SPECIAL EECS AWARD

Seth J. Teller Award for Excellence, Inclusion, and Diversity

Named for the late EECS professor, this award honors members of the MIT community who embody those three values through work, research, or educational innovation. The 2020 winners were Professor Leslie Kolodziejski and EECS PhD students Candace Ross and José Cambronero Sanchez. All were honored for their activities to improve diversity and inclusion in the department.

Kolodziejski is the lead of the EECS Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (CDEI) and also focuses on graduate student diversity as the EECS Graduate Officer. 

Ross and Cambronero Sanchez were recognized for their many volunteer activities for the EECS Graduate Office, especially their leadership in the EECS Graduate Student Visit Days Events.  For the past three years they have planned, organized, publicized, and led the discussion for the "Student Diversity Panel" portion of the visit days.  Due to their efforts, attendance in this event has grown each year.  Visiting admitted students describe how informative and helpful the authentic discussion was during the panel, and report choosing MIT because of our openness about diversity.   

TEACHING AWARDS

Burgess (1952) & Elizabeth Jamieson Prizes for Excellence in Teaching (EECS Award)

• Patrick Jaillet, Co-Director, MIT Operations Research Center; Dugald C. Jackson Professor of EECS, recognized for his teaching in 6.036 Introduction to Machine Learning.

• Pablo Parrilo, Joseph F. & Nancy P. Keithley Professor, recognized for his teaching in 6.215 (6.255J) Optimization Methods and 6.036 Introduction to Machine Learning.

EECS Outstanding Educator Award (EECS Award)

• Kimberle Koile, Lecturer, was recognized for her teaching in 6.UAT Oral Communication and 6.034 (6.844) Artificial Intelligence.

Jerome H. Saltzer Award for Excellence in Teaching (EECS Award)

• Peter Hagelstein,Associate Professor of EE, was recognized for his teaching in 6.011 Introduction to Communications, Control, and Signal Processing and 6.728 Applied Quantum and Statistical Physics.

Kolokotrones Education Award (EECS Award)

• Arvind Satyanarayan, NBX Career Development Assistant Professor of EECS, was recognized for creating the department's first course on data visualization, 6.984 Interactive Data Visualization, and also for curricular contributions to 6.170 Software Studio

Louis D. Smullin (’39) Award for Excellence in Teaching (EECS Award)

• Daniel Sanchez Martin, Associate Professor of EECS was recognized for his effort in redesigning 6.004 Computation Structures, EECS introductory subject in Logic Design and Computer Architecture. He used Bluespec, a modern hardware description language and integrated it with an open source logic synthesis tool to provide feedback regarding circuit area and timing.

Ruth and Joel Spira Awards for Excellence in Teaching (SoE Award)

• Tamara Broderick, Associate Professor of EECS, recognized for her outstanding teaching of 6.882 Advanced Topics in Artificial Intelligence, 6.036 Introduction to Machine Learning, and 6.435 Bayesian Modeling and Inference. She also made important contributions to 6.041 Introduction to Probability, incorporating new problem sets about real situations.

• Julian Shun, Douglas Ross (1954) Career Development Assistant Professor of Software Technology, was recognized for the breadth of his teaching ability in 6.006 Introduction to Algorithms, for his teaching in 6.172 Performance Engineering of Software Systems, and for creating the new graduate course 6.886 Algorithms Engineering.

AWARDS FROM STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS

Frank E. Perkins Award for Excellence in Graduate Advising (Institute Award: Recognizes faculty who demonstrates unbounded compassion and dedication towards students)

• Michael Carbin, Assistant Professor of EECS

• Leslie Kolodziejski, EECS Graduate Officer; EECS CDEI Co-Chair; Professor of EE

HKN Best Instructor Award (EECS Award)

• Jason S. Ku, Lecturer, received the 2020 award for his teaching in 6.006 Intro to Algorithms.

IEEE/ACM Best Advisor Award (EECS Award)

• Silvina Hanono Wachman, Principal Lecturer, received the 2020 award for her guidance and support of students -- for being someone they could come to with any problems in their lives (not just academics), especially during the pandemic.

SPECIAL RECOGNITIONS

Department Head Special Recognition Award (EECS Award)

• Irene Huang, EECS Administrative Officer, was recognized for her excellent and important work for the department.

• Chris Terman, Senior Lecturer Emeritus, was recognized for his work in the EECS undergraduate office, especially for new tools he created that enable staff to work more effectively (and from home after the pandemic struck).  His solutions changed the way students reach out to staff and improved understanding of the students’ degree progress for both students and advisors.

Junior Bose Award (SoE Award: Recognizes an outstanding contributor to education from among the faculty members who are being proposed for promotion to associate professor without tenure.)

• Justin Solomon, Associate Professor of EECS, for his teaching in 6.006 Intro to Algorithms and 6.837 Computer Graphics.

Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow (MIT Program: Honors MIT’s best teachers, recognizing faculty who have made exemplary and sustained contributions to the teaching and education of undergraduates at MIT.)

• Jacob White, Cecil H. Green Professor of EE and chair of the MIT Committee on Curricula was named a 2020 MacVicar Faculty Fellow.

Richard J. Caloggero Award (EECS Award: Recognizes members of the EECS department who have shown loyalty, dedication, and effectiveness beyond normal expectations.)

• Luca Daniel, Professor of EECS, was recognized for his dedicated work in numerous EECS committees, especially faculty search.

