In 2024, over 100 Pitt faculty who had shared interests in space from across a variety of schools and disciplines joined force, launching Pitt Space. With it, the first official suite of four space-engineering core courses at Pitt was rolled out to seniors and graduate students.

Earlier in 2026, Health Sciences launched the Trivedi Institute for Space and Global Biomedicine, one of the first dedicated institutes focused on applying insights from spaceflight to improve human health on Earth.

What else can Pitt do to prepare students with the background, knowledge and skills needed to come out on top in the second space age?

“Our next step is to start establishing formal academic programs to make Pitt a recognized space university,” said Alan George, department chair, Mickle Endowed Chair, and professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) in the Swanson School of Engineering.

Beginning in Fall of 2026, Pitt students will have the opportunity to enroll in a new academic degree program which will offer a space-engineering minor for undergraduates, and a space-engineering certificate for graduate students.

The program is intentionally broad as to be able to include students across a variety of STEM fields. “I am excited at how accessible we've made this minor,” said Samuel Dickerson, vice chair for education, associate professor, and director of the Computer Engineering Undergraduate Program. 

“We've created courses that should be accessible to most STEM majors at the University, reflective of the interdisciplinary nature of the Space field.”

Ultimately, Pitt Space expects to roll out two additional academic programs; in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, faculty are building upon longstanding strengths in physics, astronomy, and geology to develop new courses and programs in Space Science. Similarly, led by the Trivedi Institute, Health Sciences are building upon their world-renowned strengths to develop new courses and programs in Space Biomedicine.

The inaugural engineering program stands apart from offerings at most schools in several key ways, all designed to help Pitt graduates stand out from the crowd.

“Some engineering schools have aerospace engineering,” George said, “but that’s not what we’re doing. We are focusing strictly upon space engineering.” That translates into a leaner, more focused pathway for students who know they want to work on engineering problems in space, not closer to home.

The second differentiator grew out of a historical quirk. “Most aerospace engineering departments grew out of mechanical engineering,” George said. Pitt’s program, however, is situated in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“Now, and going forward, electrical and computer engineering is a bigger part of space engineering than mechanics.” As the founder and director of SHREC, George and his students have been working on the leading edge of this evolution, building more powerful and affordable computer systems that are resilient to withstand the harsh environment of space. “We are focused upon the way things are going, not the way they have been.”

The new degree offerings should appeal to students in another way: as a minor or a certificate, it won’t hold students back from gaining the full depth and breadth of their chosen discipline. 

“For example, say you get your bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and add a minor in space engineering on top of that. You will have a discipline degree, so you will be a fully qualified electrical engineer,” George said. A student with those qualifications could contribute as an electrical engineer in just about any domain.  

“But on top of that,” he said, “you will be a space engineer,” with specialty skills that few others can match.

R&D World recognized Pitt professors Paul Ohodnicki and Kevin Chen and their collaborators with 2026 R&D 100 Awards for three emerging technologies: Photonic BMS, TeleSENSE, and REFLEX. Each year, R&D World magazine recognizes 100 of the most significant new products, processes, and materials worldwide.

“Receiving three R&D 100 Awards in one year is a tremendous achievement and highlights the innovative, collaborative spirit that thrives at the Swanson School,” said Heng Ban, the Richard K. Mellon Professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and interim associate dean for research and facilities.

Monitoring and managing grid-scale batteries

Co-developed with Ohodnicki’s Pittsburgh-based startup Sensible Photonics, Photonic BMS developed technology that monitors and manages grid-scale batteries, such as those used in energy-intensive AI data centers. These large batteries are essential in maintaining load and frequency regulation. However, a failure in one cell can set off a chain reaction that can spark a fire that engulfs the entire battery system.

“Photonic BMS uses fiber optic technology to provide passive monitoring of temperature and chemistry in real time, allowing facility operators to identify risks before it’s too late,” said Khurram Naeem, research assistant professor at Pitt, who helped develop the technology with Ohodnicki, postdoctoral researcher Yang-Duan Su, and graduate student Shovan Shrestha.

“In addition to the novel sensor hardware, Photonics BMS technology also includes novel algorithms for data fusion, data integration, and battery management system integration,” added Su.

“This award underscores the importance of university collaborations with small businesses, startups, and spin-outs through federal funding like the U.S. Department of Energy's Small Business Innovation Research program,” said Ohodnicki, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the Swanson School, R.K. Mellon Faculty Fellow in Energy, and director of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Energy. “A Phase I DOE SBIR grant to Sensible Photonics provided the catalytic capital required to develop and demonstrate this technology. The support and collaboration are vital to transitioning technologies from university laboratory concepts to impactful ideas in the marketplace.”

Funding support from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation and an SBIR grant from the U. S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity was instrumental in the development and maturation of the technology.

Last year, Ohodnicki received two R&D 100 Awards and has been recognized five years in a row, for a total of eight awards over his career, including this year’s Photonic BMS.

Expanding sensing capabilities

TeleSENSE is a flexible manufacturing platform that uses a patented reel-to-reel laser process to transform standard telecommunications fiber into customized, high-performance distributed sensing fiber at substantially lower cost. The technology uses an agentic AI-enabled robotic manufacturing system to automate optical alignment, laser processing, and quality feedback.

“Our technology reduces labor-intensive fabrication while improving repeatability and scalable production,” said Chen, the Paul E. Lego Professor of electrical and computer engineering and the department’s vice chair for research. “The technology is designed to expand sensing applications across energy systems, infrastructure, telecommunications, robotics, and medical devices, while strengthening U.S. manufacturing capacity and competitiveness in advanced fiber-optic sensing.”

The technology was developed by Chen with collaborator Heng Ban and students Shuda Zhong and Emeka Ikpeazu at Pitt, Corning Incorporated, and Chen’s Pittsburgh-based AiMiLi Inc.

Building smarter, more-resilient clean-energy systems

REFLEX (Real-time Embedded Feedback and Layered Excitation) represents an ambitious new architecture for the hydrogen economy and next-generation power systems. Rather than treating solid oxide fuel cells and electrolyzers as passive stacks monitored from the outside, the technology embeds distributed fiber-optic sensing, electrical pathways, and active thermal-control elements directly into the interconnects at their core.

Developed by Chen in collaboration with Dong Ding, Directorate Fellow and Senior Advisor for the Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and Electrochemistry Program, and colleagues at Idaho National Laboratory, as well as scientist Michael Buric and colleagues at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, REFLEX creates an intelligent energy-system platform capable of mapping internal temperature and strain in real time, detecting and mitigating hot spots, accelerating startup, and supplying the data required for predictive digital twins and closed-loop control.

By turning a traditionally passive component into the equivalent of a high-temperature battery-management system, REFLEX could help make hydrogen production, long-duration energy storage, synthetic-fuel generation, and resilient power systems more efficient, durable, responsive, and commercially viable.

“It’s an honor to receive these two awards,” said Chen. “It’s incredibly rewarding to see the research that began here at Pitt becoming a reality thanks to our collaboration with national laboratory partners.”

About the awards

For more than six decades, R&D World has hosted the annual competition to highlight groundbreaking innovation from around the world. This year’s winners were selected from 149 finalists in six categories. The 2026 honorees will be recognized at an award gala at the Grand Hyatt Scottsdale Resort in Arizona on November 19, 2026.

Through the Manufacturing PA program, local companies partner with universities across Pennsylvania, matching Manufacturing PA’s award of up to $70,000 to fund a project over the course of the school year. Companies work closely with faculty and students to solve persistent problems and develop new technology and products.

This year’s Pitt projects and industry partners are: 

• Brandon Grainger, “Reduced-Inductance Modular Multilevel Converter for High Voltage Direct Current Systems: A Control-Driven Approach to Lower Magnetic Material Utilization and Increase Power Density” (Innomotics).
• Paul Leu, “EMI Shielding and ESD Performance of Polycarbonate Materials for Electronic Applications” (Covestro).
• Paul Ohodnicki, “Nanostructuring and Composition Engineering of Novel Ferrite Based Permanent Magnets” (National Magnetics / CorePower Magnetics).

“This program builds connections between Pitt and local industry to fuel innovation in the region and beyond. At the same time, it provides an amazing opportunity to our students, preparing the industry leaders of tomorrow,” said Heng Ban, Richard K. Mellon Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Interim Associate Dean for Research and Facilities. “We’re grateful for Manufacturing PA’s and our partners’ ongoing support of important projects like these.”

This year’s annual industry meeting will follow the jointly organized Power Sources Manufacturers Association (PSMA) / AMPED “Power Magnetics @ High Frequency Satellite Workshop,” an inaugural international workshop held on August 18, 2026, also at the EIC.

“The annual industry meeting provides a unique opportunity for current leaders in power magnetics to engage directly with the future of this industry,” said Paul Ohodnicki, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the Swanson School, RK Mellon Faculty Fellow in Energy, and director of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Energy. “That this meeting is paired with the first joint PSMA / AMPED satellite workshop and includes two remarkable keynote speakers represents the important work happening here in Pittsburgh.”

In addition to connecting current AMPED Consortium students with industry partners through student panels and a poster session, the industry meeting will feature two distinguished keynote speakers: Elif Balkas, Chief Technology Officer at Wolfspeed, and Troy Beechner, Mission Leader – Electrification at GE Vernova.

Dr. Balkas brings extensive experience and expertise in research and development of silicon carbide, a wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductor. For over 14 years, she held leadership and research positions at Cree (now Wolfspeed) before becoming the company’s chief technology officer, with a current focus on technology strategy, R&D, and commercialization across materials, devices, mechanisms, and reliability. Headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, Wolfspeed is a global leader in silicon carbide materials and devices, which drive needs for advanced high-frequency, high-power magnetics at the core of the AMPED Consortium mission.

Dr. Beechner is an expert in WBG power electronics systems and has held engineering leadership and research and development roles at companies including the Navy Nuclear Lab, Mainstream Engineering Corporation, and RCT Systems. He currently serves as Mission Leader – Electrification at the GE Vernova Advanced Research Center, focusing on power electronics and energy systems for large scale commercial and military applications.

“We’re honored to have Dr. Balkas and Dr. Beechner share their experience and insight. Their addresses will motivate students and faculty while underscoring the importance of the AMPED Consortium for the critical challenges of electrification and rapidly increasing electrical energy demand moving into the future,” Ohodnicki said.

Celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Consortium, its leadership team has also organized a workshop featuring AMPED student alumni currently working in relevant areas within industry. These student alumni will discuss their current work and how the consortium prepared them for their current industrial careers within industry.

Panelists include:

• Sneha Narasimhan, ABB.
• Joshua Lubin (BS ECE ’23 MS ECE ’24), Innomotics.
• Mark Nations, CorePower Magnetics.
• Kyle Schneider, CorePower Magnetics.

“This workshop represents more than five years since the AMPED Consortium launched, and it’s exciting to welcome these students back to explore the impact that it has had on their careers,” said Brandon Grainger, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and Eaton Faculty Fellow, director of the Electric Power Technologies Lab, and co-director of the Energy GRID Institute and Pitt AMPED. “Essential to these workshops is the emphasis on student presentations and engagement with industry. They build and strengthen the interdisciplinary community required to solve challenges in advanced magnetics to support electrification and the growing demands for electricity.”

The workshop will also include technical sessions that feature presentations from researchers and industry professionals as well as technology demonstrations. It will end with a networking and poster session.

Registration for the August 19 industry meeting is open. Registrants for the August 18 satellite workshop will receive complimentary access. 

View the Annual Industry Meeting agenda.

About the AMPED Consortium

The Advanced Magnetics for Power and Energy Development (AMPED) Consortium is a University of Pittsburgh-led, industry-engaged initiative based at the Swanson School of Engineering’s Center for Energy. AMPED builds on Pittsburgh’s legacy in the electric power industry, including the original headquarters of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, a pioneer of the electric power grid. Today, the Pittsburgh region and Pennsylvania remain pre-eminent in electric power conversion and grid technologies, spanning soft magnetic materials, distribution and power transformer manufacturers, and the utilities and end users that deploy them. Find more information.

Steven Jacobs has been around radios his entire life. His father, Paul Jacobs, designed them and launched three companies that built systems for data communication. Jacobs worked at these companies over many summers and was fascinated by the technology that could send and receive bits of data through the air.

Engineering intrigued Jacobs, but he hesitated to pursue it until a college course and its professor won him over. The experience set Jacobs on a path to devote his career to teaching electrical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering. 

This past May, after three decades in the classroom, Jacobs retired, but he leaves a legacy of engaging and challenging his students, mentoring junior faculty, and occasionally surprising them all with his saxophone.

Signals and Systems

Jacobs grew up in Chicago and moved to a suburb of Rochester, New York, as a teenager after his dad took a job with Harris Corporation, which produced technology like wireless equipment and tactical radios.

After high school, he returned to the Midwest to attend Washington University in St. Louis, where a Signals and Systems course taught by Professor Donald L. Snyder would alter Jacobs’ trajectory.

“Signals and Systems is foundational for students interested in any kind of signal processing, especially communications and control systems,” Jacobs said. “It’s also a famously difficult course.”

Yet Jacobs said that Snyder made the material accessible and inspired in him something more than just an interest in the material: he showed Jacobs the power of good teaching. 

“He was an outstanding instructor, really gifted at grabbing your attention and leading you through difficult material so you understood it,” Jacobs said of Snyder. “That experience had a huge influence on me in terms of being excited about the field and in trying to be an instructor who inspired students the way he did.”

The teaching track

Jacobs would go on to earn his BS and MS in electrical engineering at WashU, and as a master’s student he met his future wife, Julie Fiez, who was studying psychology and neuroscience.

After beginning his PhD studies at Northwestern University, Jacobs returned to WashU to earn his degree, investigating how automated radar systems could recognize different types of aircraft. While the problems he wrestled with fascinated him, Jacobs realized that it was teaching that captivated him the most. 

In 1997, Jacobs and his wife both accepted jobs at Pitt, with Jacobs hired as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Jacobs said that he thrived on teaching and engineering education. He became an assistant professor and in 2016 was promoted to associate professor, the same year that he received the Swanson School Educator of the Year Award.

“Steve is one of the most influential educators that I’ve ever had,” said Samuel Dickerson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and Vice Chair for Education and Director of Computer Engineering Undergraduate Program. “I was one of his students, and he taught the class that I now regularly teach. I modeled much of my teaching style after his and even now still use the notes that he used to teach me digital logic circuits.”

Added Dickerson, “Steve is known as the most rigorous faculty member we have. He is also one of our most beloved and celebrated educators by both faculty and students.”

The power of a well-documented lab

Essential to Jacobs’ teaching philosophy is a belief that students should learn by doing, which starts with well-documented labs. “Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve built labs for courses and written documents to describe what the students should do and learn.” 

While at Northwestern University, where he took as many teaching assistant positions as possible, Jacobs encountered mimeographed handouts that had been passed down year to year and served as the labs for the circuit courses. In what would become a hallmark of Jacobs’ career, he set to work rewriting and updating all the documents for the labs, providing detailed explanations, on his own initiative.

At Pitt, he would do the same for the courses he taught. If labs existed, he’d create new documentation. If there were no labs or too few, he would build them from scratch.

“In the last year and a half, for my digital communications course, which I've taught for years, I developed a new series of demos,” Jacobs said.

He created computer programs that students use to learn about error-correcting codes, the protocols that detect and correct errors that can arise when bits of information are sent wirelessly. Students experiment with the codes, including those used on the Voyager spacecraft to reconstruct digital images sent from outer space. 

“Even if it’s not a lab course, I always like to put things like this into my classes,” Jacobs said. “These activities are opportunities for the students to apply what they've learned because, you know, that's the reason why they're here as engineers.”

“Dr. Jacobs was passionate when it came to teaching analog communications,” said Jacob Jones, who is a second year master's student in electrical and computer engineering. “He would write equation after equation, derivation after derivation on the board that he made seem almost like art. We were in for a treat when he wheeled in equipment that was probably older than all of us just to show off a simple concept. His classes may have been hard, but we always walked away learning something new.”

Jacobs’ belief in engaging his students has extended beyond the classroom. In 2014, he became a faculty advisor for Pitt’s Beta Delta Chapter of Eta Kappa Nu (HKN), the honor society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Participation in Pitt’s chapter had waned. Recognizing the importance of fostering community and support in the program and across universities, Jacobs, with colleague Amro El-Jaroudi, helped rebuild the chapter.

“There were many people who didn’t see value in our chapter and in HKN as an organization,” said Sabrina Helbig, a Pitt PhD student in electrical engineering who held many leadership positions in the honor society. “I could tell that Dr. Jacobs cared. The success of our chapter mattered to him because he saw its potential and because it mattered to us. Having respected, visible, and caring leaders made such a difference.”

Indeed, by 2023–2024, the chapter received an Outstanding Chapter Award, the society’s highest honor.

“Steve has been such a valuable part of our program and has made a lasting impact on his students and colleagues,” said Alan George, department chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and founder of SHREC and Pitt Space. “Through example, generosity, and creativity, he has been an amazing mentor to our newer faculty, especially to our teaching-track professors. I wish him all the best in his retirement.”

The sax

In the morning after the Swanson School spring graduation ceremony, Jacobs woke up and thought, “I don’t have anything I need to do today. How is that?”

What Jacobs did that Sunday morning was work on creating another lead sheet, arranging the parts he and fellow horn players use while performing.

Jacobs began playing the saxophone in fifth grade and played in marching and jazz bands in junior high and high school. While in graduate school, he received a phone call from a fraternity brother whose rock band needed a horn section. Jacobs grabbed his sax and joined. 

After moving to Pittsburgh, he played open mics until 2006, when he joined a rockabilly band that lasted until 2022. In 2019, he also joined a Blues Brothers tribute act, the Fabulous Booze Brothers.

Jacobs has increasingly become interested in arranging original songs. Using open-source software, he creates full charts. “I've made probably 30 charts in the last six months, entire songs – what all the horns have to do in every measure,” he said.   

Whether he is designing and documenting new labs or new songs, Jacobs heads into retirement still inspired by his students and fueled by his fascination with sound, signals, and systems.

Hu, associate professor and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, develops life-saving embedded systems that operate inside or on the body. He creates smarter, more efficient devices that function within constraints such as size, battery life, and heat. 

“When I was growing up, I would watch shows with characters who could perform magic, who had superpowers to make things function remotely, and it fascinated me,” Hu said. “Today, I’m working to create remote technology that can sense changes and act to save lives on its own.”

Hu has helped transform implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICD), a device that monitors the heart and, when necessary, provides an electric shock to maintain a rhythmic heartbeat. He developed an architecture for the ICD that efficiently integrates artificial intelligence, so the sensing technology can learn a patient’s unique patterns and respond accordingly. The technology improves decision making.

Hu is currently collaborating with the UPMC Rehabilitation Institute to develop assistive devices that will improve patient outcomes. “We’re working to advance wheelchair and glasses technology to help people experiencing loss of motion or sight,” Hu said.

“I’m honored to receive this award from IEEE – TCCPS and to be listed among these researchers who are transforming cyber-physical systems and building our community,” Hu added.

“Jingtong’s research is making an impact on the lives of people dealing with significant health challenges,” said Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and SHREC and Pitt Space founder. “He is a tremendous asset to our program and the broader Pitt community, and he is highly deserving of this award.”

Registration for the workshop is now open; the preliminary agenda and workshop updates are available here. Registrants for the Aug. 18 satellite workshop will receive complimentary access to the AMPED annual industry workshop on Wednesday, Aug. 19, also at the EIC.

The Pittsburgh event builds on the reputation and single-track format of PSMA’s annual pre-APEC Power Magnetics at High Frequency Workshop, a fixture of the international power electronics calendar for more than a decade. It marks the first time the workshop will be held in Pittsburgh, a region with deep roots in electric power dating to the founding of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation and a present-day concentration of magnetic materials suppliers, power transformer manufacturers, utilities, and university research programs.

