On Thursday, May 5, 2022, over 350 Bachelor’s (B.S.), Master’s (M.S.), and Doctoral (Ph.D.) recipients walked across the stage to celebrate their graduation at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department’s Spring 2022 Commencement Ceremony. Live from the William Neal Reynolds Coliseum at NC State, more than 2,000 friends, family, and guests cheered on their graduates. An additional 5,000 supporters tuned into the livestream to watch the moment from afar.
Veena Misra, NC State ECE Alumna and Director of the ASSIST Center, spoke to the graduates as the guest speaker. She provided words of encouragement and hopes for their bright future. After working at the Advanced Products Research and Development Laboratories, Motorola Inc., Austin, TX she joined the faculty at NC State in 1998. She has authored or coauthored over 200 papers. Misra received the Alexander Holladay Medal in 2022, considered to be the highest honor bestowed by NC State and the university’s Board of Trustees.
Student Speaker Sahaj Zalavadia, Computer Engineering and Economics double major, spent his time at NC State as an Engineering Ambassador and a member of the Delta Sigma Iota Fraternity, Inc., a South Asian interest fraternity focused on service, education, and unity. Zalavadia recounted his time at NC State and reminded students to take a moment and cherish the memories they have created.
“Enjoy the time that you have with the people around you, the people that have impacted your life and helped you grow into the individual that you are today. Because 50 years down the line, when we look back at our time at NC State, we may not remember the grades we achieved or the tests we took… but we will for sure remember the relationships that we created and the moments that we shared” said Zalavadia.
Several undergraduate and graduate students received awards for their time at NC State. The following Undergraduate Awards were announced at the ceremony:
Benjamin Davis was recognized as the Faculty Senior Scholar and received the Humanities Award; Connor Bryant received the Leadership Award; Sam Honeycutt received the Scholarly Achievement Award, and Shannon Pinnell received the Service and Citizenship Award.
The following graduate students were also acknowledged for their awards as well:
Ajit Kanale was the Doctoral Scholar of the Year for his “demonstration of a new approach (BaSIC topology) to improving the short-circuit withstand time for power transistors made from wide bandgap semiconductors silicon carbide and gallium nitride. This solves one of the main application issues for these devices in motor drive applications such as electric vehicles. His approach has prevented repetitive short-circuit failures of these devices for the first time” says co-advisor Jayant Baliga.
Shubham Nema was the Master Scholar of the Year because of his “major driving force for our research in reliability analysis and fault injection with Sandia National Labs. He started working with me during his first semester at NC State, and his research results and contributions led to major academic publications and technical reports” says advisor Amro Awad.
Chethan Anjinappa received the Distinguished Dissertation award because he “has excelled in his research, teaching, and service activities during his Ph.D. journey at NC State. He has authored/co-authored 8 journal papers and 12 conference papers, contributed to a book chapter, and won 2 best-poster awards. He was also a great citizen of the wireless research community in general and our ECE department in particular, working closely with the students when he was a teaching assistant in a course, helping incoming graduate students to adapt to their new environments at NC State, participating in local “plogging” (picking up litter while jogging) activities, and contributing significantly to the peer-review process in his research area with 91 verified reviews in Publons, all of these while doing three summer internships at renown telecommunication companies” says advisor Ismail Guvenc.
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is so proud to celebrate our graduates and recognize the outstanding achievements all of our students have accomplished. Congratulations, Class of 2022!