Student Awards Banquet 2026

Welcome to the 2026 Student Awards & Recognition Banquet for the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Provided below is an outline of the evening's program, along with a complete list of the scholarships, undergraduate awards, graduate fellowships, and graduate awards recognized at this event.

Thank you to the donors and friends attending the banquet; without your support and generosity, this would not have been possible. Finally, congratulations to the students who are being honored for their hard work and inspiring accomplishments.

Buffet Dinner Menu

• Mixed Greens Salad with Seasonal Vinaigrette and Buttermilk Ranch Dressings (GF, vegan without ranch)
• Herbed Salmon with Mustard Cream Sauce
• Chicken Marsala
• Cauliflower Puttanesca (vegetarian entree)
• Herb-Crusted Yukon Gold Potatoes (GF, Vegan)
• Sauteed Seasonal Vegetables in Herbed Olive Oil (GF, Vegan)
• Assorted Breads & Rolls (Vegan, DF options available)
• Blueberry Cobbler Cheesecake (Vegan, DF options available)
• Iced Water, Iced Tea, and Coffee

Undergraduate Scholarship Recipients

Please visit the Scholarships and Awards page for more detailed information.

A. R. "Buck" Knight Scholarship in Electrical Engineering

• Dominic Michael Andrejek
• Sebastian Andre Chamorro
• Jui-Sheng Chen
• Pedro Tendrich Pires Coelho
• Zoe Madison Kaiser
• Avneet Kaur
• Kathleen Lum
• Ivan Ren
• Satyam Singh
• Frank Yiu-Kwan Wong

Ackmann Family Scholarship in Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Vineet Abbineni
• Swetha Karthikeyan
• Cooper Sweet

Alwan Engineering Scholarship

• Hassan Ahmed
• Aditi Ashwin
• Milan Djurcic
• Mark Gibbard
• Morgan Henderson
• Denys Khimoni
• Viktoriya Kurchiy
• Oliver Lach
• Ian Romero
• Ganiu Yussuf
• Meiyan Zhu

Bradley A. Simmons Memorial Scholarship

• Junyan Bai
• Sanay Doshi
• Marco Frigo
• Taowei Huang
• Andrew Kyunghyun Min
• Jonathan Aaron Qunell
• Sena Bahar Tiryaki
• Yiming Yin

Bradley J. Griffis Endowed Scholarship

• Rina Manxhuka

Brian and Sophie Leung Merit Scholarship

• Aidan Costello
• Vivek Mannava
• Sahil Sachin Shah

Bruce C. Mather Memorial Scholarship in Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Maxwell Mamishev
• Luke Wang

Charles B. and Ada Pear Scholarship

• Isaac Jung Hegg
• Hein Nyi Htut

Compall Family Scholarship

• Krish Jay Gandhi
• Nippun Sabharwal

Daniel W. and Carol A. Dobberpuhl Electrical and Computer Engineering Scholarship

• Nicholas Anand
• Benjamin Likai Chang
• Agastya Pawate
• Nikita Rudrapati

Donald R. and Arline D. Jeschke Scholarship

• Fernando Amezcua
• John Shlimon

Dr. Kenneth P. and Claire V. Gibbs Scholarship

• Hayden Michael Collier
• Ryan James Ilgen
• Thomas John Vigh

Dr. Milton Feng Scholarship in Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Nicholas Kubiak
• Passapan Sanguanchua

ECE Illinois Scholarship

• Sathya Mitiran Jayaprakash Suvithaa
• Kyle Morey
• Duc Minh Nguyen
• Shengyan Wang
• Suyan Ye
• Yuxin Zhang

ECE Visionary Scholarship

• Reyna Alam
• Jackson Baird
• Benjamin Carlson
• Sumedha Chaudhari
• Angela Chen
• Hannah Dinner
• Aarav Dudhia
• Terron Fuller
• Molly Hayden
• Ethan Kim
• Neha Kulkarni
• Clara Lawrence
• Claire Lee
• Victor Leon
• Logan Liang
• Shanshan Lin
• Amina Mandzukic
• Diego Marquez-Padilla
• Irving Narvaez
• Diego Nava
• Lucas Newman
• Ethan Ortiz
• Hannah Patterson
• Ronit Ragman
• Rumaisa Rehman
• Carmen Ross
• Rohil Saxena
• Isha Shah
• Kenneth Tran