“Pittsburgh is a natural home for this workshop,” said Matt Wilkowski, workshop chair, design consultant at Würth Elektronik, and co-chair of the PSMA Magnetics Committee. “The region’s heritage in electric power is matched today by an unusual concentration of magnetics expertise, from materials suppliers and component manufacturers to the utilities and end users that put the technology to work. Pitt’s research community, through the AMPED Consortium, gives us a partner that can bring all of that together in one room. Bringing the workshop here lets us reach a community that has shaped power magnetics for more than a century and is shaping it again now.”

The Aug. 18 program runs from 8 a.m. to 6:15 p.m. and follows a single-track format. A morning technical session focuses on advanced magnetic materials and their applications, and an afternoon session turns to electromagnetic interference and compatibility (EMI/EMC) – the engineering work that keeps power electronics from interfering with one another or with surrounding equipment. Throughout the day, technology demonstrations and posters from industry and research organizations will be open during breaks, lunch, and a closing networking hour, giving attendees direct access to the engineers and scientists behind the work.

“The satellite workshop format lets PSMA take this conversation directly into the regions where the work is happening,” said John Horzepa, technical director of PSMA. “Our annual pre-APEC workshop has built a strong international following, and the model translates well when we partner with a university and an industry consortium with the depth that Pitt and AMPED bring. The combination of technical presentations, demonstrations, and posters under one roof is what attendees consistently tell us they value most, and Pittsburgh gives us the right audience and the right setting to deliver it.”

Keynote presentations are scheduled by Sam Kernion of Core Power and Andy Lemmon of the University of Alabama. Additional confirmed speakers include Scott Sudhoff of Purdue University, Jake Perez of Vacuumschmelze, Narayanan Rajagopal of GE Vernova, and JC Sun of Bs&T.

“This workshop is exactly what the AMPED Consortium was built to do – connect Pittsburgh’s manufacturers, utilities, and university researchers with the wider power magnetics field,” said Paul Ohodnicki, RK Mellon Faculty Fellow in Energy and director of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Energy. “Partnering with PSMA, and hosting at the Energy Innovation Center, lets us pair a national workshop with our own annual AMPED industry day. Attendees get two full days of technical exchange in a region that is helping decide what the next generation of power magnetics will look like.”

How2Power, a leading online resource for the power electronics industry, is serving as media partner for the workshop.

This challenge of building and racing an autonomous robotic sailboat has intrigued college and high school students for years and led, in 2006, to the creation of the International Robotic Sailing Regatta (SailBot).  

In 2019, two University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering students who’d grown up sailing on the Chesapeake Bay also felt the allure of this challenge and launched Pitt SailBot. Since then, the club has attracted Pitt students of varying majors, backgrounds, and experience with sailing and robotics. What unifies these members is the chance to collaborate, think creatively, use their hands, and build a winning sailbot from scratch.

From nothing to Dan Marina

Although he had little experience with sailboats, Leo Goldberg, president of Pitt SailBot who recently graduated with a degree in computer engineering, joined the club in his first year at Pitt. In high school, he had built a computer and was on a robotics team. “I was intrigued by the challenge of building a robotic sailboat, with all its moving parts and complex problems to solve,” said Goldberg, who grew up in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

Every two years, Pitt’s SailBot builds a new boat from scratch. As Goldberg said, “This past year, from nothing, we just started with the design process. Everything mechanically is done in house. We don't outsource any manufacturing. Anyone, any year, any level, can come in and help build the boat.”

To build a boat, SailBot relies on two teams, the mechanical and the controls. Using 3D modeling software, the mechanical team designs the boat and runs simulations. They pick out all the materials, and they fiberglass, paint, seal, and sand it.

Throughout the process, the team collaborates with Pitt Makerspace in the Benedum Hall basement. For their new boat, the team used a 3D printer to create the shell for the hull.

The controls team, meanwhile, develops the electrical components and code required to program the boat. They design and test circuits, solder components into place, wire the boat, and integrate sensors and microcontrollers. 

The club draws students with little robotics experience to those who have worked on many teams. As Goldberg said, “Whatever their experience, we have space for them.”

He added, “It's a breadth of engineers who make a new boat. You’d expect it to be mechanical and electrical and computer, but our president and our mechanical design lead last year were both bioengineers.”

It’s not all engineers either. The club has had computer science, English, and anthropology majors. Some students have sailed but many haven’t. As Goldberg said, “It gives us a more well-rounded approach.”

Throughout the process, upper-level students provide valuable guidance to newer members of Sailbot. In addition to providing tutorials on everything from soldering to SolidWorks software, the students share insight into classes, internships, and co-ops.  

The result of the collaborative, creative, and collective effort of around 25 members is an autonomous sailboat with sensors atop the mast and an ability to adjust its sail and rudder. Last year, the team christened its newest boat. In a nod to Pitt alumnus and legendary Miami Dolphins quarterback, they named it Dan Marina.

Regattas

Once a year, teams from universities and high schools from across the U.S. and Canada, and from as far away as Brazil and Germany, meet to test their sailbots. The regatta is held at the previous winning team’s institution. This June, Cornell University will host the regatta on Cayuga Lake, in Ithaca, New York.

Pitt’s team rents an Airbnb and carpools. When they arrive, the mechanical and controls teams set to work putting their boat back together, testing their systems, and preparing for each event.

Regattas involve four required and three optional challenges. In addition to a fleet race, the boats must navigate buoys, they must enter a 40-meter by 40-meter square and stay in the box for five minutes before exiting, and they must race one nautical mile in a test of endurance. Optional events include taking on a payload and avoiding a collision with an unexpected boat. 

“Even though it’s a competition, it’s a special, friendly environment,” Goldberg said. “You’re putting electronics in the water, so inherently there’s going to be a struggle. Nobody's afraid to say, ‘Hey, I just fried my Raspberry Pi. Can I borrow one of yours?’ It's cool to see how people are willing to work together. There’s a lot of quick thinking involved.”

Last year, when the Dan Marina’s keel didn’t function properly, the team had to race to a nearby hardware store and improvise. In the end, they placed third.

“There are so many factors that can get in your way when designing the boat,” Goldberg said. “Our number one issue is that we’re in Pittsburgh, so it's not as easy to test the boat.” Rivers aren’t ideal.

The challenge of building and troubleshooting a complex system, though, has rippled far beyond Pitt SailBot’s office. As Goldberg said, “It helped me on my co-op rotation. I could take on a long-form project, comfortable that I would be working on it for a while. It also helped me land a full-time job.” In July, Goldberg will begin working at Near Earth Autonomy, a Pittsburgh-based company advancing autonomous flight.

Pitt Sailbot, which started racing in 2022, has placed third in its first four regattas. This year, the team has taken what it has learned from the previous races to fine tune their boat. They’ve driven north, to Lake Arthur, and endured cold and rain to test the Dan Marina. They hope that the spirit of collaborative, creative, and hands-on problem solving that defines their club can propel them to victory.

“If we can win and bring the regatta to Pittsburgh, I’m not sure where we’d race,” Goldberg said. “But that would be another good problem to solve.”

“The Design Expo represents the kind of sustained partnership that defines engineering at Pitt,” said Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor in Industrial Engineering. “Our industry partners bring real challenges into the classroom and work alongside our students and faculty throughout the semester, and the projects on display this year are the result of that ongoing collaboration. Bridging the work of our students with the priorities of our partners creates a collective impact that extends well beyond a single course, and we are grateful to the companies, agencies, and alumni who continue to invest in our students this way.”

An integral aspect of the Design Expo is mentoring and collaboration across faculty and disciplines. Pitt alumni, faculty, and industry volunteers judged the event, engaging with the teams and sharing ideas and experience. Faculty and other Pitt schools, as well as government agencies, nonprofits, and industry partners, sponsored teams and provided valuable insight while students developed their projects.

Visit Flickr for the Expo Photo Album.

Best Overall Project 
E-Z CVC: Improving Ultrasound-Guided Central Line Placement 
Tristyn Auth, Alexis DiNapoli, Colin Henchy, Tyler Johnston, Abrahim Kashkoush, Phillip Lavrenyuk, and Trin Murphy

Above from left: Abrahim Kashkoush, Tyler Johnston, Alexis DiNapoli, Phillip Lavrenyuk

People’s Choice Award
Landslide
Drew Cembrinski, Miles Fancher, Ella Lowry, Matthew Macey, and Caroline Vidic
 

DEPARTMENT AWARDS
Bioengineering (Advisor: Mark Gartner)
1st Place E-Z CVC: Improving Ultrasound-Guided Central Line Placement
Tristyn Auth, Alexis DiNapoli, Colin Henchy, Tyler Johnston, Abrahim Kashkoush, Phillip Lavrenyuk, and Trin Murphy

2nd Place Streamlining Transabdominal Ultrasound-Guided Oocyte Extraction Process
Sydney Barber, Ashlyn Odenwald, Ishan Patel, Arshia Shams, Colby Shores, and Lyric Zimmermann

3rd Place (tie) Attachable Motorized Walker Tray Adapted for Independent Kitchen Use
Harrison Burd, Meredith Geno, Gavin Paulhamus, Norah Stivala, Rebecca Swartz, and Danielle Zambetti

3rd Place (tie) Retractable Electrocardiogram Lead Organizer for Streamlining Patient Care
Akshay Balaji, Mya Fulton, Grace Hercik, John Lorence, Soham Mandal, Audrey Transue, and Ella Wolok

Civil and Environmental Engineering (Advisor: Ogul Doygun)
1st Place Culvert Flood Resilience
Liam Byrne, Hannah Charlton, Alexandra Romanchik, and Benamin Ruggles

2nd Place AV Shuttle
Zachary Bobro, Adam Holden, Noah Im, Andrew Jeannot, and Clark Mccord

3rd Place Raw Water Intake
Vaughn Cilea, Campbell Jefferson, Amelia Kuzneski, Cassidy Laffey, Trinity Munsisoumang, and Sean Snyder

Electrical and Computer Engineering (Advisors: Mohamed Bayoumy, Gavin Zhou, and YuAnn Li)
1st Place Haptic Hazard Belt
Ravyn Brown, Rory Cooke, and Aiden Shaffer

2nd Place Pill Buddy
Camila Iglesias, Rachel Krauss, Alexi Mascara, and Connor Paladino

3rd Place Neuromuscular Motion Control Assessment and Rehabilitation (NEMO)
Aidan Beecher, Josh Brositz, Mal Mostafa, and Sebastian Shaffer

Industrial Engineering (Advisor: Scott Streiner)
1st Place (tie) FedEx Intelligent Trailer Path Generation
Anisha Aggarwal, Henry Hoeg, Jason Peters, Pat Simmons, and Siyi Zeng

1st Place (tie) Capacity and Lean Manufacturing Assessment for New Aerospace Program Demand
Logan Biu, Camille Kakoyan, Grant Paladino, Alyssa Stauffer, and Samuel Walsh-Cooke

2nd Place UPMC Oncology Patient Capacity Analysis
Andrea Adamski, Camren Corbett, Ava Hartman, Alexis Hong, and Yuankai Zhang

3rd Place (tie) Assembly Consolidation and Flexible Labor Plan
Braelyn Brozik, Lauren Coffman, Alex Czerkawski, Bryan Landsberg, and Eliza Marcy

3rd Place (tie) Production Area Footprint Optimization
Liam Coughlin, Bradley Gavigan, Blu Trush, Junshan Xie, and Tiffany Zheng

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science (Advisor: David Schmidt)
1st Place Replicate Air Flow through Air-Cooled Machines using Wind Tunnels
Luke Braverman, Joshua Hamilton, Jeffery Kogan, Kyleigh Motley, and Jonathan Zhang

2nd Place Remote Hydraulic Tension Assembly - B
Alex Fritch, Joshua Marco, Rachel Sollie, and Evan Turner

3rd Place Laundry Folding Robot - B
Liam Gray, Greg Kenning, Thomas Kisiel, Andrew Leech, Michael Lukasik, Bri Schroll Wood, Ben Slaw, and Aidan Sullivan

Product Realization (Advisor: Eric Winter)
1st Place (tie) Automated Tool Management
Purita Ameyaw, Leilani Cruz, Samiya Henry, and R.J. Zik

1st Place (tie) Canales Cleaning Device
Charlie Greco, Ethan Hancock, Keshav Mukherjee, and Sean Savidge

1st Place (tie) Stand-Alone Pet Health Monitor
Emme Blanchard, Emma Geis, and Isaiah Jefferson

1st Place (tie) Technology-Enabled Cane
Ore Adeleye, Kylie Gardner, Yalin Liu, and Daniel McPeek

This year, however, PARC and the Swanson School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering had a unique opportunity neither Shaffer nor Wendt could have anticipated when they joined the club. NASA chose Pitt as one of eight academic institutions to track the Orion space capsule during the Artemis II mission. PARC members designed and assembled a system on the roof of Benedum Hall to track a manned craft hurtling through space.

“This has been an amazing opportunity to work with a team to design and build a system that incorporates AI and the analog technology that attracted us to the club,” said Shaffer, president of PARC and a fifth-year computer engineering student.

The first social media

More than a century ago, amateur radio at Pitt launched in 1915, when the University received experimental license 8YJ from the Department of Commerce. Widespread use of AM radio didn’t exist then. In fact, it was Westinghouse, in Pittsburgh, that launched the first commercially licensed AM radio in 1920.

Since its inception, the club has provided Pitt faculty and students the opportunity to work with new technology and connect with people from around the world.

Located on the twelfth floor of Benedum Hall, the PARC office - nicknamed “The Shack” - is chock full of ham radios and electronics. The walls are filled with postcards and awards from competitions where students make the most points of contact with other operators.

“Ham radio is the first social media,” said Juan Manfredi, professor of mathematics and faculty sponsor for the club.

Connecting and creating

“I was always the kid who would run around fixing teachers’ computers,” Shaffer said. In fact, during Covid, his high school hired him to help establish a virtual network and support teachers during remote learning.

At Pitt, Shaffer joined Pitt Digital, where a colleague told him about PARC. Although he had no experience with amateur radio, he attended a meeting and, as he said, “I was fascinated with it. I started studying for my technician’s license.”

Wendt, a fourth-year electrical engineering student, has always liked to fix things too. Growing up, he would take apart and put back together any device he could get his hands on. As a Boy Scout, he learned about ham radio and received his technician class license.

By the time he came to Pitt, Wendt’s interest in radios had waned, but then he attended a PARC meeting. “There were all these radios and electronics, and we just started working on them. I fell back in love with it.”

Today, he’s studying to get his general class license.

Finding community around the world 

Manfredi’s interest in electrical engineering started in Spain, where he grew up. To make ends meet, his father fixed electronics in the evening, and, as Manfredi recalled, “I got to see all these devices and thought, ‘I want to work with that.’”

Although he would study mathematics, Manfredi never lost interest in electronics and radios, and after coming to America for graduate school at Washington University, he visited the radio club. “I saw the antennas and thought, ‘I’m going there.’”

Manfredi came to Pitt in 1989, and in 2010, after the unexpected passing of Glenn Alec Stewart, Dean of the Honors College, he stepped into the role of PARC faculty sponsor. Manfredi had never forgotten the community he found at that first radio club.

Connecting with Orion

PARC meets weekly and members share updates, discuss competitions, and work on projects. Each year, members volunteer with the Pittsburgh Marathon. “We bring hand-held radios and stand with the EMS services in case cell service goes down during an emergency,” Shaffer said.

This year, through the collaboration with NASA, they turned their attention to space.

“NASA is interested in seeing if faculty and students can use amateur equipment to track Orion,” said Samuel Dickerson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and Vice Chair for Education and Director of Computer Engineering Undergraduate Program. “We were fortunate that they selected Pitt.”

PARC members and Pitt faculty designed the system and with the support of Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and SHREC and Pitt Space founder, acquired needed equipment.

“For the past few months, we’ve been building the antenna, the dish, and the helical feed. We’ve been getting all the software to work with software-defined radios,” said Wendt. “It's given us a chance to work with new equipment.”

The team has used AI to develop a tool to track Orion in relationship to Pitt and another to interpret any data they receive.  

“The signal could be so low we won’t know if we’ve even received anything,” Shaffer said.

After the mission launched, PARC members and Pitt faculty would meet on the roof of Benedum Hall, sometimes in the early morning hours of 4:00 a.m. They would work to locate Orion and position the dish and antennas to receive a signal.

Beyond connections

“When you have a ham radio and a license, wherever you go in the world, you have friends,” Manfredi said.

When PARC members hear from people visiting Pittsburgh, they reach out. They’ve provided advice about places to stay and sights to see. Sometimes they share a meal.

“We never talk about politics. We never talk about religion. We talk about radios instead,” said Manfredi. “We talk about food.”

The club now has something else to talk about: the remarkable work Pitt students did to connect with Orion during its historic mission.

While Manfredi’s fascination with ham radios first led him to advise the club, it’s the students who keep him there. “I like to be surprised by the students,” he said. “And they are always doing something new and exciting.”

“The GRFP is a highly competitive award, and we are extremely proud of our winners and honorable mentions this year,” said Michele V. Manuel, U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering at Pitt. “This funding will provide critical financial support for these students to expand their research that benefits all of us.”

The NSF also recognized two members of the Swanson School community with honorable mentions: Jack Hall, a graduate student in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Sead Nikšić (BS ECE ’23). Four alumni, Dalia Fantini (BS BIOE '23), Kelly Larson (BS IE ‘18), Frederick Laudati (BS ECE '25), and Paul Walter (BE MEMS ’20) also received fellowships this year. 

This year’s Swanson School awardees are:

Casey Cargill

Cargill is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Bioengineering, where she specializes in the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine (TERM) track. Advised by Jonathan Vande Geest in the Soft Tissue Biomechanics Laboratory, Cargill’s research focuses on addressing vision loss caused by conditions such as age-related macular degeneration.

Cargill collaborates with vision scientists and clinicians to develop patient-specific, 3D bioengineered models of the eye’s vascular system. By replicating the complex blood vessel networks and fluid dynamics within the eye, her work seeks to better understand how vascular disruptions contribute to blindness and to support the development of more personalized therapeutic strategies. Cargill is also a member of the Graduate Women in Engineering Network, the Black Graduate Student Alliance, and the Graduate Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) chapter. 

“My Jamaican heritage instilled in me, ‘Labor for learning before you grow old; for learning is better than silver or gold. Silver and gold will vanish away, but a good education will never decay.’ Cargill said. This fellowship supports my research as well as my personal values, allowing me to keep investing in academic growth and using it to benefit others.”

Sophia Freemyer

Freemyer is a senior undergraduate student in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering pursuing a minor in geology and a certificate in public communication of science and technology through the Frederick Honors College. Freemyer began research in Sarah Haig’s INHALE Lab, followed by a summer internship at Oak Ridge National Laboratory through the Department of Energy’s Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship program, where she worked on a materials science crystallization project. Freemyer later served as an ORISE Fellow at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). 

“My research interests are centered around critical mineral extraction from unconventional sources, specifically waste streams such as acid mine drainage, coal refuse, and produced water from oil production.” Freemyer said. “This area of research not only strengthens our domestic supply of these important materials but also utilizes streams that would end up as pollution in our environment.”

Freemyer is also an active member of the Pitt Band, where she served as a squad leader during her sophomore and junior years and as piccolo section leader her senior year. She also held leadership roles within the Varsity Marching Band Council and Kappa Kappa Psi, the national honorary band fraternity, and is a member of the Society of Women Engineers and Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society. After graduation, Freemyer’s NSF fellowship will fund her PhD studies at Columbia University's Earth and Environmental Engineering Department in the lab of Ngai Yin Yip. 

