Events « OSU EECS News

Students in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, along with their family and friends, commemorated their graduation during the school’s graduation celebration on June 10, 2022.

“Our last in-person celebration was in 2019, so it was great to see how happy everyone was to watch the students walk across the stage and be recognized for their achievements,” said Gaulke Professor and School Head Tom Weller.

Oregon State University alumna Nadia Payet, who earned a Ph.D. in computer science in 2011 and is the Senior Engineering Manager for Navigation on Google Maps, shared words of wisdom for the graduates.

After losing her younger sister to cancer in 2017, Payet changed her outlook on life and offered three lessons:

Nadia Payet delivers her speech to the graduates — Alumna Nadia Payet delivered the keynote speech at the 2022 EECS graduation celebration. Watch the entire event on YouTube.

Figure out what you want. It’s not what your parents or society wants for you. After her sister died, Payet shifted her focus from solely building a career to building more meaningful relationships. “I still love the successful career,” she said. “Because I listen more carefully now, I’m just a more human leader; someone who truly cares and puts her people first.”

Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. She urged the graduates to pretend they don’t have all the time in the world to get things done. “I remind myself that we don’t have forever, so let’s make today count,” Payet said.

Lead with empathy and kindness. “Leadership is taking care of yourself, and empowering others to do the same,” she said, and advised the audience to practice gratitude as a path toward leading with empathy and kindness.

The graduation celebration also recognized faculty, staff, and students with awards.

Outstanding Staff Member of the Year
Awarded to Calvin Hughes, assistant director for graduate programs, this honor is given to an individual who goes above and beyond their duties to help students. They always have an open door for questions, even with work sprawled across their desk.

Innovative Teaching Award
This award is presented to a faculty member who brings a new edge to the classroom. These individuals make learning fun and help enhance students’ understanding of the material through new techniques. Instructor Rob Hess received the award for computer science. Professor David Allstot and Senior Instructor Roger Traylor both received the award for electrical and computer engineering.

Faculty of the Year
Computer science professor Mike Bailey received this award which is given to a faculty member who inspires students both inside the classroom and out. The passion and pride they take in their teaching and their subject matter is evident in everything they do.

Sophomore of the Year
Julian Henry was the recipient of this award from Eta Kappa Nu, the honor society for electrical and computer engineering students.

Undergraduate Learning Assistants of the Year
Computer science students James Taylor and Andrew Kamand took home these honors. Taylor, who was among the 2022 graduates, was a learning assistant for multiple classes. Kamand, an online postbaccalaureate student in computer science, served as a learning assistant for an Introduction to Databases course.

EECS Outstanding Dissertation Award
Shashini De Silva, a doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering, received this award for her thesis, “Secure Data Analytics under Data Integrity Attacks.” De Silva was advised by Assistant Professor Jinsub Kim.

Robert Short Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year
This award, established in honor of Robert Short, was a professor of electrical engineering and the founding chairman of the computer science department, to encourage students to consider a career in academia. Shane Allen, a master’s degree student in electrical and computer engineering, was the recipient of the award.

Photo of Jordan Bartos. — Jordan Bartos, president of the OSU Hackathon club.

The coronavirus pandemic didn’t stop the OSU Hackathon Club from holding BeaverHacks Spring 2020 on March 27-29. Seventy-four participants formed 17 teams to develop a website, app, or API on the theme of community building.

It was held online — the usual venue for the club’s events, since the organizers are computer science students in the online baccalaureate program. However, the global health emergency still had an influence on the event.

“We had a lot of submissions that somehow tied to the pandemic,” said Jordan Bartos, postbaccalaureate student in computer science and president of the club.

Teams were judged by a panel of instructors and industry representatives. The club distributed $400 in prizes to the following winners:

First place: The Reading Room by Mae LaPresta, Elizabeth Tackett, Manda Jensen.
Second place: Where the Heck by Zach Tindell, Jeremy Binder, Chia-Tse Weng.
Third place: barterNow by Lifang Yan, Cameron Grover, Felipe Teixeira Groberio
New student category: Community Request Board by Jung Min (Judy) Lee, Wei Yu Tang, Angela Dimon.

All submissions are posted on the Hackathon website.

“It was incredibly gratifying to win, because the focus of our project was something all of us felt very passionately about,” said Mae La Presta, postbaccalaureate student in computer science. She was part of the winning team that created the Reading Room app to help foster a sense of community when social distancing has become the new norm.

Although the club was started by students from the online program, they welcome all Oregon State students. Bartos says his priority as president is to grow the membership of the club and raise awareness of their events. Future events could include collaborations with other clubs on campus.

“I feel pretty strongly about the benefits of the Hackathon club because when I competed in the first one, it really ignited something in me for coding in general,” Bartos said.

