CSE Holds Annual Awards Ceremony

Dr. Hallgren, associate professor, received the Faculty Teaching Award.  He is part of the Theoretical Computer Science Group.  He has won the award for his excellent teaching, most notably in CSE 598E, Computational Complexity, fall 2010.  His students described him as a good lecturer who is always enthusiastic about the material, understandable, lively, interesting, and very helpful.  He often gave a view point which was different from the one in the text which helped in learning important concepts.  He was also very willing to give feedback and comments on his work, both on homework and outside of class.  One student said that he encouraged class participation more than most professors the student knows. Some of his colleagues have noted that he has an excellent ability to involve students in abstract material, and that is not easy.  He kept a good balance between discipline--sticking to the designed order of the presentation, following his notes--and spontaneity, with lively speaking style and an occasional anecdote. He clearly kept student's attention with his effective presentation and good choice of salient points and examples.  In 2010, he was awarded a  PECASE Award.  Awardees are selected on the basis of two criteria: pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology and a commitment to community service as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education, or community outreach.

Karen Corl, lead graduate programs staff support, received the Administrative Staff Award.  With this position comes tremendous responsibility in serving the 215 graduate students enrolled in CSE.  She is patient, kind, welcoming, professional, and extremely knowledgeable about all graduate school policies and procedures.  Dr. Mahmut Kandemir, CSE's Graduate Officer says that, "Without Karen, it would be much more difficult to run our graduate program.  She is an excellent graduate secretary with a good eye for detail.  She keeps our graduate program well organized and works in the most efficient manner.  She deals promptly with any issue that comes up and is always there whenever a grad student needs help.  This is why we are able to run the largest Ph.D. program in the College of Engineering so smoothly."

Barb Einfalt, database analyst/programmer, received the IT Staff Award.  While it is difficult to give this award to someone who flaunted a Green Bay Packers shirt the day after the Super Bowl and who insists that there are 32 days in March, we could not ignore that the high quality of CSE's hardware design courses is partially owed to Barb’s continued efforts to hire, schedule, train, and manage student employees who operate the component supply office.   Her thorough planning and friendly demeanor contribute to a positive student experience in the hardware design courses.   Commitment and attention to detail are two of her hallmark qualities.   Faculty and staff praise Barb's helpful attitude.   Additionally, Barb's openness and candor are very much appreciated by the entire IT team.

Asit Mishra, Ph.D. student working under the direction of Dr. Chita Das, received the Graduate Research Assistant Award.  He is a research assistant, conducting research in computer architecture/interconnection networks as well as mentoring new students in the lab.  Dr. Das describes Asit as intelligent, hardworking, motivated to excel, has broad knowledge in many areas of computer science and engineering, a good team player in and across labs, and an excellent citizen.  When asked what Dr. Das values the most about Asit, his answer was that he is dependable and responsible.  He also said that it is difficult to find someone who is excellent both in research and a taste for good food.

Shad Kirmani, Ph.D. student working under the direction of Dr. Padma Raghavan, received the Graduate Student Teaching Assistant Award.  Shad was a TA for CMPSC 461, Programming Language Concepts, taught by Dr. Swarat Chaudhuri in fall 2010.  Comments about Shad from that class state that he was very helpful when asked through email, office hours or in class, reasonably prompt with return of graded materials and always willing to help students with the assignments and doubts with the course.  Dr. Chaudhuri says that, "During the time Shad was my TA, I was consistently impressed with his diligence as well as his interest in helping students. The course must have been a lot of work for him given that it had a large number of enrolled students and many assignments, and that a lot of the material taught in the course was new to him. However, it was always clear to me that he had put in the effort needed to understand the concepts deeply, as well as to grade systematically and fairly. I was quite satisfied with how the course worked out, and this would not have possible without Shad."  In the future, Shad will be working on parallel partitioning problems.  His research interests are in the area of high performance computing.

Jing Xie, Ph.D. student working under the direction of Dr. Yuan Xie, has received the Graduate Student Teaching Assistant Award.   She was a TA for CMPSC 411, VLSI Digital Circuits, taught by Dr. Yuan Xie in spring 2010.  As a TA for CMPSC 411, Dr. Xie described Jing as very self-motivated, responsible, and hardworking.  He says that he was very lucky to have such a student as his TA in 411 and now as part of his research group.  Students from the class described Jing as really patient at helping them on debugging their project and assuring their questions, a most helpful TA even at odd hours, and very patient.  Jing is currently working as an RA on the topic of 3D IC design and testing.  Her research interests are integrated circuit design and low power design.