“I am beyond excited to win this award.” Freemyer said. “Having my application accepted is extremely validating for my future goals of becoming a researcher, with expert reviewers agreeing that I have enough promise as a future scientist to fund my graduate studies.”

Aragya Goyal

Goyal is a senior undergraduate student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, focusing on autonomous systems. His research centers on field robotics, with a particular interest in underwater and space exploration technologies. Since his freshman year, Goyal has collaborated with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University under the guidance of Howie Choset and David Wettergreen, contributing to projects such as the underwater snake robot “HUMRS” and the “Zoë 2” rover, which investigates passive steering mechanisms for planetary exploration. Looking ahead, he is interested in advancing multi-robot collaboration in complex field environments, including coordinated swarms of autonomous underwater vehicles.

Goyal has also been actively involved in the Robotics and Automation Society, where he has developed both technical and professional skills while contributing to a strong engineering community. Goyal applied for the NSF GRFP with the goal of strengthening his research proposal on multi-robot coordination, initially viewing the process as a learning opportunity. With guidance from mentor Geordan Gutow and strong recommendations from his research advisors, however, he successfully refined his application and was awarded the fellowship. This award removes a significant financial barrier to pursuing graduate studies, enabling him to focus fully on advancing robotics research.

“I feel extremely excited and grateful to have been granted this opportunity. My parents and I moved to the United States in 2013 and became citizens in 2021. It was likely one of the best opportunities for my family and had allowed me to apply for this fellowship and receive it.” Goyal said. “Not only that, but my decision to come to Pitt has been equally valuable, and I am glad I made that decision as it provided me with a hub and network of highly technical people who are always ready to help and teach you. The Pitt ECE faculty is excellent, and my peers are brilliant, and it is because of the community surrounding me that I was able to win this award.”

Ritesh Shrivastav

Shrivastav is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Bioengineering, on the neural engineering track under the mentorship of Helen Schwerdt. In the Schwerdt lab, his work centers on developing minimally invasive tools to measure dopamine in the human brain with high spatial and temporal resolution.

Shrivastav's research aims to elucidate how pathological dopamine fluctuations in the brain manifest as motor dysfunction in Parkinson’s patients. According to Shrivastav, this is essential foundational science for the future development of adaptive treatment technologies that could be personalized to each patient’s unique brain state. 

“Post-graduation, I would love to continue to build upon my research by developing treatments for Parkinson’s disease such as using dopamine as a biomarker for adaptive deep brain stimulation." Shrivastav said. "In the long term, I hope to translate this work into a startup focused on bringing these technologies from the lab to the clinic. This fellowship would provide critical support for the validation research that I will conduct during my PhD, laying a foundation for future commercialization and real-world impact.”

Vanshika Singh

Vanshika Singh is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Bioengineering pursuing the neural engineering track. They conduct their research in the B.I.O.N.I.C. Lab under the mentorship of Takashi (TK) Kozai. 

Singh’s research explores how non-neuronal cells in the brain, specifically microglia, contribute to inflammation and metabolic stress across neurological disease states. Their recent work has focused on how microglial calcium dynamics change in response to electrode-induced injury, and I’m interested in extending this work to explore how these signaling changes manifest in the context of Alzheimer’s disease. Singh is also interested in investigating ultrasound as a neuromodulatory tool, particularly its mechanistic targets and how it may influence microglial activity and calcium signaling.

Beyond the lab, Singh is actively engaged in mentorship and scholarly service, spending the past two summers mentoring high school students through the Hillman Academy and recently as a reviewer for Ingenium, an undergraduate research journal at the Swanson School of Engineering. Singh also presented their research on microglial responses to electrode insertion injury at the Society for Neuroscience Conference 2025.

“It is an incredible honor to be an NSF GRFP Fellow.” Singh said. “The three years of support will give me the freedom to pursue curiosity-driven research and take intellectual risks that might otherwise be difficult. Beyond funding, this fellowship marks a meaningful milestone in my path toward a career in academic research."

“Since the first UPISC Workshop in 2022, collective energy around advanced sensing and related digital technologies across our region continues to build,” said Paul Ohodnicki, RK Mellon Faculty Fellow in Energy, director of Pitt’s Center for Energy, and associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science. “In fact, in response to the 2024 Workshop co‑organized with the National Academy of Engineering, the INSITES Consortium was established. The consortium brings together industry and government stakeholders to transform monitoring technology and to prepare the next generation of innovators.”

This year’s workshop will open with high‑profile speakers and two plenary panels. Leaders from NETL, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, and the City of Pittsburgh will discuss “Emerging Priorities and Initiatives.” There will also be a session on national imperatives at the intersection of quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, the electric power grid, and the nexus between energy and water. The afternoon will conclude with a facilitated discussion about how the infrastructure sensing community can advance national objectives.

The second day will explore applied innovation and industry partnerships. Topics include:

• Condition-based monitoring across infrastructure segments.
• Distributed fiber optics and infrastructure, featuring experts from GoogleX, LUNA, Lightera, and the Fiber Optic Sensing Association.
• Optical neural networks and distributed sensing for on‑chip photonics as well as sensing and instrumentation for nuclear applications.
• Infrastructure connectivity and cross‑sector sensing needs, with participants from Duquesne Light Company, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Water Collaboratory.

In addition to panels and keynote speakers, attendees will network, tour the Energy Innovation Center, and attend a technical poster session during the social hour.

Central to the UPISC Workshop and the INSITES Consortium are four goals:

• Developing novel sensor technologies.
• Advancing regional workforce development to meet near‑term research-and-development and future deployment needs.
• Strengthening industry and stakeholder engagement for technology transfer.
• Forming teams capable of responding to agency and industry calls.

“Improving reliability and efficiency of energy infrastructure is one core mission at NETL. Through the UPISC Workshop, we’ve built a productive space for experts across sectors to share insights and spark new collaborations,” said Ruishu Wright, Research Physical Scientist and Technical Portfolio Lead at NETL who also serves as co-host of the UPISC Workshop.

“By linking advances in infrastructure sensing with AI, digital twins, and workforce development, we can accelerate reliability, safety, and efficiency across the grid, transportation, and water systems in our region and beyond,” Ohodnicki said. “Pittsburgh, with its industrial history, its universities, and its growing innovation ecosystem, is primed to serve as a national leader in how we create and deploy new sensing technology. We’re excited to fuel collaboration and innovation at the UPISC 2026 Workshop.”  

Event details:

• Dates: June 2 – 3, 2026
• Location: Energy Innovation Center, 1435 Bedford Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15219

Learn more and register to attend the 2026 Workshop.

On March 28, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) awarded Dickerson with its 2026 North Central Section Outstanding Teacher Award, which recognizes exceptional teachers who help transform how engineering is taught.

Dickerson’s journey to the classroom began with an email from his mentor and former professor, Marlin Mickle. The message simply read: “Can you come to my office?”

Dickerson had already earned his PhD in computer engineering from the Swanson School in 2012 and was working at a Pittsburgh startup. “I did make my way to Dr. Mickle’s office,” Dickerson said. “He handed me a binder of his handwritten notes for his course Computer Networks. He said that I was the person to teach it.”

Although Dickerson continued to work at the startup, he began teaching as an adjunct and loved it. Today, he is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Vice Chair for Education and Director of Computer Engineering Undergraduate Program. He advises approximately 300 computer engineering students each year and has helped transform the department’s curriculum.

Dickerson is guided by his belief in individualized, hands-on learning. “I always spend one-on-one time with every student, no matter how large the class is,” Dickerson said. “I teach classes where students are working with their hands, on circuits or robots, and we’ll work together to solve problems.”

Dickerson credits Mickle and other mentors like Steven Jacobs, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Renee Clark, associate professor of industrial engineering, with helping him become the educator he is today.

“Steve’s level of organization and the rigor and challenge he introduces into the classroom have been so influential,” Dickerson said. “And before meeting Renee, I knew very little about evidence-based teaching practices. She not only introduced them to me but showed me how to use them in the classroom. She has invested a lot of time with me.”

In 2024, Clark and Dickerson collaborated on a $349,551 NSF project to define ethical engineering and develop techniques and tools to effectively teach judgement and ethics to undergraduate engineers. The project reflects one of the many ways Dickerson seeks to expand the possibilities of an engineering education.

“Sam is a terrific educator and advisor who always puts our students first,” said Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and SHREC founder. “He played a vital role when our department reenvisioned its curriculum, and he continues to create new, hands-on opportunities for our students to develop and apply their skills, preparing them for their next steps after graduation.”

“Professors really care about their teaching, about making a difference in their students’ lives. Recognition like this ASEE award is so important,” Dickerson said. “I’m honored to receive it.”

In the overall rankings, the Swanson School moved up one spot to #42 among all engineering programs and held steady at #24 among public universities and #21 among members of the American Association of Universities. The most notable gain was in electrical engineering, which jumped nine places to #52 overall and rose from #36 to #28 among publics. Computer engineering also improved significantly, climbing four spots to #46 (#24 among publics). Industrial engineering held its position at #24 overall while improving to #16 among publics and #13 among AAU institutions.

“Our continued upward movement reflects the sustained commitment of our faculty, students, and staff,” said Michele V. Manuel, U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering. “As we approach our 180th year of engineering at Pitt, ranking among the top 25 public engineering schools speaks to our deep history and an exciting future.”

The rankings reflect a period of sustained growth for the Swanson School. Research expenditures reached a record $63.5 million, and researchers earned 41 patents - 38% of all patents issued to the University of Pittsburgh that year. The school also welcomed its largest first-year class, enrolling approximately 780 students.

Additional highlights include biomedical engineering at #29 overall (#13 publics), mechanical engineering at #54 (#30 publics), and materials engineering at #50 (#31 publics).

Learn more about graduate and professional studies at the Swanson School.

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Photo: Third-year ECE PhD graduate student researcher Sabrina Helbig in the Swanson School Makerspace. (Tom Altany)

“I’ve collected lots of data about blood flow and the brain’s neuronal activity,” Iordanova said. “I eventually included data on glucose, lactate, creatine, and other brain metabolites in relation to aging, and then one morning, I found myself with so much information that I really had no clue what was going on. Simple linear models no longer worked, and dimensionality reduction approaches were not as useful as I hoped."

For Iordanova, assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, that influx of data set the stage for an interdisciplinary collaboration with Liang Zhan, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, to build integrative neuro-metabolic models capable of making predictions about brain health. Now, the duo is co-investigating a five-year, $3.3M R01 NIH project, “Multiscale Models of Age-Specific Neurometabolic Coupling," to create a whole-brain theory on how the brain's metabolic processes affect cognition in aging. 

Looking beyond blood flow

While most research has typically focused on amyloid plaques and hemodynamics as early warning signs of Alzheimer's Disease (AD), Iordanova and Zhan are focused on the metabolic changes that happen in the brain’s networks by looking at the impact of specific metabolites like glucose, lactate, and creatine on brain activity.

“The brain requires large amounts of glucose and oxygen to function as billions of interconnected cells work together,” Iordanova said. “But old age brings decline in metabolic efficiency, and our brain cells have to maintain networks by adapting their metabolic processing.” 

When that metabolic adaptation fails, it can lead to cognitive decline and dementia, and some individuals may be especially vulnerable due to genetics, lifestyle, or other factors. Ultimately, the goal of this work is to support the development of metabolic screening and therapies for at-risk individuals years before energy metabolism begins to affect cognition. First, however, the team must use advanced modeling strategies to make sense of the vast amount of metabolic and neural brain data they will collect.

A multi-scale, multi-species model

This approach will span three distinct levels of biological scale. At the smallest level, they will use two-photon microscopy to quantify the relationship between red blood cell velocity, neural activity, and lactate transients in late-onset AD mouse models. Next, wide-field imaging will capture how mitochondrial activity ripples across cortical networks in mice. At the largest scale, the team will explore the impact of metabolism on functional whole-brain connectivity by integrating data from brain MRI in both animal models and human cohorts. 

“We want to connect what we know in mice on a cellular level to what we know from non-invasive imaging in humans,” Iordanova said. “And to build a comprehensive brain network theory, we need a lot of robust information at different scales.”

Once the data is collected at each step, Zhan will use his expertise in brain network modeling and graph theory to build the computational architecture that ties these complicated layers of brain data together. 

“The structures of mouse and human brains differ, and of course, we know that the brain is highly complex,” Zhan said. “Because many brain regions function together, diseases such as Alzheimer’s affect not just a single region but the entire brain network, which we aim to characterize and understand.”

Toward better treatments through interdisciplinary collaboration 

The ultimate goal of the project is to bridge the long-standing gap between discoveries in the laboratory and treatments that benefit patients. Although researchers have plenty of AD data from mouse models, translating those insights to humans remains a challenge. By studying how metabolic factors interact with genetics, sex-differences and aging, the team hopes to identify biological signals that could eventually guide more personalized approaches to preventing cognitive decline.

“I’m obsessed with figuring out how to translate what we learn in mouse models of Alzheimer’s into something meaningful for humans, because translation is not trivial,” Iordanova said. “A frequent quip on the translation from mouse to human is that scientists have cured Alzheimer’s in mice many times, but patients and families are still living through the disease every day. If we can improve on the cross-species approach to identify common metabolic vulnerabilities combined with certain genetic risk factors, then perhaps we could tailor interventions at the right time to the people who would benefit most.”

Although they now collaborate closely, Iordanova and Zhan were not previously familiar with each other’s work or the potential of their combined expertise until a chance meeting at a radiology event just a few years ago. While the research itself is promising, the team also hopes their partnership will encourage more engineers and scientists from different fields to pursue collaborative projects together. 

“Engineers and scientists from different fields often speak very different technical languages, and it’s rare to see those perspectives truly come together,” Iordanova said. “There’s real value when you are actually in the room with someone from another field and working to bridge that gap, and I think that’s what’s really valuable about this collaboration.”

The interdisciplinary team also includes co-investigators Alberto Vazquez, Tao Jin and Alex Poplawsky from the School of Medicine and Nicholas Fitz and Rebecca Deek from the School of Public Health at University of Pittsburgh. This project is supported by the National Institute on Aging (R01AG092661) for the period January 2026 through December 2030.

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If the sabbatical happens to be abroad, the complexity only increases. How will it be funded? Is it realistic to uproot a family for months, or an entire year? What about language barriers?

Suddenly, an amazing opportunity of taking a semester or an entire year to recharge, uncover new research, rekindle collaborations, conduct new experiments, write, and learn can feel like a burden. 

Yet for those who do take a sabbatical, the experience is deeply rewarding if not life changing. While overseas sabbaticals are complicated, they offer a unique opportunity to forge lasting relationships, engage across cultures, and reimagine one’s research and teaching.

“You might say I’m resistant to change.” 

Harvey Borovetz, Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering, worked at Pitt for 38 years before he took a sabbatical. But when he did, it created connections that continue to flourish to this day and provide unique opportunities for students at Pitt and at Braude College of Engineering in Karmiel, Israel.

In November 2013, after stepping down as department chair, Borovetz and his wife traveled to Israel and visited the college. The following semester, he took a four-month sabbatical and lived in Karmiel, where he taught a course and developed professional relationships that have endured through a global pandemic and the Israel-Hamas War.

For five years after that first visit, Borovetz returned each year to teach. Since Covid and the war, he’s continued annually teaching remotely. Students in the Swanson School have visited Braude for a summer research experience, and their students have come to Pitt, likewise for a research experience. The exchanges are rooted in the trust and familiarity built during his sabbatical.

“For me, the people and relationships matter most,” said Borovetz. “The sabbatical didn’t advance my research per se, but I’ve grown so much as a teacher. Most of my students in Israel speak English as their second language. They’ve served in the military before attending college, and they come to class with a different set of experiences than students I teach at Pitt.

“I’ve had the opportunity to live like a citizen there,” he added. “I’ve been invited into the homes of families whose students I teach and faculty colleagues who I’ve met and have become good friends with over the years. And the relationship between Pitt and Braude continues today because of these strong connections.”

“It’s easy not to do this,” Borovetz said, “but it’s an amazing experience.”

“It jump-started my work”

Like Borovetz, Bopaya Bidanda, Ernest Roth Professor of Industrial Engineering, had never taken a sabbatical. Between chairing the department, teaching, researching, and traveling abroad to forge transdisciplinary collaborations, the time never seemed right.

In the early 2020s, Bidanda was researching “frugal engineering,” an approach rooted in innovation under constrained resources, and wanted to see it in action. For Bidanda, that meant returning to his old home.

In 2023, he applied for and received a Fulbright-Nehru Award to conduct research and promote industrial engineering excellence in Mumbai, India.

“I spent four months there building networks,” said Bidanda. “I organized a PhD colloquium with about 85 students and faculty from across India and assembled a group of scholars from around the world to help new faculty and PhD students develop global research networks.”

“Working in India involves navigating cultural dynamics alongside research. There are incredibly innovative aspects as well as bureaucratic ones,” he added. “Even though I grew up in India, returning to work there after many years was an adjustment. I felt like I was rediscovering an entirely new India.”

This impact of the sabbatical continues to ripple outward, for faculty and students in India, and for Bidanda. The colloquium was so successful that the Fulbright Commission of Sri Lanka has invited him to conduct a similar program in 2026, extending the work he started while in Mumbai.

“There isn’t just one ‘right’ way.”

When Lance Davidson, William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Bioengineering, began studying epithelial tissues in frogs, he needed new computational models. A colleague overseas, in the Dutch town of Leiden, had developed a model for plant epithelia, and an opportunity to collaborate set in motion a long-overdue sabbatical.

With funding from the Dutch Research Council, Davidson spent January through May 2019 at Leiden University, the oldest surviving university in the Netherlands, embedding himself in a lab of computational biologists.

“I stayed in a house across a canal from one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world,” Davidson said. “I biked everywhere, brought my bike on trains, and connected with colleagues across Europe.”

Davidson participated in PhD committees, exams, and mentoring, gaining a unique window into science and education in the Netherlands. “The Dutch approach differs from ours, but the quality is outstanding,” he said. “It reinforced the idea that there isn’t just one ‘right’ way to train students or conduct research.”

The experience was not without challenges. Davidson’s wife couldn’t join him, and he still ran his lab at Pitt, still advised his PhD students. “It was difficult, and the time difference made for many late nights.”

Yet the experience fueled new research and resulted in a publication with his Dutch collaborator. Today, Davidson is beginning to plan his next sabbatical.

“It was great to have them here.”

From August to December 2025, Nathan Youngblood, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, lived in Heidelberg, Germany, with his wife and two sons. At Heidelberg University, he collaborated with renowned physicist Wolfram Pernice and researchers from across Europe to advance work in optical computing, an emerging field that uses light to process information faster and more efficiently.

“Advancing this technology requires collaboration across disciplines,” Youngblood said. “Many of my European collaborators work in physics, electronics, or materials science. Being able to connect in person, visit their labs, and meet their collaborators was invaluable.”

Bringing his family overseas was logistically challenging, but meaningful. “It was great to have them here,” he said. His sons, ages four and six, learned some German, and the family traveled throughout Europe.

At the same time, fully disconnecting proved difficult. Youngblood continued to direct his Youngblood Photonics Lab at Pitt and advise his large research group. “I wish I had unplugged a bit more,” he said. “Maintaining contact from overseas took up a lot of time.”

“The plan was to start writing a book.”

Aleksandar Stevanovic, associate professor of civil engineering, taught for 18 years before he took a sabbatical. “I never felt it was the right time,” he said. “I was always too busy.”

Last year, Stevanovic, a traffic engineer who researches ways to improve traffic in urban environments, developed a plan to visit colleagues and lay the groundwork for writing a book. His sabbatical was set. But then he received two awards: a Fulbright to spend ten months at the University of Montenegro and a visiting professor scholarship to visit the Technical University of Munich, in Germany.

