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ECE Students Regina Eckert, Artem Kuskov and Siva Patibandla Win SOE Awards

May 29, 2014 - Charles Reuben

Three outstanding, well-rounded students from ECE were honored at the 2014 School of Engineering Awards Banquet held on Fri., May 9th. The awards presentation took place at 11 a.m. in the auditorium of the Centennial Engineering Center and was followed by a delicious, Brazilian-style lunch in the courtyard.

Here are ECE’s proud award winners. Let’s get to know them a little better:

Regina F. Eckert (Outstanding Junior Award)

ReginaRegina Eckert is studying for a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering with a focus in optoelectronics. Over the past two years, she has worked as a student intern at Sandia National Laboratories, researching the use of waveform correlation techniques for seismic signal processing. She is currently working with a group involved in developing state-of-the-art focal plane array technology. She plans to pursue a master's degree after graduating in Spring 2015, and hopes to continue to do research throughout her future career.

Regina is an avid reader, black & white film photographer, and aspiring writer. One of her short stories was published in the 2011-2012 edition of Conceptions Southwest, a UNM student magazine.

“I have enjoyed the innumerable hours I have spent in the ECE department, and I am looking forward to another year full of interesting projects and new topics.” said Regina.

ArtemArtem Kuskov (Outstanding Senior Award)

Artem Kuskov is a senior undergraduate Electrical Engineering student with an Electromagnetics track. For the past 15 months he has been a research assistant in the beams physics laboratory working on a magnetically insulated accelerator, numerical simulations of radiation transport and X-ray as well as RF diagnostic development. His current Pulsed Power project involves the design of a high voltage Marx generator for low impedance high power microwave sources.

Tem has presented his work at the 2013 International Conference of Plasma Science and has received an award to attend this year’s International Plasma and Beams Conference in Washington D.C., where he will be giving an oral presentation on his current work. His work will also be presented at the upcoming 2014 AMEREM conference. He has published in the conference proceedings as well as on the Nuclear Plasma Science Society newsletter and is working on an accelerator paper for a peer reviewed journal.

Tem will be working in the High Power Electrodynamics Group in the Accelerator Technology division at Los Alamos National Laboratory and will continue with his Graduate academic studies at the University of New Mexico’s Electrical Engineering Charged Particle Beams and Plasma Laboratories, where he will focus on radiation transport physics and radiographic sources.

SivaSiva Tharun Patibandla (Outstanding Graduate Student Award)

Siva Patibandla is a Graduate electrical engineering student with an emphasis in power and energy. He worked on the Solar decathlon, which brought in collegiate teams from all around the world to design sustainable, smart housing. He helped to design and deploy the photovoltaic system and the control system of the house that the UNM team built. Siva presented his work at the 2013 American solar energy society held in Baltimore. He also conducted a test on the Microgrid at the Solar Decathlon village with a team of engineers that was lead by ECE Prof. Olga Lavrova.

“What made this a unique test is the fact that there was 100% PV penetration,” said Siva. His work was submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid Issue on Distributed Energy Management Systems. He is also simulating the Microgrid in two different softwares: OpenDss and ETAP. Siva strives to understand the effects of electric car integration in to the grid in the near future and his aim is to work in the renewable energy industry once he graduates.