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News Archives
Islam/Torres Win IEEE Outstanding Grad Student Award
June 15, 2019
Two ECE Graduate Students, Khandakar Nusrat Islam, and Marcos Torres, will be awarded the Outstanding Graduate Student Award at the annual joint IEEE/Sigma Xi Annual Awards Banquet on May 13. Each winner receives a handsomely framed certificate.
Ms. Islam was nominated for this award by Prof. Edl Schamiloglu and Prof. Ahmed Elfrgani for her "outstanding academic performance in the designing of high-frequency vacuum electron devices."
Ms. Islam joined Professor Schamiloglu’s group after completing her M.S. thesis research under the supervision of Professor Mark Gilmore. She has been studying a high frequency (W-band) circular traveling wave tube (TWT) through particle-in-cell simulations. She was also involved in setting up experiments with this device at LANL in June/July 2018.
"Ms. Islam has made tremendous progress as a Ph.D. student on this topic, which was brand new for her," said Professor Schamiloglu.
In addition to her technical achievements, Ms. Islam has been active in the local IEEE Chapter and with the UNM ECE Department’s Graduate Student Association. She is spearheading a petition to establish a Women in Engineering Annex associated with the Albuquerque Chapter.
"Receiving this award is a great honor," said Ms. Islam. "This award will inspire other women to achieve great things in the world of Technology."
Mr. Marcos Torres's Master’s Thesis is entitled “Satisfaction-aware Data Offloading based on Fully Autonomous Aerial Systems” and played a big part in ECE Professor Eirini Eleni Tsiropoulou's decision to nominate him for the Outstanding Graduate Student Award. Mr. Torres performs high quality research within the PROTON Lab at ECE, UNM, while he has already submitted his proposal to the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program towards continuing his Ph.D. studies in the same department.
"Mr. Torres is an exceptional student with excellent skills, as well as kindness and willingness to help the rest of the team members of the PROTON Lab. He is highly deserving of this award and I am confident he will be in the headlines again in the future as a rising star in Computer Engineering," noted Professor Tsiropoulou.
Mr. Torres has tutored graduate and undergraduate students, taught Differential Equations and Linear Algebra, and performed research to apply to his thesis on Computer Systems and Networks. He served as an R&D intern at Sandia National Labs for almost five years where he was involved with system testing for the B61-12 project, software development for training simulations, and project management responsibilities.
"It is my hope to one day be a manager at Sandia National Labs," said Mr. Torres. "I believe that the interpersonal skills of teaching and tutoring, along with the academic skills learned in my graduate classes and research, can allow me to reach that goal."
The Albuquerque IEEE Section Awards Banquet will take place at the Sheraton Albuquerque Uptown (2600 Louisiana Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM 87110) at 5:30 pm.