Instead of planning a book, Stevanovic flew to Podgorica, Montenegro, a city with about 50 traffic signals total, where he has collaborated with faculty and city officials, delivered lectures, and helped the university develop its traffic engineering studies. He’s also been analyzing the city’s infrastructure and traffic to help improve it. 

In Germany, he has collaborated with researchers and his own PhD students to explore the future of transportation in a vastly different context.

While much busier than he’d anticipated, the experience has been hugely illuminating. “I’m bringing a new perspective to these places,” Stevanovic said, “but I’m also learning things that will be useful for my future research. It’s going to trickle down to my students.”

“We called it Disneyland for academics.”

Anna Balazs, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering and the John A. Swanson Chair of Engineering, traveled to Oxford University in 2001 at the encouragement of a scientist she knew there. Although Balazs didn’t know her that well at the time, the decision would alter the trajectory of her research. 

For Balazs, Oxford was a magical place. Each day at 11:00 a.m., the entire department congregated for teatime. “You were always talking to someone interesting,” Balazs said. “There was just a level of intensity and joy about knowledge.”

During her first sabbatical in England, she brought a postdoctoral researcher. The two would stay in the lab late into the evening. “We were working hard and we’d stop and get kebabs on the way home.”

Balazs investigates polymetric materials and how they interact on surfaces. From her collaborator at Oxford, physicist Julia Yeomans, she learned a new technique that has been invaluable.

“It's called the lattice Boltzmann method, which is used for numerically solving the Navier-Stokes equation. We extended it so that it interacts with soft materials, so you can get the interaction between a soft material and a flowing fluid,” Balazs said. “It's a backbone of what we do today.”

Seven years later, this time with her husband, a computer scientist, she returned. “I think for both of us,” Balazs said, “it changed our lives.”

Beyond the research and opportunities to meet scholars so passionate about their work, she formed a lasting connection. “I made a new friend there, who’s a friend for life, and who gave me a goddaughter.

“Those two years at Oxford were some of the best years of my life,” Balazs added. “They were life changing.”

“Despite the daunting logistics, everything worked out.”

John Keith, associate professor and RK Mellon Faculty Fellow in Chemical & Petroleum Engineering, had been, as he described, “an old-school computational chemist.” Although researchers were increasingly incorporating machine learning into the field, he remained cautiously skeptical.

In 2019, having just received tenure, and with two young sons and a third child on the way, Keith faced a complicated puzzle: funding a sabbatical in Luxembourg with his family for an entire year. In the end, he managed to get the pieces to fit.

Keith joined the research group of Alexandre Tkatchenko at the University of Luxembourg, moving his family abroad just months before Covid upended daily life worldwide. In an unexpected twist, the family even appeared on House Hunters International.

“I joined a top research group,” Keith said. “They had reconciled rigorous computational chemistry with machine learning in a way I respected. It was serious, high-quality science, and I built a strong network there.”

The work culminated in a paper in Chemical Reviews, with Keith as first author.

“I returned supercharged with ideas,” Keith said. “The sabbatical was pivotal. It gave me a foundation for future collaborations, ready to fully embrace machine learning in my research.”

Navigating funding, schooling, housing, and a global pandemic in a foreign country was daunting, but for Keith, like his Pitt colleagues who also ventured overseas on their sabbaticals, the payoff was profound.

“Bill’s journey began here in Pittsburgh. After graduating from Pitt in 1985, he started his career at Westinghouse,” said Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “What makes Bill’s career remarkable is that he has spent more than 25 years at the intersection of engineering and entrepreneurship — turning new ideas into industry-recognized, award-winning solutions across the MedTech and HealthTech markets.”

“What I especially value is Bill’s dedication to mentorship,” George added. “He serves as an advisor and coach within nationally recognized programs, and I’m proud to note that the University of Pittsburgh recognized him as Startup Coach of the Year in 2023.”

About William Gaussa

Bill Gaussa, BSEE ’85, is the chief executive officer and founder of NorthCoast Innovation Advisors and Managing Partner of Factor 7 Medical. He has over 25 years of experience in creating new businesses within the MedTech and HealthTech markets. He has worked with a wide range of companies, from startups striving to gain traction to leading innovation for Philips in a $2 billion business. Throughout his career, Bill has consistently launched industry-recognized, award-winning solutions that have grown into global successes, often leading to market leader positions and successful exits or acquisitions.

Currently, Bill is leveraging his experience with startups to move from concept to market launch, developing sustainable growth and strategic partnerships. He is passionate about transferring his know-how to entrepreneurs, as evidenced by his roles as an advisor, coach, and mentor within several nationally recognized programs (ICorp, Techstars, Olympus, etc.).

Bill's background in software engineering and business/marketing allows him to bring a unique perspective to highly technical founders on how to achieve commercial success. He enjoys helping companies identify top ideas, refine value propositions, create market-winning products, secure competitive advantages with IP/trade secrets, and build investor pitches that secure investment.

Bill holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and a Master of Business Administration degree from Carnegie Mellon University.

But long before his storied career began, the light bulb would be his inspiration. His family had one bulb attached to an extension cord, and as the eldest son, Peng got to carry it around the house. He was fascinated that electricity could travel so far to produce the light and the heat emanating from it.

One night, though, his thumb touched the unsafe light socket, leaving a burn scar and a profound respect for the power and peril of electricity that he carries with him to this day. The experience set in motion his life’s work to make electric power safer, more efficient, and more resilient.

This month, Peng, the RK Mellon Endowed Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Swanson School of Engineering, received an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Medal in Power Engineering. The honor, IEEE’s most prestigious, recognizes innovators who improve lives by developing technology that transforms electric power.

IEEE is recognizing Peng for his “contributions to Z-source and modular multi-level converters for distribution and transmission networks.” Traditional converters can only either boost or buck (step down) voltage and cannot be short-circuited or open-circuited, but Z-source technology, which has a unique network of inductors and capacitors, can do both voltage boost and buck. It also tolerates short- and open-circuits. Modular multi-level converters are composed of modules that can be added or subtracted depending on energy needs. Both technologies play a critical role in creating safe, flexible, high-performance systems for diverse energy sources.

“Electric arcs can be explosive and destructive. In recent years, we’ve seen the devastating wildfires in places like Hawaii and California that have been ignited from downed power lines,” said Peng, who also co-directs Pitt’s Energy GRID Institute. “Since graduate school, I have been developing systems that can handle faults. Even in the power conversion converters/inverters I’ve developed, they won’t create a huge fault and can switch to a self-protection mode.” 

Peng’s Z-source concept has been extended to direct current (DC) circuit breakers. A DC is stable and efficient but difficult to interrupt during faults. Unlike alternating current (AC), which reverses direction at fixed intervals, DC flows continuously in one direction and can produce an electric arc when the connection is broken.  

“The Z-source circuits and controls have been used and adopted in many applications such as DC circuit breakers, power conversion, fault protection, and power grid resiliency enhancement,” Peng said.

IEEE’s Medal of Power Engineering is one of many prestigious honors Peng has received. He is an IEEE and a National Academy of Inventors Fellow, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and an IEEE William E. Newell Power Electronics Award winner.

“Fang’s tireless work to transform electric power conversion extends far beyond the lab and the classroom. It is making a difference in people’s lives every day,” said Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and SHREC founder. “He is an exceptional recipient of this award and an invaluable member of our community.”

“I am honored to receive this recognition from IEEE,” said Peng. “I came to Pitt because of its rich history in electric power and for the opportunity to work with amazing colleagues like Dr. Brandon Grainger and Dr. Paul Ohodnicki. In Pittsburgh right now, there is an electric power and electrical energy renaissance, and I am proud to be a part of that.”

Helbig, a third-year PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, is researching ways to replace distribution transformers with power electronics to develop more energy efficient, agile, and resilient systems. As one thrust of her research, she is developing a DC-to-DC converter that can boost DC voltage to higher levels for grid applications, which could improve how energy stored in batteries integrates into the grid. Another project, in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories, aims to advance AC-to-AC solid-state transformers by using new types of transistors as switches in different circuit topologies and incorporating multiple ports to better manage power flows.

Innomotics launched this scholarship ten years ago to provide valuable financial support to promising electrical engineers and to celebrate inventor Peter Hammond. In 1993, Hammond developed revolutionary motor speed control technology in nearby New Kensington, Pennsylvania, where it is still produced today. The technology helps industrial equipment like large pumps and compressors operate more efficiently.

“As a PhD student working to develop independence, it can be hard to step back and observe research impacts on the future with what we are working on now,” said Helbig. “It’s such an honor to receive this recognition and have Innomotics see my work and how it aligns with their values, which Peter Hammond embodied.”

The Peter Hammond Award is one of many honors Helbig has received since starting at Pitt. While Helbig was an undergraduate, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) awarded her a Power & Energy Society (PES) scholarship, and later recognized her with a Charles LeGeyt Fortescue Graduate Scholarship while she earned her master’s degree. She was one of 25 female graduate and postdoctoral students invited to participate in the Epistimi-ACG-LUCE Summer Leadership Workshop for Women in Energy in Greece.

Helbig has also held many leadership roles, including serving as president, in Pitt’s IEEE Beta Delta student chapter, helping the organization earn multiple Outstanding Chapter Awards. She was featured on the cover of the Swanson School’s 2025 annual report as part of an article on the School’s interdisciplinary research in energy.

“From the moment Sabrina first stepped foot in Benedum Hall, she has been a tremendous addition to the Swanson School,” said Brandon Grainger, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and Eaton Faculty Fellow. “She is an exceptional scholar and innovator who is always building community in our program and across the school. She is an ideal recipient of this honor.”

Past awardees of this scholarship have included Jacob Friedrich, Thomas Cook, Ryan Brody, Michael Sullivan, Josh Lubin, and Todd Marzec, all of whom are still active in the electric power conversion business, with two working for Innomotics in their R&D department.

“When manufacturers truly get integrated with university faculty, not only can they impact the lives of younger engineers, but they can easily see the exceptional talent who can be hired to impact their business units,” said Grainger. “This helps ensure the electric power field continues to thrive with the number of electrical engineers needed to solve current and future problems.”

Pitt’s Center for Energy sponsors two awards that recognize a high school and a middle school student. Grainger himself sponsors a third, the Thomas Lake Pittsburgh Excellence in High School Physics Award, in honor of the high school science teacher who inspired his own love of STEM.

“I’ve been attending and delivering these awards almost yearly for a decade,” said Grainger, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and Eaton Faculty Fellow at the Swanson School of Engineering. “It makes a difference to celebrate these students.”

Grainger presented awards to two high school students: one for a project that explored biomedical sensors for monitoring the heartbeats of newborn babies, the other that investigated the optimal resistive loads in solar panel arrays. He also recognized a middle school student whose project examined the temperature performance of batteries.

“There are always so many amazing projects,” said Grainger, who also directs the Electric Power Technologies Lab and co-directs the Energy GRID Institute and Pitt AMPED. “This year, there was a student using finite element analysis to analyze structures. That’s very, very advanced for a high school student.”

Beyond getting to see some of the region’s strongest STEM projects up close, Grainger says that his motivation for supporting these students is practical and personal.

“There were over 400 students there, and I’d say only about five percent might continue pursuing an engineering degree because of the available competition with various career options,” he said. “We need to get middle and high school students thinking about engineering education and career pathways much earlier.”

While companies and organizations like Bechtel Plant Machinery, the Society of Women Engineers, and Carnegie Mellon University also provide awards, Grainger sees the potential for more industry and university support. “The awards validate the work these students do and inspire them to continue exploring STEM-related pathways.”

Grainger added, “I’m a product of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, and it’s important that former students like me find someone who sees their potential.”

“We didn’t have any hands-on experience working with cloud-native computing or developing actual solutions to issues,” said Granieri.

That changed in the fall of 2025, after the two enrolled in ECE 1894: Industry Projects, a course that provides undergraduate electrical and computer engineering (ECE) students with opportunities to work with industry partners to solve real-world problems.

Nekib and Granieri were soon collaborating with a lead software engineer from Microsoft, diving into a new platform, learning new coding languages, and becoming part of a community of computer engineers dedicated to improving the technology.  

Issue #1698 

Kubernetes allows companies to store, manage, and run applications across multiple platforms. The system ensures that different parts of an application, each in their own containers, communicate and function correctly.

Open Elastic Block Store (OpenEBS) is an open-source storage system that runs on Kubernetes. Within OpenEBS, developers can use the Mayastor storage engine to create, test, and debug software in a controlled environment.

All this was foreign to Nekib and Granieri, but it wouldn’t be for long. Their professor, Minhee Yun, in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, connected the two with Brian Smyth, Principal Software Engineer Manager at Microsoft’s Pittsburgh office.

Smyth guided the pair to GitHub, where the OpenEBS community manages and shares code and tracks and solves issues.

“We had to find a problem that we could solve over the course of the semester,” said Nekib. “We chose #1698.”

The issue, ”Prometheus Exporter: Provide metrics for Mayastor node status (online, cordoned, etc) #1698,” focused on identifying the status of nodes, the individual units that provide the central processing, memory, and storage to run an application.

“It was difficult to know if the nodes were on or offline, if they were cordoned off, and if they were close to failing,” said Granieri. “As a result, developers could overwrite code and lose important work.”

Joining the open-source community

After conferring with Smyth, the Pitt students reached out to the OpenEBS community, who welcomed their efforts to improve Mayastor.

“It was nerve-racking at first because we were partnering with someone from Microsoft, and we wanted to make a good impression,” Granieri said. “And it was like, ‘here’s a new technology stack, now get to work.’ It was fascinating to explore cloud computing. We used Rust and Go, which were new programming languages for me.”

“We would meet with Brian and exchange design reviews and discuss architectural problems,” said Nekib.

The team developed metrics that allowed users to understand how each node was functioning and take appropriate action as needed.

“Brian was such a great mentor,” said Granieri. “He provided us enough support so that we knew what we were doing, but he gave us freedom throughout the process.”

They also engaged with members of the OpenEBS community, who shared ideas and asked the two students for their input.  

If Nekib and Granieri were nervous about making a good impression, their concern proved unnecessary. On December 2, 2025, they presented their solution at the Microsoft office.

“PJ and Iyan did tremendous work,” said Yun, who advised the project. “Their final presentation demonstrated exceptional clarity, technical competency, and industry-level communication skills. The feedback from their mentors reflected appreciation for their professionalism, depth of understanding, and real-world impact of their work.”

“It was like a whole new field,” said Nekib. “We were doing development operations, which I’d always wanted to do.”

“It was cool to be an active member of the OpenEBS community, not just a passive user,” said Granieri. “It was a great experience to solve a problem that will make the technology work better.”

For the 2025 – 2026  year, the IEEE PES selected 244 PES Scholarship Plus recipients across the nine IEEE regions. In the Mid-Atlantic region, 18 scholarships were awarded, with five going to these Pitt engineering students:

• Alexis Shafer
• Anthony Spadafore
• Joaquin Tristan
• Jack Wasco
• Jillian Zitcovich

The PES Scholarship Plus Initiative awards promising students based on their excellent grades, engagement in and outside of the school, and passion for power and energy fields. 

In addition to receiving as much as $10,000 in financial aid assistance, scholarship recipients can access mentoring with industry professionals as well as a free, one-year student membership for IEEE and IEEE PES.

“These scholarships speak to our students’ high quality of work and commitment to power and energy,” said Robert Kerestes, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the electrical engineering undergraduate program. “I’m extremely proud of Alexis, Anthony, Joaquin, Jack, and Jillian, who continue a tradition of Pitt students receiving IEEE PES scholarships.”

Since 2014, Swanson School students have received IEEE PES scholarships each year, including triple scholar Kaye Baron and the three Carnovale brothers, who IEEE PES profiled.

Colwell chose guitar. And sure enough, as an undergraduate electrical engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh, he found himself onstage at an Oakland bar, playing in a band to make extra money.

Between sets, he would finish his homework. “I remember the drummer coming up to the table one night, where I was doing calculus between sets,” Colwell said. “He just shook his head and muttered, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you.’”

There was nothing wrong with Colwell. He was just helping cover tuition while doing what he loved—playing guitar and pursuing his electrical engineering degree.

Colwell’s passion for electronics would guide him from his humble beginnings in Pittsburgh, where he was one of six children (half of whom became Pitt grads) in a working-class home, to a groundbreaking career designing microprocessors at Intel. He would author patents, win awards, write a book, and serve as Director of the Microsystems Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). At every step, important mentors sparked his curiosity, challenged his thinking, and embodied qualities that would define his career.

A Wizard

Colwell credits his hometown for helping develop his mindset. “Pittsburgh was hands on, make it happen, no excuses, you know—get it done,” he said. “That was excellent preparation for going into a technology field.”

If the city helped shape him, so did his Uncle Joe. “When I grew up there in the ’60s and early ’70s, in my family, if something broke, you didn't take it to someone else. You fixed it, or you got my Uncle Joe to fix it.”

His uncle, with the help of Heathkits and Erector Sets, inspired Colwell’s fascination with electronics. And although he had no college degree, Colwell’s uncle, an electronic technician at Westinghouse, imparted something else.

“He taught me to never assume something was intellectually beyond me,” Colwell said. “He would say, ‘Someone designed that, so you can understand it enough to figure out how it works and how to maybe make it better.’”

To Colwell, his uncle seemed like a wizard. “I admired that fearlessness associated with complex technology, and that's what I'd like to pass on to anyone else.”

A Professor

If his uncle inspired Colwell’s fascination with electronics, his advisor at Pitt, Ronald Hoelzeman, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, illuminated their inner workings.

Colwell took Hoelzeman’s Digital Logic. “Prior to that course, I understood very little about digital electronics. But in that class, I got it. I could see how it works,” Colwell said. “Ron was an extremely good teacher.” He was the first professor who supported Colwell’s instinct to design systems.

Decades later, Colwell would re-connect with his early mentor while both served on the editorial board of the IEEE publication Computer Magazine.

A Peer

Colwell’s undergraduate experience also introduced him to a peer who would later become a collaborator: Kaigham “Ken” Gabriel (BS EE ’77).

At the time, Pitt’s electrical engineering curriculum required students to write 40 to 50 pages of handwritten equations as circuit analysis homework. As Colwell recalled, “I’d get bored. I’d start to move faster, skipping steps. I inevitably made mistakes.”

He noticed the work of a fellow student, whose equations were written out immaculately on lined engineering pads. “It was like it came out of a printer,” Colwell said. “I sensed that I needed to meet this guy, so I introduced myself. I said, ‘You’re the guy who screws up the curve when they grade the tests. So who are you?’”

The two became good friends.

Gabriel imparted advice that stuck with Colwell. “He told me that if you struggle at all with something, don’t skip any steps—don’t be lazy. Draw them out, line by line.”

The discipline proved invaluable as Colwell went on to earn his computer engineering PhD from Carnegie Mellon University and begin designing and innovating at Bell Labs, PERQ Systems, Multiflow, and eventually Intel, where he would become the Chief Architect responsible for Intel’s Pentium P6 microarchitecture in the 1990s.

In the 2010s, Gabriel would recruit his former Pitt classmate to join him at DARPA, where Colwell would guide high-impact technological innovation and meet remarkable people like a space shuttle astronaut and an SR-71 Blackbird pilot. He would also get to fly in an F-16 fighter jet and land and take off from an aircraft carrier.

A Colleague

“One of my theories, which I pass on to any engineering student who wants it, is that the best thing you can do for yourself and your career is to find the best possible people and latch onto them. Be nice to them,” Colwell said.

That philosophy led him to another collaborator, David Papworth, a colleague at Multiflow and later at Intel.