STUDENT TEACHING AWARDS  (EECS Awards)

Carlton E. Tucker Teaching Award

• Srini Raghuraman

Frederick C. Hennie III Teaching Awards

• Evan Denmark

• Mesert Kebed

• Jennifer Madiedo

• Valerie Richmond

• Zhongxia Yan

Harold Hazen Teaching Award

• Dylan Mathis McKay

Undergraduate Teaching Assistant (UTA) Awards

• Srijon Mukherjee

• Tony Wang

STUDENT UROP AWARDS  (EECS Awards)

Anna Pogosyants UROP Award

• Zoë Marschner
  Project: Hexahedral Mesh Repair via Sum-of-Squares Relaxation
  Supervisor: Justin Solomon

Jeremy Gerstle Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) in AI Award

• Steven Liu
  Project: Diverse Image Generation via Self-Conditioned GANs
  Supervisor: Antonio Torralba

Licklider UROP Award

• Carlos Castillo Lozada
  Project: Sprayable User Interfaces: Prototyping Large-Scale Interactive Surfaces with Sensors and Displays
  Supervisor: Stefanie Mueller

Morais (1986) and Rosenblum (1986) UROP Award

• Brandon Motes
  Project: Automated Optical Measurements to Predict Performance of Optoelectronic Devices
  Supervisor: Vladimir Bulovic

Robert M. Fano UROP Award

• Dhruv Rohatgi (2 Projects)
  Project1: Truncated Linear Regression in High Dimensions
  Project 2: Near-Optimal Bounds for Online Caching with Machine Learned Advice
  Supervisors: Costis Daskalakis, Piotr Indyk

SuperUROP Awards (2019-2020)

• Fatima Gunter-Rahman
  Project: Using Single-Cell Transcriptomics to Understand Cognitive Resilience in Alzheimer’s Disease
  Supervisor: Li-Huei Tsai

• Lior Hirschfeld
  Project: Uncertainty Quantification Using Neural Networks for Molecular Property Prediction
  Supervisor: Regina Barzilay

• Yaateh Richardson
  Project: Learned Bloom Filters
  Supervisor: Tim Kraska

STUDENT CLASS AWARDS  (EECS Awards)

David A. Chanen Writing Award (for Group Writing in 6.033)

• Eric Hong, Magdalena Price, and Alok Puranik
  Title:  ZoomNet: Updating NASA’s ExtraNet

George C. Newton Undergraduate Laboratory Award (6.111 Group Project)

• Ishaan Govindarajan and Eric Pence
  Project: The DiGuitar

Northern Telecom/BNR Undergraduate Laboratory Award (6.111 Group Project)

• Jeremy McCulloch, Adam Potter, and Sreya Vangara
  Project: Futuristic Pepper’s Ghost Approximation

• Kendall Garner and Claire Traweek
  Project: digitEyez

J. Francis Reintjes Excellence in 6-A Industrial Practice Award

• Matthew Hutchinson
  Title:  Applying High Performance Computing to Early Fusion Video Action Recognition
  Supervisor: Charles Leiserson
  Company: MIT Lincoln Lab

• Lokhin Cheng
  Title: Digital Control for Adaptive Efficiency in Switching Regulators
  Supervisor: David Perreault
  Company: Analog Devices

STUDENT THESIS AWARDS  (EECS Awards)

Charles & Jennifer Johnson Artificial Intelligence and Decision-Making MEng Thesis Awards

1^st Place

• David Mayo
  Title: Understanding Object Recognition Performance at Scale in Machines and Humans
  Supervisor: Boris Katz

2^nd Place

• Nilai Sarda
  Title:  On Anomaly Detection in Particle Accelerators
  Supervisor: Justin Solomon

Charles & Jennifer Johnson Computer Science MEng Thesis Awards

1^st Place

• Ryan Senanayake
  Title: A Unified Iteration Space Transformation Framework for Sparse and Dense Tensor Algebra
  Supervisor: Saman Amarasinghe

2^nd Place

• Severyn Kozak
  Title: Chasing Zero Variability in Software Performance
  Supervisors: Charles Leiserson, Tao B. Schardl

David Adler Electrical Engineering MEng Thesis Awards

1^st Place

• Theia Henderson
  Title: A Continuous Approach to Information-Theoretic Exploration with Range Sensors
  Supervisors: Vivienne Sze, Sertac Karaman

2^nd Place

• Chandler Squires
  Title: Causal Structure Discovery from Incomplete Data
  Supervisor: Caroline Uhler

Ernst A. Guillemin SM Thesis Award in Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making

• Jingzhao Zhang
  Title: Dynamical Systems View of Acceleration in First-Order Optimization
  Supervisor: Suvrit Sra

Ernst A. Guillemin SM Thesis Award in Electrical Engineering

• Alireza Fallah
  Title: Robust Accelerated Gradient Methods for Machine Learning
  Supervisor: Asu Ozdaglar

George M. Sprowls PhD Thesis Award in Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making

• Jiajun Wu
  Title: Computational Perception of Physical Object Properties
  Supervisors: William Freeman, Joshua Tenenbaum

George M. Sprowls PhD Thesis Award in Computer Science

• Joshua Alman
  Title: Linear Algebraic Techniques in Algorithms and Complexity
  Supervisors: Ryan Williams, Virginia Williams

• Young Hyun (Albert) Kwon
  Title: Riffle - An Efficient Communication System with Strong Anonymity
  Supervisor: Srini Devadas

• Amy Xian Zhang
  Title: Systems for Collections Human Curation of Online Discussion
  Supervisor: David Karger

Jin Au Kong PhD Thesis Award in Electrical Engineering

• Anuran Makur
  Title: Information Contraction and Decomposition
  Supervisors: Yury Polyanskiy and Lizhong Zheng

• Di Zhu
  Title: Microwave Engineering in Superconducting Nanowires for Single-Photon Detection
  Supervisor: Karl Berggren

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL WINNERS!

Send changes/corrections to: eecs-communications@mit.edu