Participants say that learning new technical skills, building relationships with other students, and having the reward of creating something new were the main benefits of the experience.

“I was impressed by what everyone was able to accomplish by the end of the weekend. The presentations were incredible, and it was so cool to see what everyone’s ideas were,” said Manda Jensen, postbaccalaureate student in computer science.

Yvo Desmedt, the Jonsson Distinguished Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, will speak on the topic of cybersecurity on October 17.

The lecture is part of the Michael and Judith Gaulke Distinguished Lecture Series which brings internationally renowned scholars to Oregon State to ensure that students and faculty have access to important technology breakthroughs, as well as the fundamental science and engineering that is the foundation for today’s high tech advances.

The title of Desmedt’s talk is “The fundamental reasons information technological systems are insecure.” The lecture will be held on the Oregon State University campus in Rogers 230 on Wednesday, October 17, 2018 at 11:00 a.m. The event website has more details about the talk.

In addition to being a Distinguished Professor at UT Dallas, Yvo Desmedt is an Honorary Professor at University College London, a Fellow of the International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR) and a Member of the Belgium Royal Academy of Science.

Originally from Belgium, Desmedt earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. Although Dr. Desmedt was born in Belgium and graduated from a Belgian University, he has worked in the United States for most of his life. For this reason, he was appointed to become a “foreign member” of the Royal Academy of Belgium. He has worked in both industry and at universities in Belgium, New Mexico, Canada, Wisconsin, London, and Florida before joining UT Dallas in 2012.

Desmedt’s research interests include computer security, critical infrastructure, cryptography, entity authentication, information hiding, malware, network security, and cyberterrorism. His work has aided Fortune 100 companies in the United States, and American and European financial institutions such as bank and credit card companies.

Sanjit K. Mitra, an expert in signal and image processing, will speak at Oregon State University on October 14 for the Michael and Judith Gaulke Distinguished Lecture Series. The lecture series brings internationally renowned scholars to Oregon State to ensure that our students and faculty have access to important technology breakthroughs, as well as the fundamental science and engineering that is the foundation for today’s high tech advances.

The title of his talk is “Structural Subband Decomposition: A New Concept in Digital Signal Processing.” The talk will be held in Learning Innovation Center (LINC), 200 at 4:00 p.m.

Mitra is a research professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara and Professor Emeritus, Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Mitra is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, he has served IEEE in various capacities including service as the President of the IEEE Circuits & Systems Society in 1986. He is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, a member of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences, an Academician of the Academy of Finland, a foreign member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Arts, a foreign member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Croatian Academy of Engineering, and the Academy of Engineering, Mexico, and a Foreign Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India and the Indian National Academy of Engineering.

Professor Nelson Tansu is the first speaker for The Michael and Judith Gaulke Distinguished Lecture Series. The lecture series brings internationally renowned scholars to Oregon State to ensure that our students and faculty have access to important technology breakthroughs, as well as the fundamental science and engineering that is the foundation for today’s high tech advances.

Tansu’s research focuses on the physics and device technologies of semiconductor nanostructures for photonics and energy-efficiency applications. Specifically, he has had made seminal advances to the invention and innovation, fundamental sciences, and device technologies of III-V and III-Nitride semiconductors. His innovations have impacted areas of dilute-nitride diode lasers, and III-nitride semiconductor technologies for energy efficiency.

On Monday, September 24 at 4:00 he will present his talk “Beyond Conventional III-Nitride Materials and Devices – from Photonics to New Applications.” The talk is held in Learning Innovation Center, room 200 on the Oregon State University campus.

Tansu is Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the Daniel E. ’39 and Patricia M. Smith Endowed Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Director for the Integrated Photonics and Nanofabrication Core Laboratory and Center for Photonics and Nanoelectronics at Lehigh University.

He has more than 16 US patents, and his work is integrated in today’s state-of-the-art solid-state lighting technology. He has authored more than 134 refereed journals and 279 conference publications. His life story as a professor was published in the form of best-selling children’s book “Nelson the Boy who Loved to Read” in his native country Indonesia. He serves as the Editor-in-Chief for Photonics and Editorial Board Members in eight other leading journals in applied physics and nanotechnology.

Danny Dig, associate professor of computer science, is leading the effort to create the PPI Center.

Oregon State University is hosting a planning workshop for a new industry-focused pervasive personalized intelligence center on October 11-12, 2018 in Portland, Oregon.

The center would allow for interdisciplinary and collaborative research on machine-learning based software systems and aid in long-term partnerships between startups, corporations, universities and government agencies. Industry members involved leverage affiliate investment, have direct access to students, and enjoy company savings thanks to low risk and accelerated research and development.