“When you design a microprocessor,” Colwell said, “every day you're faced with a hundred decisions about the product, and each one represents an important tradeoff.”

Constrained by time and money, Colwell valued having “a genius” who would help navigate the most difficult tradeoffs. “Dave's one of those people who's just, you know, God knows where his brain came from.”

Commitment, Kindness, and Curiosity

Figures like Hoelzeman, Gabriel, Papworth, and especially his uncle shaped Colwell’s trajectory, and they embodied qualities that he has found essential to his success.   

First is commitment. “It may seem obvious,” Colwell noted, “but if you're unwilling to throw yourself at the problem, what are you doing?”

Second, which years of leading teams taught him, is kindness. “People don’t create in a vacuum anymore, and if your peers hate you, your output will go down. It’s also just the right thing to do.”

And finally there is fearless curiosity—the desire to take something apart and make sense of it.

“I like creating,” Colwell said. “I like starting with something that is nothing and turning it into something useful or pretty.”

Indeed today, when he’s not consulting with industry and academia, he loves working with his hands, building furniture and restoring analog synthesizers. He still plays guitar, too, and can knock out those old songs that once helped him pay his way through Pitt.

For his important contributions to the field of optical computing (also known as photonic computing), Youngblood has received a prestigious Friedrich Wilhem Bessel Research Award from Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The €60,000 award, given to approximately 20 renowned academics each year, recognizes individuals whose research is making a lasting impact in their discipline and beyond.

“Today, the massive increase in the use of AI requires more efficient, scalable systems,” said Youngblood, associate professor in the Swanson School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “There’s an urgent need to efficiently process more data, more quickly.”

Traditional computer systems use electrical circuits and separate the central processing unit (CPU) and the memory (RAM), so data must travel between the two to complete functions, creating bottlenecks and slowing down processing.

Researchers like Youngblood are developing novel photonic circuits that allow data to be processed directly where it is stored in memory. “There are physical mechanisms we can use so the system can process data closer to memory or even in the memory cell itself,” said Youngblood, who also directs the Youngblood Photonics Lab at Pitt.

“We’re doing this in the optical domain,” he added, “using light beams to transfer information. Light travels more efficiently than electrons at high speeds since optical fibers don’t need to be charged and discharged like metal wires. And because light waves can pass through themselves without interference, it’s possible to send multiple streams of data at different wavelengths, improving scalability.”

While the technology is emerging, Youngblood has already helped develop a promising new method for photonic in-memory computing and among many awards has received a $552,166 Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation and a $449,240 award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to advance these systems.

“Nathan continues to make remarkable advances in the field of photonic computing,” said Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and SHREC founder. “That he has received this prestigious recognition from Germany speaks to his exceptional research and the important collaborations that he is forging between the University of Pittsburgh and institutions overseas.”

“I’m honored to receive this support and recognition from the Humboldt Foundation,” said Youngblood, who recently returned from a sabbatical in Germany, where he was hosted by the physics department at Heidelberg University. Youngblood worked with the celebrated experimental physicist Professor Wolfram Pernice, who last year received Germany’s most important research award, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.

“Advancing this technology requires close collaboration with researchers in fields like physics, electronics, optical communications, and materials science,” he added. “I’m grateful to have this opportunity to build upon the relationships I’ve made overseas and continue this exciting research.”

“The Design Expo is a unique opportunity for our students to gain real-world experience solving industry problems,” said Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor in Industrial Engineering. “Students are learning important skills that extend beyond developing their technical abilities. They’re working as a team and thinking creatively. They’re using their hands and innovating. I’m grateful for everyone—from faculty and staff to industry partners and volunteer judges, and of course our students—who make this amazing event happen.”

An integral aspect of the Design Expo is mentoring and collaboration across faculty and disciplines. Pitt alumni, faculty, and industry volunteers judged the event, engaging with the teams and sharing ideas and experience. Faculty and other Pitt schools as well government agencies, nonprofits, and industry sponsored teams as well, providing valuable insight while students developed their projects.

Winners below. Visit Flickr for the Expo Photo Album.

Best Overall Project
GaN Motor Controller 
Fredrick Laudati, Connor Watson, and Joseph Zaradzki

People’s Choice Award
Adaptive Assist Robotic Joint 
Elizabeth Novikova, Julia Koma, and Jillian Zitcovich

DEPARTMENT AWARDS

Bioengineering

1^st Place E-Z CVC: Improving Ultrasound-Guided Central Line Placement
Tristyn Auth, Alexis DiNapoli, Colin Henchy Tyler Johnston, Abrahim Kashkoush, Phillip Lavrenyuk, and Trin Murphy

2^nd Place High Frequency Oscillatory Ventilation Chest Wiggle Detection Device
Isabella Hsia, Isabelle Lisi, Connor Rees, and Jaiden Steele

3^rd Place Streamlining Transabdominal Ultrasound-Guided Oocyte Extraction Process
Sydney Barber, Ashlyn Odenwald, Ishan Patel, Arshia Shams, Colby Shores, Astrid Yerardi, and Lyric Zimmermann

Civil and Environmental Engineering

1^st Place (tie)
Oakdale Pump Station
Anna Abelev, Owen Gaskill, Patrick Lovenguth, and David Nisula

Clearwell Replacement
Marie Flinchbaugh, Lily Leh, Jack Schlegel, and Julianna Sergi

2^nd Place ALCOSAN Primary Sedimentation Basin
Quincey Kilbridge, Julia Resch, and Sameer Ul Haque M Sayed

Electrical and Computer Engineering

1^st Place GaN Motor Controller
Fredrick Laudati, Connor Watson, and Joseph Zaradzki

2^nd Place VR Tremor Assessment System During MRgFUS
Colton Tamburri, Aidan Uher, and Noble Woodall

3^rd Place Paint the Canvas
Connor Marsh, William Muckelroy, Connor Murray, and Greg Soltys

Industrial Engineering

1^st Place Enhancing Productivity with 5S Solutions for Tooling and Calibration Management
Alison Bergkoetter, Christos Mavrogeorgis, Maiah Ruby, and Rylee Shaffer

2^nd Place Steel Coil Transfer Optimization Using SIMIO
Jake Johnson, Alison Ngau, Morgan Powers, and Henry Veltum

3^rd Place Project Centargo: Enhancing Bayer’s Injector Line Production for Optimum Efficiency 
Cameron Case, Tara Nguyen, Ethan Snyder, and Jason Wiedmann

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

1^st Place Remote Control Vehicle for Use in Contaminated Environments
Sebastian Carre Jordan, Jacob Korus, Caelin Langton, Angus Nicholson, and John Profozich

2^nd Place Advanced Head and Neck Support System for Patients with Disorders of Consciousness (DoC)
Owen Bishop, Jared Kartschoke, Aishani Ramoju, Randy Saintjean, and Rachel Thomas

3^rd Place Functional Requirements for Thermal Fatigue and Additive Manufacturing
Tanay Agrawal, Ethan Kinyon, Dylan Noker, and Gabriel Warriner

Medical Product Prototyping

1^st Place Perfect Pessary
Francesca Chioda, Karla Frank, Kyla Frenja, Angelina Pribozie, and Jace Statam

2^nd Place MicroTymp
Saif Abbas, Mateen Atassi, Bharath Ramineni, and Peter Wood

Product Realization 

1^st Place Canales Cleaning Device
Josh Lee, Mike Lee, Kyla Frenja, Adam Price, and Sophia Roa

Serving on the organizing committee as Finance and Local Arrangement Co-Chair, Abdelhakim, an associate professor in the Swanson School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, played an essential role in organizing these co-located conferences and their seven associated workshops:

• 7^th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems, and Applications (IEEE TPS 2025)
• 7^th IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Machine Intelligence (IEEE CogMI 2025)
• 11^th IEEE International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing (IEEE CIC)

“I'm honored to have had this opportunity to help organize such a large event and to receive this award. I am deeply grateful to the conference’s steering committee for this recognition and to the organizing committee for their collaboration and support; together, they made the conferences such a success,” said Abdelhakim. “It’s been inspiring to connect and collaborate with so many peers and to help build a transdisciplinary community.”

Abdelhakim, who is also a Space, High-Performance & Resilient Computing (SHREC) faculty member and whose research intersects with cybersecurity, networking, and critical infrastructure in space and on Earth, founded the IEEE Workshop on Security and Resiliency of Critical Infrastructure and Space Technologies (IEEE SR-CIST) last year and co-chaired the workshop again this year. IEEE SR-CIST is one of the seven workshops co-located with the three conferences.

At the IEEE SR-CIST workshop, participants explored new challenges, evolving technology, and innovative approaches necessary to secure infrastructure on Earth, such as energy and transportation systems, and in space. The program featured a keynote delivered by Greg Shannon, fellow and chief cybersecurity scientist at the Idaho National Laboratory, and an invited talk by Sekar Kulandaivel, a research engineer at Bosch. It also included a dedicated panel on operational technology (OT) security, highlighting the unique risks and protections required for OT environments.

“The workshop brought together a diverse group of leaders from industry, academia, and national laboratories to share new research and explore ways to design resiliency into critical systems,” said Abdelhakim.

She added, “Across the conferences, there were important discussions from many perspectives about AI and large language models, exploring how these technologies can be used to enhance security as well as the risks they introduce.”

“Mai’s efforts showcase her leadership in the community and her commitment to advancing security initiatives,” said Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, NSF SHREC Space Center Director, and professor of electrical and computer engineering who is helping to lead the Pitt Space Initiative. “She is advancing important progress in space security research, contributing to a field that remains in critical need of innovation and growth.”

Through the Plus3 Transfer Plus Program, students explore the intersections of engineering, technology, and society in the Czech Republic. Thanks to renewed scholarship support from the Maiorana Trust of the Nationality Rooms & Intercultural Exchange Programs, 15 scholarships, each worth up to $3,500, will be available for 2026 participants in the two-week, three-credit program. 

“Even though we design our programs to be as cost-effective as possible, airfare and travel costs can still be barriers,” said Alicia Olalde, director of Global Experiences and Engagement at the Swanson School. “Having dedicated scholarship funding for this program helps us ensure that more of our students have access to global learning opportunities.”

The program immerses students in the engineering, cultural, and historical context of Prague, and highlights industrial ties between the Czech Republic and Pittsburgh. Led by Mary Besterfield-Sacre, senior associate dean for academic affairs and director of the Engineering Education Research Center, the program features a mix of company and university visits along with cultural excursions, including stops at the Bohemian Innovation Center, automobile manufacturer Škoda, historic sites such as Terezín and Kutná Hora, and visits to silver mines, cathedrals, power plants, and more. 

“Sometimes you can’t see how engineering impacts societies unless you’re looking at it from a perspective that’s not usual to you.” Besterfield-Sacre said. “When you’re born and raised in Pennsylvania, you can get used to certain things, but when you look at engineering as an outsider, you can pick up on insights you might have missed before, which is fundamentally why we bring these students abroad.” 

14 Swanson School students were awarded Nationality Room scholarships from the Maiorana Foundation for the summer 2025 program. For third-year bioengineering student Amaris Mbuagbaw, who traveled to Prague with the program last summer, the experience deepened her understanding of global research and collaboration. Even with visits to the International Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry and learning about cancer research in the Czech Republic, Mbuagbaw found that one of the strengths of the program was its interdisciplinary nature. 

“Initially, I thought I would learn more about bioengineering, but my final paper was actually more focused on civil and environmental engineering.” Mbuagbaw said. “Going on this trip, you can really think outside the box and invest your time into learning different things that are technically not in your field of study.” 

Unlike other SSOE Plus3 programs for first-year students, this program is open to SSOE sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and priority acceptance is given to students who have transferred into the school. Scholarship applications are open until December 1, 2025, and the complete program application is due January 28th, 2026. 

“I think being a responsible engineer today means developing a global perspective,” Olalde said. “Engineering solutions aren’t one-size-fits-all—the right answer in Pittsburgh may look very different in West Virginia, South Africa, or the Czech Republic. You have to design with context in mind, and there’s no better way to learn that than through experiential opportunities like Plus3.

Don’t have a passport? The Swanson School’s Global Experiences and Engagement Office is offering a passport raffle to support first-time U.S. passport applicants, funded through generous alumni donations. Eligible students must be U.S. citizens who have never held a passport and are graduating after 2027. Winners will receive reimbursement of application and execution fees (up to $165) upon submitting proof of application by January 31, 2026. The raffle closes on Wednesday, November 19 at midnight, with winners announced the following day. Apply now!

On Tuesday, November 11, 2025, industry, academic, and national laboratory leaders will meet at the Wyndham Grand Hotel in Pittsburgh to address complex security challenges in an interconnected world, one that extends thousands of miles into space. The IEEE Workshop on Security and Resiliency of Critical Infrastructure and Space Technologies, part of the four-day Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems, and Applications, seeks to build an international ecosystem dedicated to securing critical infrastructure.

“There are unique challenges and cross-domain dependencies between terrestrial and space systems that introduce new vectors of risk, which continue to be overlooked,” said Mai Abdelhakim, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Pitt, who launched the IEEE SR-CIST workshop last year and is serving as the chair of the workshop’s organizing committee. “A central aim is building a community that is working across domains, on Earth and in space, to address complex risks and keep infrastructure safer.”

Recognizing how critical infrastructure today extends into a space, indeed how they are so aligned and essential to society, the workshop includes a transdisciplinary group of presenters across sectors. Finding solutions to ever-evolving threats that can have increasingly catastrophic results requires a multifaceted approach and a connected community.

“Maintaining critical infrastructure, no matter if it’s a power plant, a satellite, or a space station, is becoming increasingly complex,” said Robert Cunningham, Vice Chancellor for Research Infrastructure at Pitt and general co-chair of the IEEE SR-CIST workshop. “During this workshop, we’re going to look at the technology and training necessary to ensure safer and more resilient systems. We’ll explore the need to design reliability into mobile systems, into everything from e-bikes to trains to space shuttles.”

Cunningham will open the workshop, followed by keynote speaker Greg Shannon, fellow and chief cybersecurity scientist at the Idaho National Laboratory, who will discuss “Foundations for Trust, Privacy, and Security in Proliferated Spaces.”

Shannon will also moderate the panel “Operational Technology (OT) Security.” The expert panelists are:

• Dionosio De Niz, principal researcher and the technical director of the Assuring Cyber-Physical Systems directorate at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
• Samuel Perl, senior member of the technical staff on the CSIRT development team within the CERT® Program at CMU’s Software Engineering Institute.
• James Gillespie, chief growth officer and vice chairman at GrayMatter, a leading OT-focused company.
• Chad Spensky, founder and CEO of Allthenticate, a cybersecurity company.

Sekar Kulandaivel, research engineer at Bosch, will present an invited talk titled “Fast and Secure Safety-Preserving Hotpatching for Microcontrollers via Static Trampolines.”

The workshop will have three paper presentation sessions with a diverse, international group of industry leaders and academics. Participants will also have opportunities to network and share ideas.

“It’s exciting to hold the workshop in Pittsburgh this year and to have such distinguished experts from across fields sharing their insight,” said Abdelhakim. “Everyone’s experience is vital in developing more secure, resilient systems on Earth and in space.”

See the full program and learn more about the workshop and how you can attend.

For University of Pittsburgh computer engineering students Dikchhya and Nischal Kharel, the compact objects hurtling through space and pelted by radiation are unique challenges.

Through a partnership with the University of Pittsburgh’s NSF Center for Space, High-Performance & Resilient Computing (SHREC) and Lockheed Martin, the two undergraduates had a unique opportunity to develop and deploy applications to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), 22,236 miles above the earth. 

Discovering SHREC

As the cousins were nearing graduation from the Swanson School of Engineering last spring, neither had concrete plans to attend graduate school. That changed after a conversation with Samuel Dickerson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.

“When Professor Dickerson learned that we both loved space and wanted to work at NASA, he asked if we knew about SHREC,” Nischal said. “Somehow, we didn’t.”

Dickerson amended that, introducing them to Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, NSF SHREC Space Center Director, and professor of electrical and computer engineering. George provided Dikchhya and Nischal with the opportunity to earn credits conducting space research with Linus Silbernagel, a second-year PhD student, and Evan Gretok, a SHREC postdoctoral researcher.

Solving real-world problems

On November 1, 2022, Lockheed Martin launched an In-space Upgrade Satellite System (LM LINUSS) into GEO, which enables satellites to orbit at the same rate as Earth's rotation, making them appear stationary from the ground. Today, as the mission nears completion, the CubeSat satellite serves as a test bench.

In GEO, more than 20,000 miles farther out than satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), LINUSS provides an opportunity to test code and applications in more challenging conditions.

“Lockheed Martin approached Dr. George about the possibility of building and running tests in a GEO satellite because of SHREC’s expertise in satellite hardware and software,” said Silbernagel. “We had some problems that Dikchhya and Nischal could help solve.”

The limits of memory

CubeSat satellites are incredibly small—some fewer than four inches—and thus constrained in their computational power, reducing function efficiency. Tiny onboard cameras, for instance, can capture wavelengths that the human eye can’t process but that create enormous files that waste time and energy to transmit back to earth.

“I worked on a project called CNN JPEG, which a graduate student had started and that uses machine learning to compress data in satellite photos,” said Nischal. “I wanted to deploy the technology on LINUSS.”

The LINUSS satellite uses a ZCU102 computing board, and the team replicated Lockheed Martin’s satellite configuration on it.

“Lockheed Martin packages their apps in a certain way,” Nischal said. “We got the technology running on our test board and sent it to them to be transmitted to LINUSS.”

Unfortunately, although the app worked on Earth, it was too large to run in the satellite. “In classes, we’re taught about memory constraint, but it’s different when you actually run into it,” said Nischal, who has been working to optimize CNN JPEG.

Making it work in space

Satellites generate many images, but most are irrelevant. They depict stretches of ocean or forest, or just clouds. “Satellites send back many images of little interest to researchers, wasting memory and bandwidth, which creates delays,” said Dikchhya.

To solve this problem, Dikchhya set out to run a machine-learning model on LINUSS. The model, trained by Gretok, enables autonomous onboard classification on a constrained system. The application reduces massive images to tiles and categorizes them to help eliminate redundant data. “My job was to make it work in space,” Dikchhya said.

She did just that.

Using the ZCU102 board, she programmed and packaged the application and sent it to Lockheed Martin.

“Mine is a smaller model, so it ran without issues,” said Dikchhya. “After our final tests, the Lockheed Martin team sent it up to LINUSS, ran the application, and the model correctly classified the images. Watching something we built operate successfully 22,000 miles above Earth was a major milestone and an exciting opportunity.”

“It would be impossible for students to do something this big without Lockheed Martin’s partnership,” said Silbernagel. “Dikchhya and Nischal got to join the team remotely during the testing and deployment. It’s the first time Pitt undergraduate students have run apps in GEO.”

“This project represents an essential aspect of SHREC,” said George. “Through university and industry partnerships like this one, students get these incredible opportunities that propel them into space research and prepare them for careers in space engineering.”

“When we started,” said Nischal, who like Dikchhya is now a SHREC graduate student, “we were undergraduate students with almost no real-world research experience. We encountered problems that others hadn’t, and we had to figure out how to solve them.” 

Titled “Power Electronics Based Measurement System for Characterizing Magnetic Components,” the project was funded by a $70,000 grant, with a matching cost share, from the Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development through its Manufacturing PA Innovation Award program.

“This project gave two Pitt graduate students the opportunity to work with higher voltage,” said Grainger, who is also the Eaton faculty fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Director of the Electric Power Technologies Laboratory. “The hands-on experience developing, designing, and testing hardware using the latest semiconductor technology is so valuable as they head out to the workforce.”    

In magnetic cores, which are essential to power generation and transfer, magnetic domains change their orientation with the applied magnetic field as voltage fluctuates, resulting in energy loss. To improve efficiency, engineers develop systems to characterize, or test, these cores like those developed in this program.

