STUDENT AWARD WINNERS

Zvi Galil Award for Improvement in Engineering Student Life
Columbia Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs (CORE)

Bernard Jaffe Prize 
Yunus Kovankaya 

School of Engineering and Applied Science Scholar Athlete Award
Elisa Luo

Campbell Award
Alexander Moreno

School of Engineering and Applied Science Student Activities Award
Katherine O'Reilly

Thomas "Pop" Harrington Medal
Athena Pagon 

George Vincent Wendell Memorial Award
Elias Tzoc-Pacheco

Robert D. Lilley Award for Socially Responsible Engineering
Engineers Without Borders: Yuba County

Morton B. Friedman Memorial Prize for Excellence
Yash Vijay Amonkar, PhD

Graduate Student Life Leadership Awards
Mark Barbet, PhD
Albert Fernandez Veiga, MS

Graduate Speaker
Camille-Louise Kouba Mbayo, MS

Valedictorian and Illig Medal Winner
Ethan Wu

Salutatorian 
Julia Zhao

FACULTY AWARD WINNERS

CEAA Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award
Lydia Chilton, Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Xunyu Zhou, Liu Family Professor of Financial Engineering 

Edward and Carole Kim Award for Faculty Involvement
Hardeep Johar, Senior Lecturer in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research 

Janette and Armen Avanessians Diversity Award 
Brian Smith, Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Presidential Teaching Award Winner
Yi Zhang, Associate in the Discipline of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research

ALUMNI AWARD WINNER

Columbia Alumni Medalist
Alexander A. Ned BS’87, MS’90 

Columbia Engineering’s Class of 2023 showcased their inventive solutions to challenging problems at the 8th annual Senior Design Expo. Projects varied from an approach that aims to reinvent IV (intravenous) administration for NICU patients to a novel capture system to remove space debris. More than 50 teams spanning eight departments presented their innovations and research at a packed showcase held May 4 at Roone Arledge Auditorium to a crowd of peers, professors, alumni, and STEM enthusiasts.

The biomedical engineering team behind NuJet (Anjali Nair, Isa Nuñez, Athena Pagon, Vish Rao, Elías Tzoc-Pacheo), attempted to solve the need for a cost-effective vaccine delivery to make vaccines more accessible, sustainable, and sanitary. 

“Syringes and needles are the most common form of vaccine delivery, despite many of the components being single-use,” said Pagon. 

On top of this, there are strict storage, transportation and disposal requirements, leading to a high-cost model that is typically only accessible in high resource centers. Their solution, a low-cost needle-less injector, generates a pressurized fluid stream that delivers the vaccine right below the skin while reducing cross-contamination, waste, and cost.

Inspired by individuals who suffer from overstimulation and anxiety, the electrical engineering students behind Musical Meditation (Tess Fallon, Alexandr Petuhov, Leonardo Arvan, Madeline Denis) developed a pair of headphones that reads the user's heart rate, while playing calming music that adjusts itself in an attempt to slow down the person’s heartbeat. 

Some designs focused on improving existing solutions. AMPF, also known as the Automated Pothole Filler (Jose Chanchavac, Phillipe Dumeny, Javier Lopez, Jerry Qu, Justin Tucker) aimed to simplify the process of filling potholes, which typically requires work from a large team of workers, typically five to 10 people at a time. “Our solution greatly reduces the number of people needed to about one to two workers,” said Javier Lopez, who recently received a degree in mechanical engineering. While AMPF focused on earthly solutions, DEMI (Miles Huntley-Fenner, Christina Wrightm Yidi Reiss, Leon Aharonian, Nicolas Aldana) focused on safely securing space debris, also known as space junk, which poses a serious threat to the welfare and sustainability of orbital activities. Their two-stage capture system encloses the debris and seals it in a storage chamber, which is something that other solutions lack.

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Sustainability was a common theme among many projects, with the expectation of improving systems that currently affect the environment. AQUA4 (Anton Deti, Emily Milian, Itai Savin, Kennedi Wade) developed a water rerouting system that repurposes water used in the bathroom. Students from the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering researched how best to treat contaminated soil in New York City, with hopes to rid the soil of harmful metals such as lead and arsenic (Mantjita Camara, Emily Lord, Dane Miller). 

Many civil engineering models were built this year with sustainability in mind, from re-designing Dam systems to better serve the flora and fauna of the surrounding area (Ruben Bazalar, Caroline Cailloux, Kevin Cardenas, Yunus Kovankaya, Zhihao Liu, Ariana Novo) to cost-effective Brooklyn housing made entirely of recycled shipping containers (Charlie Henry Renner, Abraham Oh, Katherine Koziol, Amin Mojarad, Isabella Citera, Tes S DeJaeger). 

Other visionary projects aimed to improve skills, through games and physical exercise. With focus on creativity, the students behind ZyloZinger (Sienna Brent, Alex Yu, Haris Zia) created an interactive xylophone game that challenges hand-eye coordination. In an effort to improve athletic training, Deadliftr (Yelaman Sain, Kyrie Lorfing, Matt Klenk, Sam Wustefeld, Will Hamilton) aimed to develop a device to help weightlifters on their deadlift training, creating a wireless device that gives athletes real-time feedback on their form. 

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“I feel inspired and energized by all of the inventive projects on display here today and I know the rest of you feel the same,” said Dean Shih-Fu Chang in his address preceding the event. “It truly shows how creative our field of engineering and applied science is and our commitment to being engineers for humanity.”