Justin Ting receives Distinguished Leadership Award

Justin Ting, doctoral student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the College of Engineering. This award recognizes outstanding leadership and service to the College, University, and community.

Ting says his approach to leadership is focused on “elevating conversations between communities. Insights encountered through dialogue can lead to fruitful action.”  

He served as president of Tech for Social Good for two years, which is a student organization at Michigan that provides nonprofits and volunteer organizations with digital infrastructure, and provides special programs for students. Among his activities as president, Ting brought together five different student organizations (Tech for Social Good, BlueLab, Michigan AI Safety Initiative, Center for Socially Engaged  Design, Will Engineers Repeat History?) to share resources and perspectives on technology and social impact at an event called “The Specs.” The Specs is organized by undergraduate students with the goal of introducing students early on in their careers to socially aware technologies and dialogue.

Another aspect of Ting’s work with Tech for Social Good was connecting external organizations with student volunteers. He also designed a workshop that provided students with the tools to critically analyze a variety of cultural narratives of technology. This workshop became the basis for an upcoming engineering education publication for the school of Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP), which will be co-authored by Prof. Yousif Hasan, Assistant Professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and School of Information. The publication compares different ways the social impact of technology is taught through both engineering culture and curriculum.

“If students are to learn how to make an impact early on, difficult conversations about technology and awareness must happen at the grassroots community level,” says Ting.

He also moderated a reading group held each semester with the purpose of teaching students how to integrate ideas in technology and social justice. 

Ting believes in three key components for effective leadership: curiosity, initiative, and empowerment. Curiosity to understand a broad range of perspectives so all feel seen, initiative to both set a vision and follow projects through to completion, and empowerment that is focused on the individual growth of a group’s members.

Ting is the recipient of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program award, which supports his research that spans hardware acceleration and neuro-control theory. He received his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and minor in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and is advised by Prof. Jing Shuang (Lisa) Li.