As magnetic cores advance and reach higher operating frequencies, so too must these converters, which convert electrical energy from one form to another. Grainger and his team utilized semiconductor modules that are rated for 1700 volts and capable of switching up to 100 kilohertz.

“The modules in use here in Pittsburgh today are rated for 1200V. Moving up to this new class provides more range based off the newest technology,” noted Grainger. “We’ve been working on this system since last year when we received the grant, learning and designing.”

“With higher voltage and higher frequency, you can test larger magnetic components, which is more realistic to what the industry uses,” said Marzec.

With this successful prototype, CorePower Magnetics can stimulate their magnetic cores with high-frequency waveforms to evaluate product inefficiencies beyond what is capable at universities.

“Collaborating with engineers at CorePower Magnetics was an incredible opportunity,” said Navaiyan. “The electrical engineers have so much experience developing these systems and provided valuable insights throughout the year.” 

“I’m always looking for industry leaders to partner with on grants like this one,” said Grainger. “It’s a great opportunity for everyone involved. PhD students gain hands-on workforce experience while Pennsylvania businesses solve problems and innovate.”

Wei Gao, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, has collaborated with researchers from Peking University to develop analytical metrics to qualitatively evaluate the quality of synthetic wireless data. The researchers have created a novel framework that significantly improves the task-driven training of AI models using synthetic wireless data.

Their work is detailed in “Data Can Speak for Itself: Quality-Guided Utilization of Wireless Synthetic Data” (DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2506.23174), which received the Best Paper Award in June at the MobiSys 2025 International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services.

Assessing affinity and diversity

“Synthetic data is vital for training AI models, but for modalities such as images, video, or sound, and especially wireless signals, generating good data can be difficult,” said Gao, who also directs the Pitt Intelligent Systems Laboratory.

Gao has developed metrics to quantify affinity and diversity, essential qualities for synthetic data to be used for effectively training AI models.

“Generated data shouldn’t be random,” said Gao. “Take human faces. If you’re training an AI model to identify human faces, you need to ensure that the images of faces represent actual faces. They can’t have three eyes or two noses. They must have affinity.”

The images also need diversity. Training an AI model on a million images of an identical face won’t achieve much. While the faces must have affinity, they must also be different, as human faces are. As Gao noted, “AI models learn from variation.”

Different tasks have different requirements for judging affinity and diversity. Recognizing a specific human face is different than distinguishing it from that of a dog or a cat, with each task having unique data requirements. Therefore, in systemically assessing the quality of synthetic data, the team applied a task-specific approach.

“We applied our method to downstream tasks and evaluated the existing work of synthesizing data,” said Gao. “We found that most synthetic data achieved good diversity, but some had problems satisfying affinity, especially wireless signals.”

The challenge of synthetic wireless data

Today, wireless signals are used in technologies such as home and sleep monitoring, interactive gaming, and virtual reality. Cell phone and Wi-Fi signals, as radio waves, hit objects and bounce back toward their source. These signals can be interpreted to indicate everything from sleep patterns to the shape of a person sitting on a couch.

To advance this technology, researchers need more wireless data to train models to recognize human behaviors in the signal patterns. However, as a waveform, the signals are difficult for humans to evaluate.

It’s not like human faces, which can be clearly defined. “Our research found that current synthetic wireless data is limited in its affinity,” said Gao. “This leads to mislabeled data and degraded task performance.”

To improve affinity in wireless signals, the researchers took a semi-supervised learning approach. “We used a small amount of labeled synthetic data, which was verified as legitimate,” Gao said. “We used this data to teach the model what is and isn’t legitimate.”

Gao and his collaborators developed SynCheck, a framework that filters out synthetic wireless samples with low affinity and labels the remaining samples during iterative training of a model.

“We found that our system improves performance by 4.3% whereas a nonselective use of synthetic wireless data degrades performance by 13.4%,” Gao noted.

This research makes an important first step toward ensuring not just an endless stream of data, but of quality data that scientists can use to train more sophisticated AI models.

With more than 8,000 satellites currently in low Earth orbit and little to no standardization of these sophisticated machines, the potential for bad actors to compromise one is not the stuff of campy action films. Indeed, a recent attack made headlines.

The University of Pittsburgh engineering professors and scholars at the NSF Center for Space, High-Performance, and Resilient Computing (SHREC) are collaborating with MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the Naval Nuclear Laboratory to improve satellite security. Mai Abdelhakim, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Robert Cunningham, Vice Chancellor for Research Infrastructure at Pitt, and their PhD students Quincy Bayer and Robert Esswein, and have helped develop a novel algorithm to more efficiently and effectively assess the trustworthiness of satellites.

Their research, “TAU: Trust via Asynchronous Updates for Satellite Network Resiliency” (DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-95761-1_15), is published in Applied Cryptography and Network Security. It advances understanding of network behavior and provides a powerful tool to keep satellites more secure and resilient. 

Fast, cheap, and potentially out of control

“Satellites today cost much less to produce and send into low Earth orbit, meaning more are being launched,” said Abdelhakim, who is also a SHREC faculty member. “But there are supply chain vulnerabilities and little oversight, so you don’t know who’s putting in what components. These satellites are already vulnerable because they’re connected to networks.

“The attack surface is huge.”

“The satellites being sent into low Earth orbit are built to last approximately five years,” added Cunningham, himself part of the SHREC faculty. “They provide essential communication, sensing, and navigation services worldwide. They connect people in remote areas to the internet, power the GPS in people’s vehicles, and increasingly interact with our phones. Keeping these satellites secure and resilient is of utmost importance.”

Satellites are susceptible to various attacks such as kinetic and black hole attacks. The former involves a physical attack on the system, while the latter is a software attack that can cause a satellite to accept packets (units of data) that arrive via a network but then drop or discard some or all of them, disrupting functionality.

“We modeled attack scenarios and evaluated the current trust assessment tools,” said Bayer, first author of the paper. “We found that these tools are complex to scale up and require extensive computation and communication. In some of our models, compromised devices could even circumvent trust assessment packets by acting benignly.”

Added Abdelhakim, “There is currently no unified approach to trust assessment.” 

Ensuring trust, asynchronously

Satellites are powered by batteries and solar panels and need efficient systems and algorithms. Pitt, MIT, and Naval Nuclear Laboratory researchers developed TAU: Trust via Asynchronous Updates to secure satellite constellations by taking advantage of the unique aspects of low Earth orbit satellites.

TAU relies on a series of finite state machines, a model based on predetermined states; in this case, satellites are identified as trusted, questionable, or untrusted. Network interaction and satellite behavior determine the trust level.

“We evaluate trust based on the events reflecting networking behavior,” said Abdelhakim. “Did a satellite move the packets as expected? Are there more positive events than negative? If there are more negative events, the status would move to questionable and ultimately to untrusted.”

The system is also asynchronous. Satellites are connected to ground control, but they only communicate with nearby satellites. A satellite in a constellation will directly evaluate the trust of the three nearest ones and indirectly evaluate a few others on a separate orbital.

A satellite will alert others after it detects a satellite is behaving questionably. The decentralized model decreases the energy budget while more effectively identifying compromised systems, which can then be isolated and repaired or taken offline.

Abdelhakim, who is organizing an IEEE Workshop on Security and Resiliency of Critical Infrastructure and Space Technologies in November of 2025, in Pittsburgh, said, “It’s like a neighborhood watch. When someone sees something suspicious in their immediate area, they alert others nearby, who alert a few others farther out.

“The system can keep the ever-increasing constellations of satellites in low Earth orbit more secure, ensuring that the people who benefit from satellite technology can access it reliably.”

In 2018, as a postdoc at Pitt, she taught her first class and remembers thinking, “Yeah, I definitely like this.”

Her love of inspiring students to take ownership of their education has only grown since then. Now an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at her alma mater, Bocan has been recognized as the Institute of Electrical and Electric Engineers (IEEE) Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) 2025 C. Holmes MacDonald Outstanding Teacher.

“I can’t put into words what this award means to me,” Bocan said. “Knowing that students have got something out of my courses or that I’ve helped them in some way is what I love about teaching. It’s so rewarding." 

Each year, IEEE – HKN student chapters can nominate one professor, and Bocan was an easy selection. As Abby Magistro, a former student and teacher’s assistant, said, “Dr. Bocan is a favorite professor of many students in our department. She provides many resources like lecture videos and other materials for curious students to investigate.”

Added John Klamut, a Pitt graduate student, “Dr. Bocan always ensures that students have access to whatever support they need, whether in the form of office hours or supplemental materials.

“She structures her courses so as to create a strong conceptual foundation while encouraging critical thinking and problem-solving."

Bocan teaches courses in C++ programming as well as in software architecture and software simulation. Drawing on research in self-determination theory, she builds lessons that motivate students “to do something hard, to learn difficult things.”

“I’m interested in how students learn, especially in the age of ChatGPT,” Bocan said. “How do you structure a course and develop activities that will encourage students to intrinsically realize the value in what they’re learning?”

Questions like this one guide Bocan’s work to develop adaptive classes that uplift students who are struggling while challenging those who have excelled. She creates and provides materials and adjusts projects to reach students across levels and interests.

She also encourages collaboration, building a vital skill students will need when they enter the workforce. She teaches an upper-level course where students will code in teams, practicing on Github, a coding platform, and collaborating on the repository.

“Working in teams can be difficult,” said Bocan. “I’m careful to structure the team interaction to ensure students get the most out of working together and stay motivated.”

Bocan researched wireless electronic medical devices as a PhD student and simulation and modeling as a postdoc. Today, she researches engineering education and values the opportunity to learn from and work with her colleagues through her involvement with the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET and through the Engineering Education Research Center (EERC).

“Kara has been a tremendous addition to Electrical and Computer Engineering and to the Swanson School and larger Pitt community,” said Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, NSF SHREC Space Center Director, and professor of electrical and computer engineering. “Her commitment to innovative learning and to fostering in her students an intrinsic interest in the material ripples far beyond her classrooms. Kara embodies the spirit of this prestigious award.” 

IEEE – HKN launched the award in 1972 in honor of its namesake, C. Holmes MacDonald, a Bell Telephone engineer who would go on to teach at Drexel University. Given to one professor from around the world each year, the award highlights “the central and crucial role of college professors in training and motivating future… engineers.”

IEEE – HKN will recognize Bocan at the 2025 IEEE EAB Award Presentation Ceremony on Friday, November 21, in New York City.

After enrolling in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, a program called STEMnetX would lead them to that doorway in Schenley Place, home of Pitt Space. They’d taken different routes to the Swanson School, but both shared a passion for space exploration.

“All this time,” Samiya said, “I didn’t realize my biggest interest had been right down the street from our engineering classes.”

All their roads led to the Swanson School

Samiya, a Philadelphia native, has always loved space. “In fourth grade, when we reached the space unit, my teacher got 100 percent of my attention,” she said.

Her family later moved to Harrisburg, where her high school algebra instructor screened Hidden Figures. The movie, about three Black women who worked at NASA during the Space Race, gave her new insight into her future.  

“I know it might sound cliché,” she said, “but that was the moment I realized there was a place for me in physics and space engineering too.”

Samiya would go on to earn a BA in physics from Duquesne as part of a three-plus-two dual-degree major program. After her third year, she came to Pitt to pursue a BS in mechanical engineering and a certificate in Innovation, Product Design, and Entrepreneurship.

Akriti’s journey began on the other side of the globe. In 2016, during her freshman year in high school, she and her family emigrated from Janakpur, Nepal, to Pittsburgh.

Akriti loved astronomy, but at Pitt she followed in her older sister’s footsteps, studying pre-med. “I was all set on becoming a doctor, but after my first year, I felt lost. My friends told me about engineering, and I was intrigued because I already liked physics.”

Launching to Pitt Space

In the spring of 2024, Associate Professor Matthew Barry, with a reputation for seeing the potential in his students, told them about summer fellowship opportunities through STEMnetX. The nonprofit initiative was developed by Rama Bala, a faculty member in the Pitt Space program, to promote STEM education and careers in underserved communities.

Akriti and Samiya applied, were accepted, and in June traveled to Washington, PA, for a weeklong STEM boot camp at William & Jefferson College.

It was, Samiya recalled, “an intense week,” with daily Python coding courses, seminars, and networking. However, one day the participants in STEMnetX’s Space Engineering Pathways pilot program left for a tour of Pitt, which was when Akriti and Samiya discovered the Pitt Space program in Schenley Place. Their experience was a revelation.

“It was inspiring to meet graduate students and professors involved in projects that were on the International Space Station,” Akriti said.

Schenley Place also houses the NSF Center for Space, High-Performance & Resilient Computing (SHREC), the nation's leading academic research center in the field of computer and electrical engineering for mission-critical systems, from spacecraft to supercomputers. SHREC is “mission control” for experiments currently in orbit on the ISS.

“I thought, ‘This is crazy.’ NASA is my dream job—even if I just work there one summer as an intern,” Samiya said. “The trip was part two of my Hidden Figures moment because I realized how many people around me have similar interests and how the school fuels those interests.”

Another window into the real world

For Akriti and Samiya, STEMnetX has offered an out-of-this-world experience, while the opportunities they’ve had at the Swanson School have made engineering more tangible.  

Samiya for example was a MEMS Facilitating Inclusive Research Experiences (FIRE) Summer Research Intern, working with Associate Professor Patrick Smolinski. She studied quadricep tendons in ACL reconstruction surgery, testing their ultimate strengths, and applying different forces to simulate how the tendons would react in a body.

“My passion is with space, but my interests in engineering are wide ranging,” said Samiya, who will resume the research this fall. “In the lab, we’re working with cadavers and collaborating with orthopedic surgeons to advance understanding of quadricep grafts.”

In 2024, Akriti began working with Barry, who is developing a next-generation radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Akriti models and analyzes thermal insulators under different conditions and is helping construct a numerical model of plate fins on the thermoelectric generator. “I want to understand every aspect of what I’m doing,” she said.

Stepping confidently into the future

In the spring, Akriti’s and Samiya’s paths will again diverge. Samiya, who wants to be a design engineer in the aerospace and aviation industry, is taking a quick detour to law school.   

“I want to study intellectual property, which will go hand in hand with my engineering design career.”

Akriti plans to continue her research in grad school. “The STEMnetX program and my work with Dr. Barry have combined my two main interests: space and research.

“Research is such an important aspect of a student’s experience. I’m so glad I’ve had this opportunity to understand why I’m doing this—why I want to do it. I know I’m on the right path, and in my graduate school interviews, I can show that this is what I’ve wanted,” Akriti said.

“And I love it.”

For the second year in a row, Pitt has been the most-awarded university across the Commonwealth. Since the launch of the program in 2018, Pitt has received $2,293,188.00 in total award funding. Associate Professor Markus Chmielus has received nine awards totaling $487,665 alone, making him the most-awarded researcher in the program.

Administered through Carnegie Mellon University, these awards are part of a program that fosters collaboration between Pennsylvania businesses and universities and colleges across the Commonwealth. Researchers and their students can receive up to $70,000, which is used for student research and related expenses.

“The Manufacturing PA Innovation program gives real-world workplace experience to undergraduate and graduate students while assisting Pennsylvania manufacturers in conducting research that they may not have the means or expertise currently to address,” said David Vorp, Senior Associate Dean for Research & Facilities and John A. Swanson Professor of bioengineering. “Faculty in the Swanson School have been successful with this program, which has led to important and meaningful new industry partnerships. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.”

The six recipients and their projects are:

• Markus Chmielus, Mechanical and Materials Science, “Developing High Entropy Carbides (HECs) for Industrial Applications” (General Carbide Corporation).
• Zachary Harris, Mechanical and Materials Science, “Additive Manufacturing of Nickel-Aluminum-Bronze Using Pennsylvania-Manufactured, Low-Cost Powder” (Metal Powder Works, Inc.).
• Jung-Kun Lee, Mechanical and Materials Science, “Development of Corrosion-Resistant Coating by Cold Spray Method” (Westinghouse Electric Company).
• Zhi-Hong Mao, Electrical and Computer Engineering, “Additive Laser Manufacturing of Micro-Optical Fluidic Chips” (AiMiLight Sensors and Intelligent Systems Inc.).
• Albert To, Mechanical and Materials Science, “Development of a Fracture Test Artifact for Early Process Anomaly Detection during Laser Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing” (Cumberland Additive).
• Wei Xiong, Mechanical and Materials Science, “Synergistic Design of Heat Treatment and Surface Finishing for Superior Functionally Graded Alloys” (Extrude Hone LLC). 

Varied projects like these prepare students to enter the workforce while ensuring Pennsylvania companies maintain their competitive edge in a fast-changing economy.

On April 29, watching the classic bow shape of bright red and orange blobs on the weather map move closer to Pittsburgh, Alexis Kwasinski knew the storm would be bad. For more than 20 years, Kwasinski, associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, has studied and documented infrastructure resilience in the face of natural disasters, and he understood what the vivid colors and ominous formation could mean.

“Technically the storm wasn’t a derecho [a violent system that can produce hurricane-force winds], but it was close,” Kwasinski noted. “I knew that Pittsburgh, with all its trees and hills, and its aged power grid, would be affected.”

The unprecedented damage left about 325,000 Duquesne Light customers without power, including 140,000 in Pittsburgh alone. The massive toll—caused by high winds, downed trees, and damaged infrastructure—left thousands without power for several days although many also had neighbors just across the street with their lights still on.

Indeed, as weather around the world grows increasingly unpredictable, so does the need for more resilient grid infrastructure. While solutions are as varied and complex as the places most affected by disasters, Kwasinski has found one consistent way to promote resilience—by building community and helping the public better understand the grid and how to assist each other after disaster strikes.  

Restoring connections

Kwasinski’s interest in resilience stems in large part from his early career working in telecommunications, specifically technical support. In Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he earned his BS in Electrical Engineering and a Graduate in Engineering Specialist Telecommunications degree, Kwasinski and his team fielded calls from across Latin America and had to figure out how to restore systems, sometimes as far away as the Rio Grande, so that people could communicate.

“This was in the late 1990s, during the dot.com boom and the growth of data centers and cell towers,” said Kwasinski. “I learned so much about infrastructure and recovery work and what to do when equipment fails. I started to think about resilience and its importance in people’s lives.”

Then came Katrina

In 2003, after ten years working in the field, he enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to pursue a PhD in electrical engineering. In August 2005, as he began his dissertation work on resilience and dependencies (how systems rely on other systems), Hurricane Katrina blew ashore.

“I went to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast for a week to look into the damage,” said Kwasinski. “I wanted to see what grid infrastructure was damaged and how, and what held up. I wanted to see how power was being restored.”

Witnessing the aftermath of Katrina affirmed what his time in the telecom industry had set in motion: he would devote himself to advancing more resilient power infrastructure.

Since Katrina, he has visited and documented numerous disaster sites soon after impact, from Fukushima, Japan, after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. He’s traveled to New York and New Jersey after Superstorm Sandy and to Florida after Irma, Ian, and many other hurricanes have slammed ashore. He’s been to towns across Texas devastated by tornadoes.

Documenting resilience

After a disaster, the media focus most on the devastation—the destroyed houses, buckled roads, flooded neighborhoods. For Kwasinski, he spends as much time documenting the structures that withstand the immense forces of nature as he does those that don’t.

In 2010, two catastrophic earthquakes hit within a month and a half of each other—one in Haiti, the other, which produced a tsunami, in Chile.

“I couldn’t visit both places and ended up going to Chile. They have a much stronger electrical infrastructure, and to see how that fared provides more insight than an already strained infrastructure that fails in a disaster. We gain important clues into developing more resilient grids.”