Electrical and Computer Engineering Alumni Scholarship

• Drake Alexander Bartolai
• Jacob Alfredo Baumel
• Nihar Koganti
• Runxi Li
• Satyam Raj
• Pranav Srinivasan
• Jack Edmund Tipping
• Yibin Wang

Eleftherios Polychronopoulos Scholarship

• Jincan Ye

Emma L. Marshall Scholarship

• Shovan Jagadev

Ernest A. Tolli Memorial Scholarship

• Nicholas Michael Costello
• Mark Sorial

Floyd E. Lundgren Scholarship in Electrical Engineering

• Dhruv Dilbaghi

Frank C. Mock Scholarship

• Suleymaan Ahmad
• Ali Asghar
• Eric Chang
• Onyinyechi Stephaine Eze
• Victoria Anne Lee
• Alayna Wenting Li
• Ryan Li
• Yunli Shan

Frank D. and Irene M. Low Scholarship

• Farhan Ali
• Annabel Li
• Gerardo Pineda
• Hector Ponce Hernandez
• Eduardo Reikdal Guimaraes
• Urnabati Roy

Gary Whitledge Scholarship

• Randolph Miguel Zara Ayala
• Haoru Li
• Rakan Mohammad
• Oluwakayode Olutosin Moronfoye
• Nikhil Vishnoi
• Edwin Yeduan Xiao

George A. and Ina M. Zehr Scholarship

• Lucas Thomas Lessard

George and Cynthia Anner Scholarship

• Esteban Casillas
• Aarushi Tiwari

Harriett and Robert C. Perry Scholarship

• Patrick Pu Huang
• Zexuan Yan

Henneman Scholarship

• Yuxiao Li

Herbert Y. and Stella S. Chang Endowed Scholarship in Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Estela Medrano Gutierrez
• Samridhi Verma

Indira Gunda Saladi Engineering Research Prize

• Harsh Gupta
• Shengyan Wang

Ingram Family Scholarship

• Matthew Dallinger-Eaker
• George Sober

Jeewan Singh Ghuman Scholarship

• Olivia Kapusniak
• Ashley Saju

John and Sheila Woythal Scholarship

• Aarushi Aggrwal
• Jizhen Chen
• Aastha Grover
• Xinran Hu
• Rohit Iyer
• Zikun Liu
• Ziheng Qi
• Apoorva Sharma
• Daniel Alexander Shultz
• Ansley Andrew Tsai
• Ziyi Wang

John B. Pettegrew Scholarship

• Alexander Michael Bessonov
• Kevin Jacob Kolesiak

John P. Desmond Electrical and Computer Engineering Scholarship

• Rani Ayman Alhayek
• Chase Martin Bruksch
• Pavle Ocokoljic
• Jason Osei-Tutu
• Allen Yuanqi Wu

Joseph W. Lyding Endowed Scholarship

• Meenakshi De
• Sophie Tzisen Yang

Jules Falzer Electrical Engineering Scholarship

• James Edward Alfano
• Samuel Clarke
• Sarah Allison Lau
• Jackie Li
• Joseph Carmine Magee
• Sourojit Kumar Mazumder
• Jiseob Shin

Kaskowitz Family Scholarship

• Joseph Michael Casino

Kayong Park Memorial Scholarship for Cancer Research

• Roderick Sacdalan

Kwon Family Scholarship

• Oviya Jeyaprakash

Lauren Kelley Memorial Scholarship

• Krishnan Shankar
• Keehan Tsai

M. A. Pai Scholarship

• T.G. Roberts

Mang Chi Chan Memorial Scholarship

• Aparna Akathoottuparambil
• Paige Tran Nothelfer

Nick and Katherine Holonyak, Jr. Rising Senior Scholarship

• Grace Jiamin Huang
• Kevin Yuxuan Wang

Nick and Katherine Holonyak, Jr. Scholarship

• Colin Chi-On Moy

O. Thomas and Martha S. Purl Scholarship

• Edward Walter Dzieza
• Kai Chandu Karadi

Oakley Scholarship

• Jake Kenneth Ashpole
• Haruto Iguchi
• Yosef Stephen Kapinus
• Ryan Eido Liem
• Madhav Mehta
• Leyton Kiel Mueller
• Siddarth Pattisapu
• Tuna Tuncer

