooks in the areas of networking, digital communications, and software.

1993

Samuel Fuller

Alumni Society Merit Award – EECS

Samuel Fuller served as a Vice President of Research and Development at Analog Devices Inc. since March 1998 and its Chief Technology Officer since March 2006. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

1992

Joseph E. Rowe (1927-2002)

Alumni Society Merit Award – EECS

Joseph Rowe joined the University of Michigan faculty in 1953. He became Director of the Electron Physics Laboratory in 1958, a position he held for ten years until he was named Chair of EECS. Under his leadership, the Electron Physics Laboratory became one of the premier laboratories on campus and was the forerunner of the Solid-State Electronics Laboratory.