His own backyard

On April 30, the morning after the storm blew through Pittsburgh, Kwasinski didn’t have to board a plane or drive far to document the aftermath. His own roof and chimney were damaged, though he still had power.

“I knew a few spots where I would encounter problems,” he said. His first stop was a nearby west-facing hill. “Just about where I expected it, a tree had fallen on a house. I was off by about 50 yards.”

While the number of impassable roads surprised Kwasinski, the power outages didn’t. “Like so many places across the country, the main problem with the power grid in Pittsburgh is that it was originally designed to provide the most energy to the most people at the lowest cost,” he said. “It’s not designed to withstand storms like this one. The grid shows its limitations.”

Building a more resilient grid won’t be easy. As Kwasinski says, “Beyond the considerable expense, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, and there are many trade-offs.”

For example, moving power lines underground could improve resilience. However, as Kwasinski noted, “Even underground, we know for sure the lines will fail—it’s a question of how long before they do.” The expense and time of moving lines underground and then digging them up for repair might outweigh the uncertainty of a storm knocking out power to above-ground lines.

At the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught before coming to Pitt in 2014, Kwasinski received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to research microgrids. These smaller, localized sources of energy are another option for building resilient infrastructure. Yet, as Kwasinski said, “You must weigh where microgrids receive their energy and what would happen, for instance, if an earthquake damaged a gas line.”

In his recent visits to Florida, Kwasinski has noticed more concrete utility poles, and data from recent storms show they perform better. But as he notes, “Not even concrete is a magic solution. With a hurricane—or any natural disaster—you can’t be 100 percent resilient. There are intrinsic characteristics of a grid that limit what planners can do.” 

A key to resilience: community

While designing and developing more resilient infrastructure is complex, costly, and can feel out of most people’s control, Kwasinski has found, through his many years of research, something everyone can do. It’s the very thing that first inspired his research: restoring connections. 

Kwasinski sees promise in people learning more about their environment and communities and about the infrastructure and systems they rely on. For him, that starts with getting to know people in one’s own neighborhood.  

“The negative effects of a natural disaster are mitigated by forming stronger connections, by knowing your neighbors and by reaching out—before and after a storm,” said Kwasinski. “The places that recover more quickly, that are more resilient, tend to be those with a stronger sense of community.”

STEMnetX, a Pittsburgh-based initiative that inspires underserved students to pursue STEM education, is trying to change that. In collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Pitt Space, the initiative has received a 2025 Moonshot Grant from Remake Learning to open pathways for space-related STEM education for high school students across Allegheny County.

“There is so much space-related research going on in Pittsburgh, and by allowing students to see themselves as scientists and engineers, we hope to inspire them to pursue education and a career in STEM,” said Rama Bala, a faculty member in the Pitt Space program and the President and CEO of STEMnetX. “We are grateful for Remake Learning’s generous support and for their work to transform education.”

Remake Learning is a Pittsburgh-based network of educators and leaders promoting innovation in teaching and opportunities for all students to thrive. They provide grant funding to organizations that reimagine education and propel it into the future. 

This year, for their Moonshot Grant applications, they received over 100 letters of interest. From those letters, they selected 40 projects and asked for a full proposal. During the second review, Remake Learning chose to fund STEMnetX’s project.

The project seeks to promote workforce development and STEM education in underserved populations through space engineering. Bala and her team will expand the pipeline of students in high school who pursue postsecondary education in STEM-related fields by making space-related careers more tangible.

STEMnetX will build relationships with STEM educators in area high schools and share curriculum with them. The team will begin visiting classrooms to hold workshops, where they will use virtual reality sets to allow students to imagine themselves as astronauts and as space engineers.

During workshops, students will also meet experts in the field. Through networking sessions, they will engage with NASA scientists, industry leaders, and space engineers from Pitt Space. They will discover what space-related research entails and how these individuals pursued their careers.

Beyond their high school classrooms, students will have the opportunity to tour Pitt’s campus to see Pitt Space research in action, visiting labs and facilities while learning about college courses in space engineering.

“The beauty of research in space engineering is that it produces new technologies to improve lives and society while inspiring the next generation of students,” said Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, NSF SHREC Space Center Director, and professor of electrical and computer engineering. “Pitt Space is excited to collaborate with STEMnetX to help high-school students set their sights on the stars and beyond.”

Hawbaker set his destination to the Swanson School of Engineering. Despite his decade of travel, Pittsburgh was the largest city the Pullman, Washington, native had ever lived in. The city and Pitt’s campus made a powerful first impression: “Wow, this huge building is just devoted to engineering?” Hawbaker recalled thinking to himself.

Although he had a successful undergraduate career at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Hawbaker said his return to life as a student wasn’t seamless at first. After eight years away from the classroom, it took time to relearn the rhythms of academic life.

But the discipline and structure ingrained in him through his military service gave Hawbaker a solid foundation, and he eventually created a consistent schedule that helped him adjust to the new environment with having to stay up late studying.

Support from the Pitt community also made a big difference. Hawbaker credits his advisor — Brandon Grainger, associate professor and director of the Electric Power Technologies Laboratory in Pitt’s Swanson School — for providing steady guidance during the transition.

Grainger said Hawbaker’s experiences before pursing graduate school afforded him a level of maturity that helped him succeed. The advisor also watched Hawbaker make fast social connections and build community within the lab, organizing gatherings and outings to sporting events.

“He has the personality that got the guys to break out of their shell,” Grainger said. “He always made people feel welcome and conversational and  really became the social chair of the group by encouraging golf outings, NCAA basketball bracket competitions, attending Pitt basketball games as a lab and other things.”

From Hawbaker’s perspective, he wasn’t the only one fostering an environment of friendship and support, recalling his first semester, when he was struggling with a higher-level course and his classmates had his back.

“My fellow classmates and people in my lab that were taking the same class, they were like, ‘Hey, we know you're going to help us out with other stuff. We're going to help you out with this,’” Hawbaker said. “And that really kind of made me feel like I belonged”

Although Hawbaker, like many graduate students, felt as though he had a rocky start, Grainger noted that the captain was an exceptional student, leveraging his experiences as a pilot to develop a deep understanding of how electrical systems power complex designs like helicopters.

His military career also inspired his thesis, which addressed a technical issue with electric currents in motors found in electric vehicles and even helicopters. When motors start up, they often experience an inrush current, also known as a switch-on surge, which can damage components and shorten the lifespan of critical systems.

To help solve that, Hawbaker created a simulation that controls how electricity flows into the motor when it powers on. With this approach, electrical systems behave as if a physical resistor is there to dampen electrical responses, even though there isn’t one.  Electrical engineers call this virtual resistance.

Now, Hawbaker is preparing for his next assignment: He’s returning to West Point for a three-year teaching position as an instructor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. There, he’ll trade student life for faculty duties, helping cadets navigate the same path he once walked. Hawbaker said he feels prepared for this new role thanks to Grainger and other Swanson School professors.

“I’m super excited to put the uniform back on and start developing cadets and teaching them,” Hawbaker said. “I feel like I'm ready to go teach. I think Dr. Grainger tailored how we did our meetings and how he mentored me to help prepare me to be a professor, versus preparing someone to be an engineer in the field.”

University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering alumnus Samarth Chopra BS ECE '25 received a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to join the University of Maryland and pursue a PhD in electrical and computer engineering. He has joined the UMD GAMMA Lab (Geometric Algorithms for Modeling, Motion, and Animation), under the guidance of Professor Dinesh Manocha.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) supports individuals who have demonstrated the potential to make significant contributions to STEM-related fields. The purpose is to strengthen the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States. The program is open to full-time students in master’s and doctoral programs and provides three years of support over a five-year fellowship period. The 2025 Fellowship was awarded to approximately 1500 US students.

Chopra is the recipient of the Vikram Manikonda Endowed Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in Electrical and Computer Engineering. The award was established by ECE Alum Vikram Manikonda (M.S. ’94 / Ph.D. ’97) to provide merit-based support to students studying controls or microelectronics with the intention of enhancing diversity, including but not limited to racial or gender diversity in engineering. 

Other awards include the University of Pittsburgh ECE Outstanding Graduate Award and Senior Design Expo SSOE Best Overall Project Award and SSOE ECE Department First Place Award.

At UMD, Chopra will focus on photorealistic and geometrically accurate Gaussian Splatting for autonomous robot navigation, as well as ground robot navigation stack in partnership with Army Research Labs (ARL).

STEMnetX, an initiative supported by the Pittsburgh-based nonprofit Chance to Change Lives (CCL-US), believes they can. Through its collaboration with Pitt Space at the University of Pittsburgh, STEMnetX has launched its Space Engineering Pathways program to inspire under-resourced undergraduate students from across the Mid-Atlantic to set their sights on the stars. Now in its second year, the program welcomed its cohort on May 12 and immediately illuminated pathways to a career in STEM and space engineering.

“Many under-resourced college students who might be interested in space don’t experience many opportunities to see themselves as scientists. Many don’t know about research and space-related STEM careers,” said Rama Bala, a faculty member in the Pitt Space program and the President and CEO of STEMnetX.

This year, fourteen students from community colleges and four-year institutions across the Mid-Atlantic and as far as the Midwest, including the University of Pittsburgh, traveled to Washington & Jefferson College, in Washington, PA, to attend a week-long immersive introduction to STEM-related research and careers.

During this “bootcamp,” students took a crash course in Python coding each morning, and then in the afternoon they explored topics such as quantum computing, biotechnology, and space engineering. Students learned about networking, delivering elevator pitches, developing their resumes, and creating LinkedIn profiles.

On Thursday, May 15, the students visited the University of Pittsburgh to meet space engineers and to see space-related STEM in action. They began their tour at the Space, High-Performance & Resilient Computing (SHREC) facility, a National Science Foundation Center on the Pitt campus. The fellows met with graduate students who shared their research and showed them the technology designed at Pitt and currently aboard the ISS.

“We scheduled 30 minutes, but after the hour, I had to shepherd the students out—that’s how engaged they were,” said Bala. “For many of these students, this was their first time in a research facility.”  

The tour continued to Benedum Hall, where students met faculty in the Pitt Space program and learned about pathways to research and careers in space engineering and related fields.

Next, the cohort visited Dr. Wei Xiong’s Physical Metallurgy & Materials Design Laboratory to see state-of-the-art 3D printing in action. Again, a planned 30-minute tour lasted over an hour. “It was incredible to see the level of engagement—and for them to see 3D metal printing and learn about its intricacies.”

At the Gertrude E. & John M. Peterson Institute of NanoScience and Engineering, JosephAnna Barr, the administrative coordinator at the lab, introduced students to advanced microscopy and showed them both atomic and electron microscopes. Two Pitt researchers happened to be conducting image analysis, and they engaged with the students.

“It was amazing how accessible the researchers were with the students,” Bala said. “And the students, in addition to seeing research in action, were learning how to talk with scientists. They were building their career-development skills.”

As Bala noted, “When we drove back from the tour, students were saying, ‘I never thought about graduate school as an option until now.’”

On Friday, the cohort celebrated their week together immersed in STEM. Throughout June and July, they will continue to engage with experts through virtual workshops and networking.

Through funding from RK Mellon Foundation, these fellows received a $500 stipend and travel reimbursement. Fellows can also apply for grant funding up to $5,000 to conduct their own research. Those interested in continuing with the program can serve as STEM ambassadors and visit their local elementary, middle, and high schools.

“We want these students to see themselves as future STEM leaders as they motivate a new generation,” said Bala. “We want to foster in these students a sense of belonging—you know, where they can say, ‘Here is a group of students like me.’”

Today, Yates is the president and CEO of NiSource Inc., an energy company that serves over four million customers. His journey from a working-class household outside of Philadelphia to the top of a leading energy company may have seemed improbable even to Yates himself, yet at every step he’s had amazing mentors, an endless drive to learn more—and his degree in mechanical engineering.

“If you can do that, you can do anything” 

For Yates, mechanical engineering was a natural fit. As far back as he can remember, he was always fixing things. “I just had an inclination to take things apart and fix them—cars, lawnmowers, appliances,” he said. “I drove my father crazy, always using his tools.”                                                              

After graduating high school, Yates chose the University of Pittsburgh in part because he liked the atmosphere around Oakland and on the Pitt campus. “It felt inclusive,” he said.

During his first year in the engineering program, though, he struggled academically. “I probably didn’t have proper preparation. As a freshman, I had to work hard, but I got caught up and finished the year with a 3.9 GPA.”

Though money was tight, and Yates was never sure he could cover his next semester, it was an exciting and rewarding time. “Engineering is four hard years,” he remembered. “Those semesters, I didn’t get out much, but I did well academically and had fun.”

Beyond overcoming challenges such as linear algebra, he was learning a skill that would prove as vital today as it was then. “This was where I first learned to think critically,” Yates said. “And that matters so much in industry and in business.”

With his mechanical engineering degree, he felt more prepared for the MBA he would later earn at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. He felt equipped with key skills that would help him negotiate new responsibilities and unexpected challenges. As he said of his four years at Pitt, “If you can do that, you can do anything.” 

Do what you love doing

After graduating, Yates took a job as a startup engineer at PECO (formerly Philadelphia Electric Company), a company where he interned during the summers of his third and fourth years at Pitt. He had other opportunities, but, as he said, “I took the lowest-paying offer I had, because I liked the work. I liked what I was doing.” 

This principle—doing what he loves—has guided Yates since that first job, and it has been a key source to his success. He remembers those first days of his internship, when his classroom learning became suddenly tangible. “After I walked into a power plant and saw turbines and pumps and compressors, when I had to figure out how to put these million pounds of steam through that line, thermodynamics really started to mean something.” 

For Yates, the work was and remains fascinating. “Energy was considered stodgy, boring,” he said. “But the energy sector is always evolving. I’m never bored.” 

Like the field in which Yates has dedicated his career, his road to becoming president and CEO of NiSource, which has included senior positions at Duke Energy Corporation and Progress Energy, has also evolved dramatically. “I’ve had 19 jobs. I’ve kept growing, progressing, and getting more experience—trying new things and figuring them out.” 

The power of persistence, people, and failure

If his love of the work and its dynamic nature have helped Yates reach seemingly improbable heights, so have his mentors along the way—starting with his father and his mother.

“At the time, I don’t think I realized the influence of my parents,” Yates said. “I inherited my father’s work ethic—his no-nonsense attitude. ‘That’s your job, go do it.’ And I inherited his impatience, which can be good.”

From his mother, he gained valuable interpersonal skills. “She was a people person,” Yates said. “She worked in a psychiatric hospital, and from her I learned that you treat people with respect and understanding.”

Throughout his career, as he has taken on more leadership roles and has managed more people, he’s seen more acutely how the influences of both his parents have shaped him as a leader. As Yates said, “People don’t follow you because you’re a good engineer but because you’re a good leader. If you want to manage and lead people, there are skills you need to develop.”

Yates also credits leaders in the energy field like John Doering and William “Bill” Johnson. These pivotal figures, as Yates said, “Let me fail. They gave me jobs and let me fail, but they kept pulling me up as long as I was learning from my failures.”    

Changing the trajectory

Since graduating with his engineering degree, Yates has returned to Oakland and the campus that first drew him to Pittsburgh. In 2012, he was recognized as the Distinguished Alumnus in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and in 2022, he received the Swanson School of Engineering’s Distinguished Alumnus Award. On May 2 this year, he delivered the graduate commencement address for the Swanson School.

While honors like these may suggest someone approaching the end of their career, for Yates there’s still much more to do and learn. “I love what I’m doing,” he said. “I’m not done yet.” He still wakes up every morning ready to solve problems in an ever-changing energy sector and improve the lives of the people he serves. 

“I’m grateful to have earned my engineering degree at Pitt,” Yates said. “It changed the trajectory of my life, and I still want to use it to change the trajectory of the communities where we operate and the people who work in our company.”

Teams of two to eight students were mentored by Pitt faculty and local industries, and their projects were judged by Pitt alumni and faculty as well as by industry volunteers. Attendees also voted on their favorite project, which earned the People’s Choice Award.

“Each year, the Swanson School’s many industry partners generously pose real-world problems for the Design Expo,” said Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor in Industrial Engineering. “Seeing how our students work together to solve these challenges, for me, is an endless source of inspiration. This spring, the new venue has only added to the event’s success. We are grateful to the judges, our partners, and the attendees for their support of our students and engineering at Pitt.” 

Visit Flickr for the Expo Photo Album.

Winners below:

Best Overall Project
Vision-Language-Action Model for a Generalist Robotic Manipulator 
Benjamin Carnovale, Samarth Chopra, Alexander McMoil, and Evan Sokolson

People’s Choice Award
Standardizing Starline’s Warehouse Pickings
Maggie Altschaffl, Bikai Fang, Sarai Morato, Xindi Shao, and Matt Tarone

DEPARTMENT AWARDS  

Bioengineering 

1^st Place Improving Bag Value Masks in Emergency Medicine  
Kelly Isola, Connor LaMarca, Ben McCutcheon, Rebecca Miller, Brock Pemberton, Madison Smith, and Erica Taylor 
  
2^nd Place Adjustable Pediatric AFO with Locking Flexion Hinge for Diplegic Cerebral Palsy  
Aritra Ghatak, Semira Kizhakkey, Kshitija Koli, Andrea Moore, Francine Sanoy, and Danielle Yakubisin 
  
3^rd Place Still Grip: Ergonomic Surgical Grip  
Michael Christofidis, Maya Franklin, Ryan Ging, Tarnini Ravikumar, Suyash Sinkar, Peter Wood, and Eileen Zhang  

Civil and Environmental Engineering 

1^st Place Bullock-Pens Park Project 
Erica Beigi, Madelynn Bennett, Brandyn D’Amico, Connor Kane, Paige Mancia, and Nick Rocco

2^nd Place BNY Mellon Center Retrofit 
Trey Blystone, Michael Constantine, Ashley Lucente, Michael Makowski Jr, Daneil Schaub, William Schmidt, and Grace Walker

3^rd Place Sylvan Ave Slope Stabilization Project 
Liam McLaughlin, Fernanda Morales-Viveros, Chris Moran, Cora Nevel, and Daniel Parks

Electrical and Computer Engineering

1^st Place Vision-Language-Action Model for a Generalist Robotic Manipulator
Benjamin Carnovale, Samarth Chopra, Alexander McMoil, and Evan Sokolson

2^nd Place Satellite Tracking Directional Antenna Array (STARR-LOC)
Kaye Baron, Thomas Eckrich, Aidan Gresko, and Adam Nichols

3^rd Place (tie) 
Cheap High-Performance Advanced Storm Equipment (CHASE) 
Rohan Ari, Noah French, Ruizhe Gao, Natan Herzog, and Beryl Sin 

CAVEMAN – Cave Autonomous Vehicle for Exploration, Mapping, and Navigation 
Benjamin Esquieres, Tyler Hansen, Kushal Parekh, Pavel Serhiayenka, and David Zhang

Industrial Engineering

1^st Place Lunar Intelligence and Reconnaissance Initiative (LIRI) 
Connor Cosgrove, Katherine Gonzalez, Felicity Thatcher, Andrea Toader, and Brian Trieu

2^nd Place Standardizing Starline’s Warehouse Pickings 
Maggie Altschaffl, Bikai Fang, Sarai Morato, Xindi Shao, and Matt Tarone

3^rd Place NurturePA: Streamlining Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorder (PMAD) Assessment 
Hannah Bradfield, Xiangyy Cheng, Jordan Henry, Xinkai Li, and Roan McCall

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

1^st Place Vibration Durability of Printed Electronics for UAVs 
Ezra Dugosh, David Engler, Adam Gosden, Nathan Hoffeditz, Minh Nguyen, and Brittany Sadej

2^nd Place (tie) 
Multimodal UAV Detection  
Dmitri Asay, Matthew Houston, Jayden Provance, and Alex Schehadi 

Acoustic Noise Reduction for Urban Homeless Populations  
Rebekah Burns, Ben Fidler, Elizabeth Fillman, Maia Gulley, Brendan Lang, Hannah Muschinski, and Steven Panico

Development of Thermal Management Solutions for AI Datacenters Using High Thermal Conductivity Materials – B  
Lauren Beck, Ryan Carroll, Emma Murphy, Ganesh Selvakumar, Taorui Su, and Ruiqi Wang

Product Realization

1^st Place Wearable Fall Injury Protection via Expandable Foam 
Shane Conlin, Eric Eversbusch, and Kenechukwu Nnake

2^nd Place Alternate (Renewable) Energy Sourcing at Commercial Scale  
Arjun Bains, Bhargav Gadiparthi, John Nelligan, and Brigit O’Bannon

3^rd Place “Smart” Medicine Dispenser  
Jeremy Fresh, Cindy Lkhagvasuren, Jessica Wong, and Danielle Yakubisin

While efforts to reduce energy consumption in modern computing tend to focus on hardware and the energy sources powering large data centers, the University of Pittsburgh’s Amr Mahmoud hopes to increase awareness of another, less targeted source: software. 

