The 2015 Texas A&M Computer Science and Engineering Spring Banquet and Awards Ceremony was a very memorable one for the department. It was held on campus at the Bethancourt Ballroom in the Memorial Student Center and hosted CSE faculty, staff, current students and distinguished former students.
The night started with the annual undergraduate poster competition before the banquet. Once the banquet began, CSEGSA President Jory Denny welcomed everyone to the event. Then Department Head, Dr. Dilma Da Silva presented the awards, certificates and recognitions. CSE Former Student and astronaut, Steve Swanson made a special appearance to present the department with a Computer Science and Engineering flag that had accompanied him to space.
Da Silva presented the Distinguished Former Student Awards, which were given to Ravi Iyer ’99 and Monty Mueller, ’84. Iyer, who received his Ph.D. here, is now a Senior Principal Engineer, CTO and Director in Intel’s New Business Initiatives (NBI) group. He has published more than 150 papers and actively participates in conferences and journals. He is also an IEEE Fellow and has made significant contributions in new SoC/CMP architectures, cache/memory hierarchies, QoS, accelerators, wearables/IOT and performance/power analysis. Iyer received the Feiyu Yu, CS –G7 Scholarship for his recognition.
Mueller, who received his Bachelor’s degree here in 1984, is now the Department of Computer Science and Engineering’s Advisory Council Vice Chair. Previously, he worked as a consultant and partner with Accenture for over 20 years, he was vice president and regional director of Phoenix House Foundation, Inc., and ran his own business until 2012, retiring shortly thereafter. Mueller received the Matthew Bulluck, CS –G7 Scholarship for his recognition.
Denny presented the student, faculty and staff excellence awards.Following the Distinguished Former Student awards, Da Silva announced the IAP research poster winners.
Department selected Peer Teaching Excellence Award
- Kevin Vece
Student selected Peer Teaching Excellence Award
- Colton Williams
- Nathan De Jong
Department selected Teaching Assistant Excellence Award
- Tanzir Ahmed
- Grant Wilde
Student selected Teaching Assistant Excellence Award
- Michael Nowak
Undergraduate Faculty Teaching Excellence Award
- Dr. Akash Tyagi
Graduate Faculty Teaching Excellence Award
- Dr. Nancy Amato
Undergraduate Research Excellence Award
- Trevor Nelligan
Graduate Research Excellence Award
- Jialong Zhang
Undergraduate Leadership Excellence Award
- Rafael Moreno
Graduate Leadership Excellence Award
- Jory Denny
Mentoring Excellence Award
- Stephanie Valentine
Student Selected Staff Excellence Award
- Valerie Sorenson
- Kimberly Mallett
Department Selected Staff Excellence Award
- Karrie Bourquin
- Elena Rodriguez
ACE Program co-directors, Dr. Nancy Amato and Dr. Jennifer Welch recognized the ACE Scholar graduates and Dr. Teresa Leyk, Peer Teacher Advisor and Dr. John Keyser, Associate Head for Academics, recognized the Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE) Spring 2015 inductees.
“I thought this year’s event was fun and everyone seemed to have a great time,” Denny said. “All the award winners this year were very deserving of their respective awards. I was honored to be able to emcee for the event; it gave me a chance to give back to the department for all it has done for me over the years. Overall the event was a huge success!”
The annual CSE Spring Banquet and Awards Ceremony is hosted by the student organizations and is funded by the IAP Program and the department.