“At Rigado we are committed to building a scalable, interconnected IoT that drives real business value. In support of those efforts to expand the ecosystem and interoperability we are pleased to be taking part in the Planning Workshop for the Center on IoT. We encourage anyone looking at digital transformation for your business to join us in helping to shape the future of IoT,” said co-founder and chief executive officer of Rigado.

If created, center headquarters would be at Oregon State with a site at University of Colorado Boulder supporting research under the supervision of the U.S. National Science Foundation using the Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers model.

“CU Boulder is thrilled to be a partner in making the PPI Center a reality. The software challenges of tomorrow are simply too great for any single university or company to tackle alone. Fortunately, CU and Oregon State bring complementary expertise and a can-do, cooperative attitude to the center effort,” said Bor-Yuh Evan Chang, co-director for the PPI Center and associate professor of computer science at University of Colorado Boulder.

Center topics of focus to enable intelligent IoT

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
Security and Privacy
Edge and Cloud Computing
Programming Languages and Verification
Software Engineering and Human Computer Interaction

Center staff

Twenty-nine faculty across the focus areas, including ACM Fellows Tom Dietterich and Margaret Burnett.

Planning workshop

What: Workshop with industry members, universities and National Science Foundation

About: Planned topics include meeting industry needs, NSF best practices and defining relevant research projects.

When: Oct. 11 & 12, 2018

Where: Sentinel Hotel, 614 S.W. 11th Ave., Portland, Oregon

Online: www.ppicenter.org

Phone: 541-737-8216

Email: Center Director Danny Dig at digd@eecs.oregonstate.edu
or CU Boulder Site Director Bor-Yuh Evan Chang at evan.chang@colorado.edu
and Shivakant Mishra at mishras@colorado.edu

Photo of Mark Clements — Mark Clements, senior development and QA manager for CASS, teaches during the workshop.

Employees in the Center for Applied Systems and Software (CASS) in the College of Engineering are teaching a workshop for high school teachers to learn how to create mobile apps for Apple devices. The three-day workshop is being held August 13 – 15, 2018 by Professional and Continuing Education (PACE) at Oregon State University.

The course is intended for any interested teacher, even if they have no programming experience. By the end of the workshop the participants will create their own app that can run on an Apple device using the programming language called Swift. They will also have the tools, including lesson plans, to teach programming in their class. Another benefit is that they will continue to have online support with CASS when they are implementing the program in their class.

“By teaching this workshop, we are enabling teachers to use this really awesome curriculum from Apple in their high schools. And then hopefully that will help interest more young people in computer science,” said Carrie Hertel, director of the Software Development Group for CASS.

Hertel is excited to expand CASS’s outreach to high school teachers and hopes to hold more workshops in the future, as well as provide a modified workshop for professionals.

Zander Work at NW Cyber Camp — Zander Work (right) helps a student at the NW Cyber Camp held at Oregon State University.

A week-long STEM Academy camp to introduce high-school students to cybersecurity was held on the Oregon State University through campus last week. Although it was the first time the camp was held in Corvallis, it is the third year the camp has been operating.

The location was not happenstance. NW Cyber Camp co-founder, Zander Work, just completed his freshman year at Oregon State where he made connections with faculty and graduate students in cyber security who helped teach the courses. Instructors also included alumni and other industry representatives from NuScale Power, McAfee, Splunk, NetSPI, Cylance, and PKI Solutions.

“The students were awesome,” Work said. “Everyone was very engaged with the speakers and they asked a lot of good questions.”

The goal of the camp is to get more students interested in the field of cybersecurity which has over 300,000 unfilled job openings, according to Cyber Seek.

“The camp has definitely shown me a lot more opportunities for what I can do in the future with cybersecurity,” said Grace, one of the camp participants. “There are a lot of different fields you can go into like data science, machine learning, ethical hacking, or security work. That’s been really cool to learn about.”

Jayde, another camp participant, already has plans to join the Air Force and focus on cybersecurity.

“I really liked the hands-on activities and learning about real examples of hacking,” Jayde said.

Both students mentioned it was harder than they were expecting, but in a good way.

“The guest speakers have been fantastic. Everyone is knowledgeable and teach at a rigorous enough level that people don’t get bored,” Grace said.

The 20 students at the Oregon State camp came from Corvallis, Albany, Philomath and Lebanon. The camp overall hosted 110 students this summer including sites in Portland, Gresham, Wilsonville, and Bend.

Rakesh Bobba, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the faculty organizer for the event said, “It was really fun. We would definitely like to host it at Oregon State again, and hopefully expand it to reach more students.”

Students working at NW Cyber Camp held at Oregon State University.