Omron Electrical Engineering Scholarship

• Matthew Terance Blake
• Phillip Xiang Chen
• Harsh Gupta
• Ryan Michael Sullivan

Peter W. Sauer Scholarship

• Sandra Georgy
• Jialin Lu
• Jonathan Mitchell Sengstock
• Jeanjuella Beauvais Tipan

Professor G. H. Fett Memorial Scholarship

• Lucas Brower
• Michael Misura

Professor N. Narayana Rao Endowed Award

• Yuxuan Guo
• Sandra Kathure Kiunga

Robert C. MacClinchie Scholarship

• Alec Joseph Loessy

Robert M. Janowiak Memorial Scholarship

• Skyler Tzung-Wei Lang

Russell E. Berthold Scholarship

• Dora Ann Stavenger
• Matthew Weng
• Samsung
• Shehzeen Amdani
• Sebastian Chamorro
• Stephen DelBello
• Neil Deo
• Kristie Gits
• Haruto Iguchi
• Ryan Ilgen
• Kathure Kiunga
• Sanjiv Kondin
• Kathleen Lum
• Tyler Marrazzo
• Sourojit K. Mazumder
• Mudit Darshak Mehta
• Archita Pratihast
• Satyam Raj
• Siddharth Rau
• Ben Saarva
• Daniel Shultz
• Wyatt Sturn
• Daron Sun
• Thomas Vigh
• Ved Vyas
• Dan Yang
• Chen Zeng
• Chenxi Zhang

Sparking Curiosity Scholarship

• Andrew Michael Tobin

The Robert E. Lepic Electrical Engineering Scholarship

• Youngmin Jeon
• Qianyu Li
• Stefano Park Kim
• Rithwik Rayani
• Shixuan Yuan

TIA - Robert William Pullen Foundation Scholarship

• Tzu-Chi Liu

Varshney Family Scholarship

• Steven Ivan Dimov

Vincent A. and Janet O'Brien Scholarships

• David Biruduganti
• Qimiao Gong
• Louise Heaton
• Miles Kubik
• Katherine Li
• Nicole Liang

William J. Mayer Engineering Scholarship

• Joseph Hanger
• Mason Hudspath
• Jay Lee

Undergraduate Award Winners

Please visit the Scholarships and Awards page for more detailed information.

A.R "Buck" Knight Award in Electrical Engineering

• Ziheng Qi
• Aastha Grover
• You Wu
• Haoru Li

Carolyn Shimabukuro Memorial Award

• Xiangyi Kong
• Yuxin Zhang

Daniel W. and Carol A. Dobberpuhl Student Award

• Jay Lee
• Alec Loessy
• Junyan Bai
• Hyunsoo Kim
• Haoran Gao

Ellery B. Paine Award

• Ziheng Ye
• Dhruv Dilbaghi
• Sophie Yang

Indira Gunda Saladi Engineering Research Prize

• Shengyan Wang
• Dhruv Dilbaghi

John Bardeen Award

• Shengyan Wang

Marcia Peterman Award

• Ansley Tsai
• Daniel Shultz
• Fiona Cashin

Michael E. Napier Memorial Award

• Daron Sun

Robert H. Jung and Lisa J Chan Award

• Jason Osei-tutu

Timothy N. Trick Leadership Award

• Skyler Lang

Graduate Fellowship Recipients

Please visit the Graduate Student Fellowships page for more detailed information.

A. R. "Buck" Knight Fellowship

• Taha Ameen Ur Rahman
• Arjit Bali
• Debottam Dutta
• Arda Guclu
• Yu-Han Huang
• Zetai Liu
• Rajalaxmi Rajagopalan
• Yijin Wang
• Mohamed Badr Younis
• Shensheng Zhao

Dan Vivoli Endowed Fellowship

• Hieu Trung Hoang
• Gonzalo Núñez Muñoz

Dr. Ok Kyun Kim Fellowship

• Kaiwen Cao
• Ye Lin

E. A. Reid Fellowship

• Gabriel Alexis Muñiz-Negrón
• John Pohovey
• Anjana Samarakoon
• Alex Muyang Zhang