Workshop participants at Oregon State University. — Researchers from all over the world gathered at Oregon State for “Frontiers in Metrology Techniques for Magnetic Nanodevices”

Researchers from universities, national laboratories, and tech companies came to Oregon State University this July to discuss needs and challenges in measuring the performance of magnetic nanodevices.

This first-time workshop, called “Frontiers in Metrology Techniques for Magnetic Nanodevices” drew participants from as far away as Japan, Belgium and the United Kingdom. It was jointly organized by Pallavi Dhagat, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Thomas Silva at the National Institute for Standards and Technology.

The purpose of the workshop was to bring together researchers from diverse areas working on magnetic nanotechnologies to share information that could spark collaborations and advance the field. The format of the workshop emphasized networking and encouraged sharing unpublished and ongoing work.

“The targeted goals of the workshop made for productive and highly relevant discussions and networking,” said Ania Bleszynski Jayich, associate professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara. “As a physicist with a basic research approach, it was instructive to discover several close connections to industrial needs, and thus I was able to initiate several important relationships that will hopefully flourish in upcoming years.”

Although there are several conferences in the field of magnetism this was the first international workshop that was focused solely on metrology. Attendees gave very positive feedback and indicated they would like it to become a biennial event.

“It was very fruitful. We were often behind schedule because the talks were generating so many discussions,” said Hans Nembach, senior research associate at University of Colorado, Boulder. “It’s a great format, we should certainly have it again.”

Support for the workshop was provided by Oregon State University, Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute and Intel.

Kedi Yan (electrical & computer engineering) and Nick Wong (computer science) work on their self-playing guitar. More photos in the OSU EECS Flickr album.

“Gadgets and Gizmos” was the theme for the first HWeekend of 2017 on January 20-22, jointly sponsored by the College of Business and the College of Engineering.

In just one weekend, forty-seven students from business and engineering designed, built, and pitched their idea for a marketable product including temperature based alarm clock, a computer controlled potato launcher, a 3-D printed longboard fender, and a self-playing guitar.

It was the seventh iteration of the popular event that provides students from different disciplines an opportunity to work together in teams. Students came from a variety majors including business, bioengineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, environmental engineering, and mechanical engineering.

“This event is really cool, because I get to do things that I normally don’t get to do in my major,” said Alec Westbrook, a chemical engineering student who worked on the 3D printed longboard fender project. “I mean, how often can a guy that is mixing chemicals all day work with his hands and create something new?”

Photo of potato launch team. — The potato launch team tests out their device. More photos in the OSU EECS Flickr album.

This event allowed students to make use of the new Buxton Hall Makerspace and Mastery Challenge lounge, which gave students access to 3-D printing, soldering irons, a drill press, laser cutting, and UV ink logo printing.

Mentors for this HWeekend included six industry members from Intel and two from Microsemi.

“People here are really excited about the things they are making,” said Aayush Pathak, a silicon architecture engineer from Intel who attended HWeekend as a mentor. “And to be a part of it and share what I have seen in my school and life — it’s a proud feeling.”

Staff from both the College of Business and the College of Engineering also helped mentor students through the creation and marketing of their projects.

“It’s an incredibly valuable partnership between business and engineering,” said Dale McCauley, the makerspace manager for the College of Business. “The students are getting the chance to build relationships that ordinarily wouldn’t form. If you get business students to understand how engineers think and vice versa, I think that is valuable.”

At the end of the weekend, the students received group awards for their dedication and hard work. The Executors award goes to the team that produces the best engineering execution of their idea to create the most polished final product, the Helping Hand is for the team that contributes the most to other teams, and the InnovationX Pitch awards go to two teams who had the best business pitches for selling their prototypes.

Photo of temperature-based alarm clock team. — The temperature-based alarm clock team works out their design.

Award winners

Executor: Temperature Based Alarm Clock team. The team included members Noah Hoffman, Taylor Johnston, Alexia Patterson, and Abdurrahman Elmaghbub.

Helping Hands: Checkpoint team. The team included members Andrey Kornilovich and Graham Barber

InnovationX Pitch: Checkpoint team and Temperature Based Alarm Clock team.

Story by Taylor Mrzena

OSU EECS News

News from the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University

Category Archives: Events

Electrical engineering and computer science students celebrate their graduation

It’s business as usual for online Hackathon club

Cryptography expert to speak at Oregon State

Sanjit Mitra will speak at the Gaulke Distinguished Lecture Series

Oregon State welcomes Nelson Tansu as the first Gaulke distinguished lecturer

Oregon State invites industry members to collaborate on IoT center

CASS teaches teachers mobile app development

NW Cyber Camp comes to Oregon State

Workshop on magnetic nanodevices sparks international collaborations

Business and engineering students create gadgets and gizmos

Contact Info