ECE Distinguished Research Fellowship

• Mohamed Aly
• Saha Archishman
• Chloe Armstrong
• Sebastian Armstrong
• Ryan Billings
• Cristian Colon
• Xizheng Fang
• Abigail Guicheteau
• Zhuoran Han
• Imane Hankour
• Chun Ying Hou
• Yu-Han Huang
• Samuel Jung
• Shubham Kumar
• Hrit Mukherjee
• Erin Raftery
• Milind Vaddiraju
• Batu Yesilyurt
• Alex Muyang Zhang
• Alex Lee
• Anson Li
• Arjun Srinivas Vedantham
• Johnathan Wright

ECE Jack Kilby Fellowship

• Ethan Thieme
• Batu Yesilyurt

Harriett and Robert Perry Fellowship

• Tahsin Binte Shameem

Hong, McCully, and Allen Fellowship

• Xingang Guo

Hoveida Family Foundation Fellowship

• Abigail Guicheteau

James M. Henderson Fellowship

• Cornell Horne, Jr.
• Ryan Matthew Horvath
• Nan Kang
• Shivam Kumar
• Fang Li

Joan and Lalit Bahl Fellowship

• Priyash Barya
• Anubhav Bose
• Manvi Jha
• Ram Krishna
• Anuj Maheshwari
• Ram Padmanabhan
• Samyak Kabir Rawlekar

John Bardeen Fellowship in ECE

• Johnathan Wright

Linda Su-Nan Chang Sah Doctoral Fellowship

• Brianna Scheid Hajek
• Yueying (Tobby) Qiu

Promise of Excellence Fellowship

• Cornell Horne, Jr.

Promise of Excellence in ECE Fellowship

• Dennis Binford
• Liam Crandall
• Patrick Crandall
• Reuben De Souza
• Daniel Endraws
• Ian Hopkins
• Allison Hwang
• Chi Jiang
• Sangbin Lee
• Harbin Li
• Pilar Luiz
• Kyunghwan Min
• Abrar Murtaza
• Joseph Silberman
• Berre Vize
• Robert Wang

Rambus Computer Engineering Fellowship

• Shuangliang (David) Chen
• Andre Maurice Schreiber
• Jiaxin Wan
• Yuqi Xue

Sundaram Seshu International Student Fellowship

• Ankan Ghosh Dastider

Tadao Murata Graduate Fellowship in Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Sheikh Mohd Ta-Seen Afrid
• Selemon Nigussu Mamo

Graduate Award Winners

Please visit the Graduate Student Awards page for more detailed information.

Andrew T. Yang Research Award Fund

• Nikita Duggar
• Yaokun Shi

Elsa and Floyd Dunn Award

• Wen Jin
• Leyang Liu
• Sourya Sengupta

Gregory Stillman Award

• Jiaxin Wan
• Joshua Akin
• Garima Gupta
• Erin Raftery

Harold L. Olesen Undergraduate Teaching Award (Fall 2025)

• Montan Mike
• Luiz Pilar
• Prasad Vishesh Vidya

Harold L. Olesen Undergraduate Teaching Award (Spring 2026)

James W. Beauchamp Award for Interdisciplinary Research

• Fatemeh Fardno

John Bardeen Award

• Anik Mazumder
• Yi Zhou

Lieutenant General Thomas M. Rienzi Student Award in Memory of William L. Everitt

• Daniel Pflug

Nick and Katherine Holonyak, Jr. Graduate Student Award

• Ye Lin
• Ankan Ghosh Dastider
• Hubert Elly
• Kewei Song

Nick Holonyak, Jr. and Katherine R. Holonyak Award

• Chloe Armstrong
• Zetai Liu
• Yicheng He
• Yan Miao

Paul D. Coleman Outstanding Research Award

• Priyash Barya
• Mihir Kavishwar

Qualcomm Graduate Award

• Andre Schreiber
• Dwip Dalal

Raj and Jeanette Mittra Award

• Xiaodong Ye

Robert T. Chien Memorial Award in Electrical Engineering

• Debottam Dutta
• Jiawei Li
• Yu-Han Huang
• Ameya Sameer Anjarlekar

Shun Lien Chuang Memorial Award for Excellence in Graduate Education

• Ram Krishna
• Sheikh Mohd Ta-seen Afrid
• Chaitanya Amballa

The Dr. Eric K. Walton Graduate Award

• Gonzalo Nunez Munoz

Wen-Mei W. Hwu Award

• Kaiwen Cao

Yi-Min Wang and Pi-Yu Chung Endowed Research Award

• Manvi Jha
• Mosbah Aouad

Yuen T. Lo Award

• Wang-Chien Chen