Mahmoud, assistant professor of electrical and computing engineering at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, has received an Engineering One Planet Mini-Grant (EOP-MGP) from the American Society for Engineering Education to develop and incorporate educational modules that teach sustainable programming and green electronics, and the impact they can have on the environment and in people’s lives.

“While researching how universities are teaching sustainable computing, I found very little about software,” noted Mahmoud. “Yet a program running on the cloud can use up a lot of energy.”

Mahmoud and his department colleague, Assistant Professor Mohamed Bayoumy, will develop six two-week modules on sustainable electronics and software development. In fall 2025 they will begin using these modules in three core computer engineering courses: Electronic Circuit Design Laboratory, Algorithms for Big Data, and Senior Design.

Mahmoud and Bayoumy also bring a unique perspective to the project—both earned their PhDs in electrical and computer engineering from the Swanson School in 2019.

“Too often we see students designing programs or circuits with only functionality in mind,” said Mahmoud. “With these modules and the focus on sustainability that they will bring to the classroom, we hope to change that.”

Students will encounter the modules in the second, third, and fourth year of their study, which Mahmoud believes will help reinforce sustainability principles. They will learn how to evaluate the carbon footprint of software and how to use coding to make programs as energy efficient as possible. They will develop greener electronics, creating circuits that consume less energy while maintaining functionality.

“I’m honored to receive this grant and to be part of the fourth cohort of the Engineering One Planet Mini-Grant Program,” said Mahmoud. The grant is only awarded to any institution once over the lifetime of the program. “The project aligns so closely with the Pitt Sustainability Plan and with Engineering One Planet’s mission to make sustainability an essential component of engineering.”

Mahmoud hopes to fine tune the modules so that educators anywhere can easily incorporate them into lessons to teach sustainable computing. 

“The ultimate goal is awareness,” Mahmoud noted. “When students graduate and start working, we want them to consider sustainability in whatever they’re designing—whether that’s code or hardware. With this awareness, the next generation of engineers can help ensure a greener planet.”

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell-based therapies have revolutionized the treatment of blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma, demonstrating the power of synthetic signaling receptors for immunotherapy. For these therapies, patient T cells are harvested, engineered with a CAR, and then reintroduced into the patient. However, CAR T cells have been less successful at treating solid tumors. The recognition and infiltration of solid tumors requires new CAR T cell designs.

While researchers continue to explore the most potent configurations, the combinatorial complexity of potential therapeutic lymphocyte designs, including CAR T cells, is vast. Miskov-Zivanov will create a system that will survey the scientific literature and databases to efficiently retrieve and integrate existing expert knowledge with experimental data and recommend more effective CAR T cells and tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs).

Miskov-Zivanov, a computer engineer whose post-doctoral research has been in computational and systems biology, hopes that the automated framework she is developing can reliably accelerate this process. “As a computer engineer," she said, "I am driven to automate complex design processes. I explore how tasks traditionally performed manually by biologists can be streamlined and executed automatically using computational approaches.”

In 2023, Miskov-Zivanov received an NSF EAGER Award to create a tool that uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract information from scientific literature and, with the integration of experimental data, help synthetic biologists engineer new CAR T cells.

Building off that two-year project, she will develop a new system that uses both traditional NLP approaches and more recent large language models (LLM) together with neural networks to read, analyze, and interpret research papers and experimental data and conduct comprehensive in silico experiments on a wide range of cell designs. 

By developing and testing new prompting methods, Miskov-Zivanov hopes that “instead of a researcher having to go through tens of thousands of papers, many that are irrelevant, the system can extract meaningful data and insights.”

Educating future engineers

The extracted information will be presented as knowledge graphs (KGs), which she will further refine and analyze using graph neural networks (GNNs) to predict the most effective therapeutic cell designs. This past year at Pitt, Miskov-Zivanov also introduced a new graduate-level course focused on KGs and the methods for their construction and application. She sees great promise in integrating information and structured knowledge within KGs with data-driven predictions enabled by GNNs, and she aims to uncover novel and meaningful connections and relationships that will significantly advance the engineering of new therapies. Equipping the next generation of engineers with these tools is essential for addressing critical, life-saving research challenges. 

Miskov-Zivanov hopes to build “reliable methodology to engineer and test thousands of designs for immunotherapeutic cells such as TILs and CARs with diverse and potent receptor systems.” Her work seeks to advance immunotherapy while developing new algorithmic processes to identify and present trustworthy, predictive scientific data and research.

“I am so grateful and honored to have received this CAREER Award,” said Miskov-Zivanov. “My interest in immunotherapy began twelve years ago when I read about a young girl whose leukemia was cured by this kind of treatment. Since then, I’ve been inspired to help advance this research. As a computer engineer, I’m especially motivated by opportunities to apply computing to make a meaningful impact in other fields.”

“Our department of electrical and computer engineering is so proud of Professor Natasa Miskov-Zivanov and her latest achievement, the NSF CAREER Award,” said Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, and professor of electrical and computer engineering. “She leads the MeLoDy (Mechanisms and Logic of Dynamics) Laboratory, where her research spans a broad range of cutting-edge topics by leveraging her expertise in digital circuits, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and dynamic systems. Natasa’s new project promises to significantly advance the field of immunotherapy design. She is an innovator in both the laboratory and the classroom, and I am so excited about her future as a rising star in the field.”   

“It is a privilege to recognize Ravi Rahangdale and his inspiring journey,” said Alan George, Department Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “From staying at the YMCA and selling chimney sweeps door to door to attending night school at Pitt to turning a defunct North Carolina transformer manufacturing plant into a bustling company, Ravi embodies the quintessential immigrant story. With his wife, Shashi, he has made a tremendous difference in the lives of so many people through their businesses and many charitable contributions.”

About Ravi Rahangdale

Ravi Rahangdale was born in Central India (later Maharashtra) before India's independence from Great Britain and while World War 2 was still raging. At age 9, he moved away from his village to obtain an education. You will hear many impressive things about Rahangdale, but this is what impresses his grandchildren the most.

He was admitted to Nagpur Science College and Jabalpur Engineering College and was the highest-ranking student in electrical engineering in his state. He began his engineering career in India as a civil servant working for B.H.E.L, where he was responsible for distributing electricity to rural communities.

In 1970, Rahangdale immigrated to the United States. His first job in the U.S. was as a door-to-door salesman.

Rahangdale started his U.S. engineering career at Uptegraph Transformer in Scottdale, PA. His wife, Shashi, and 3-year-old son joined him in 1971. His daughter was born in 1973. He went to night school at the University of Pittsburgh and graduated with a master's degree in electrical engineering in 1974.

After graduating, he moved to Lynchburg, VA, and worked for H.K. Porter Co., now Delta Star. In 1988, at 48, he took a chance and bought the defunct FayTranCo., a small transformer manufacturer in Fayetteville, NC. Rahangdale proved himself by providing high-quality products and services. He was soon able to build Fayetteville Transformer Company's facility in Raeford, NC, with 15 employees.

In 1996, he purchased the Canonsburg, PA, factory that once housed Cooper Industries, formerly McGraw Edison. This larger facility represented another opportunity in the transformer industry. Combined with the expanding plant in Raeford, the new company was named Pennsylvania Transformer Technology, Inc. (PTTI). PTTI manufactures power-class substation transformers of medium and large core-form design. Rahangdale was awarded a Key to the City of Canonsburg in 1998.

Rahangdale has employed as many as 400 employees. He prides himself on never having laid off any employees and on the positive economic impacts of his companies on the rural communities where they operated.

In November 2023, Rahangdale and Shashi retired after 35 years, selling their business to Quanta Services.

In January 2024, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper awarded Rahangdale the Order of the Long Leaf Pine award, the governor's highest honor. The award is for persons who have made significant contributions to the state and their communities through their exemplary service and exceptional accomplishments.

Through the businesses he and his wife built, they have helped hundreds of people through jobs and millions through access to electricity, and they have made numerous charitable contributions. They have raised two children—Sandeep (A&S ’89) and Lisa—and have helped raise their five grandchildren.

“It is my great privilege to recognize Robert ‘Bob’ Colwell with our 2025 Distinguished Alumnus Award,” said Michele Manuel, U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering. “A native Pittsburgher who followed his dream of becoming an electrical engineer, Bob has challenged the status quo and relentlessly pursued innovation—be it here at Pitt where he earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, at Bell Labs, or at Intel. Indeed, through his work as chief architect of the Pentium Pro microarchitecture as well as the Pentium II and Pentium III processors at Intel, Bob helped fundamentally transform microchip design.

“Already recognized as the 2000 Distinguished Alumnus in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Swanson School, Bob reflects a spirit that I see throughout Pittsburgh and our university. I can’t think of a more deserving recipient of this highest honor.”

About Robert P. “Bob” Colwell

Dr. Robert P. “Bob” Colwell is a distinguished electrical engineer known for pioneering microprocessor architecture work. A Pittsburgh native, he earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 1977 and later obtained a master's and doctorate degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. His early career included roles at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Perq Systems, and Multiflow Computer, where he worked on very long instruction word supercomputers.

In 1990, Colwell joined Intel and became the chief architect of the P6 (Pentium Pro) microarchitecture, as well as the Pentium II and Pentium III processors, and initiated the Pentium 4 project. Recognized for his technical expertise, he was named an Intel Fellow in 1996. His contributions played a key role in shaping modern microprocessor design. In 2000, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award for the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh for his outstanding achievements in the field.

After leaving Intel in 2001, Colwell focused on consulting and writing. He authored The Pentium Chronicles, offering insights into microprocessor development, and contributed as the “At Random” columnist for IEEE Computer Magazine. In 2005, he received the ACM Eckert-Mauchly Award, and in 2006, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his transformative work in computer architecture. In 2012, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is an inventor or co-inventor on 40 U.S. patents.

Beyond engineering, Colwell has diverse interests, including restoring analog music synthesizers, woodworking, and playing guitar. His legacy continues to influence the field of microprocessor design and computer architecture.  

According to the NSF, the GRFP helps to ensure the quality, vitality, and strength of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States. The five-year Fellowship provides three years of financial support, including an annual stipend of $37,000. This year’s GRFP cohort includes 1,000 students from a wide spectrum of U.S. higher education.

In addition to the 1,000 fellowships, the NSF also named a record 3,018 applicants as honorable mentions — an award that does not provide funding but which young researchers can add to their résumés to boost their standing and reapply the following year. Six current and Swanson School students and one alumna received this honor.

“The GRFP is a highly competitive award and we’re proud of our winners and honorable mentions this year,” said Michele V. Manuel, U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering at Pitt. “This funding provides critical financial support for students to expand their research that benefits all of us. Even the Honorable Mention validates the importance of each student’s application and future potential." 

This year’s Swanson School awardees are:

Current Students

Heather M. Phillips, Engineering Science/Electrical and Computer Engineering 
Temperature-Piloted Area-Selective Atomic Layer Deposition with Thermoelectric Control

As high-performance computing drives breakthroughs in fields like AI, healthcare, and energy, the demand for efficient electronics is rapidly growing. Heather’s proposed research meets this challenge by advancing low-power semiconductor devices. Her work focuses on leveraging thermoelectric devices based on the Peltier effect to enhance thermally selective atomic layer deposition (TePASA), enabling precise control over material interfaces. This project builds on research she began as a DAAD RISE fellow with the Blick Group in Hamburg, Germany. “I’m grateful to so many faculty members at Pitt for guiding me on my research journey,” Heather said. “From developing technical research skills in Paul Ohodnicki’s lab to learning what it means to be an effective educator while collaborating with Mohamed Bayoumy on curriculum development in ECE, I’ve had the support to grow as both a researcher and educator here at Pitt.”

Katelin C. Rahn, Bioengineering 
Relationship between the Lipidome and Hemostatic Platelet Function in Traumatic Vessel Injury 

Traumatic injury is a growing area of interest within clinical and engineering research, and the assessment and development of new technologies to reduce the impact of traumatic hemorrhage in patients is one of Katelin’s goals as a PhD student. Her proposed research utilizes a custom microfluidic device to characterize platelet, von Willebrand Factor, and lipid interaction in trauma patient blood samples. Given the magnitude of preventable deaths in trauma and lack of clinical devices and therapies specifically idealized in this patient population, innovation in this space is crucial and requires novel approaches and discoveries. “This research wouldn’t be possible without my advisor Dr. Susan Shea, my mentor Dr. Matthew Neal, and the support from the Pitt Bioengineering department,” Katelin added.

Alumna (current school in parentheses) 

Annette G. Thompson, Chemical and Petroleum Engineering (University of Colorado at Boulder) 
Integrated Computational Approach for Guided Enzyme Design in Fatty Acid Synthesis

Annette's research focuses on understanding and redesigning the molecular “assembly lines” cells use to produce chemical precursors, with an emphasis on fatty acid synthesis. These systems rely on helper proteins to guide substrates through precise steps, yet how enzymes recognize the right carrier protein-substrate complexes remains unclear. Shes use molecular dynamics simulations and kinetic modeling to study these interactions and identify engineering targets to control product formation. By combining computational approaches with experimental collaboration, this work aims to accelerate the design of biotechnologies that produce a broader range of useful chemicals—more efficiently and precisely than nature alone. “I’m deeply grateful to my advisors, Dr. Jerome Fox and Dr. Michael Shirts, whose support and complementary expertise have been instrumental in shaping this research and enabling these collaborations,” Annette said. “I am also thankful for my time in Dr. Lei Li's lab at Pitt, where I gained invaluable experience and discovered my passion for graduate research.”

Honorable Mentions

Jacqueline Avila, Bioengineering 
Samarth Chopra, Electrical and Computer Engineering 
Kaelyn McClain, Bioengineering 
Collin Preszler, Bioengineering 
Stacia Subick, Chemical and Petroleum Engineering 
Andrew Stricklin, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Alumna Honorable Mention 

Stephanie Manasterski, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science (University of Alabama Huntsville)

Innomotics, a globally leading provider of electric motors and large drives systems, and the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, a university innovating processes and designs shaping the world, have awarded this year’s $10,000 Innomotics Peter Hammond Scholarship to Todd Marzec, a graduate student in the Swanson School’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. 

Announcement of the sixth annual scholarship comes during the 30th anniversary of the Perfect Harmony drive, Innomotics’ market-leading medium voltage drive – a high-power machine that 
controls the speed of large motors – invented by the award’s namesake and still built in New Kensington, Pennsylvania today. For the past 30 years, the Innomotics Perfect Harmony GH180 has stood strong as a leader in the medium voltage drive sector with over 25,000 units installed globally in the world’s most critical applications. 

The scholarship is presented annually to outstanding graduate students pursuing studies in electric power engineering who exemplify academic excellence, innovative research, and characteristics seen within Hammond while practicing. 

“I am incredibly honored to receive the Innomotics Peter Hammond Scholarship. This recognition not only validates my research efforts in power electronics and magnetics design but also highlights the importance of industry collaboration in advancing technology. The opportunity to engage with leading manufacturers like Innomotics provides insight into real-world applications of our research, helping to bridge the gap between academia and industry. Peter Hammond’s contributions to power engineering have had a lasting impact on the industry, and to be recognized in connection with his legacy is truly meaningful,” Marzec said. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical and computer engineering from Pitt and is pursuing a doctorate in the field. Marzec’s research interests include the design and optimization of magnetic components for power-dense electronic circuits, low- and medium-voltage power conversion equipment, power electronics for harsh environments and microgrid applications, and grid integration of renewable energy. 

Annually, Marzec presents efforts to the Advanced Magnetics for Power and Energy Development (AMPED) Consortium to drive miniaturization of high-power magnetics through advanced modeling and multi-objective optimization techniques. Such efforts are helping organizations to drive towards high power and high switching frequency ( > 1 MHz) designs that may one day be translated into practice. 

“Training the next generation of advanced electrical engineering talent takes resources beyond just the advisors within the school of engineering to balance the students for practice,” said Brandon Grainger, Eaton faculty fellow, associate professor and Director of the Electric Power Technologies Laboratory. “We are always grateful for the support of regional manufacturers like Innomotics who financially support the local talent and value the engagement through technical interactions. This always inspires and motivates the graduate students with their higher education pursuits.” 

“It’s especially gratifying to award the Peter Hammond Scholarship during the 30th anniversary of the Perfect Harmony drive which revolutionized power conversion,” said Kevin Wissner, Innomotics Director of Research & Development. “This scholarship marks our dedication to nurturing future engineering students and encouraging them to pursue bold ideas that could change the way we live and work tomorrow.” 

Innomotics Perfect Harmony drive, comprising a series of interconnected cells to generate medium voltage power, has been renowned for three decades as the most trusted drive worldwide for its reliability, efficiency and ease of use. This global-leading product is innovated, engineered and manufactured at Innomotics’ New Kensington, Pennsylvania, plant, home to 400 employees.

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“Last semester, with Professor Prashant Kumta, we mentored Dr. Okhunjon Sayfidinov, a visiting scholar from Navoi, who was supported by the American Councils for International Education,” said Tan. “Okhunjon and his colleagues are looking to expand their research capabilities at the university, and he had the opportunity to see how Pitt operates.  

“He was here with us for three months, and we did a lot of research work with the instruments in our facility. With the technology we have here and our staff, it was a productive time.” 

To expand the work started in the fall, Tan applied for and received the Fulbright Specialist Program Award, which promotes collaboration between scholars and institutions. Central to the Fulbright Program’s mission is bridging divides and fostering connections across the world—objectives that Tan values.  

For 16 years, he has supported hundreds of multidisciplinary research projects in nanoscience and engineering with the Nanoscale Fabrication and Characterization Facility, and he trains students on research using electron-beam-based and x-ray-based equipment and materials. His own research studying structures at the micro to atomic scale is highly collaborative and interdisciplinary, and he enjoys working with researchers in different fields, many from other countries. “By establishing broader connections and bringing together different voices,” said Tan, “you can amplify the impact of research.” 

Of this opportunity, Tan said, “It’s an honor to receive this award from such a prestigious organization. It wouldn’t be possible without the support of my colleagues and the resources that we have here at Pitt. I’m excited to learn more about their program and facility—and to bring what we have here and extend our impact.”

For Steven Jacobs, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Swanson School of Engineering, this recognition reflects the commitment of student leaders to develop a thriving honor society. Jacobs, who advises along with professor Amro El-Jaroudi, began supporting Beta Delta eleven years ago, after participation had decreased.

“Student organizations become successful when there are students in leadership positions who take the initiative to increase the level of activity,” said Jacobs. “And that’s what’s happened in recent years with officials like Sabrina [Helbig] and now with Jacob [Jones].”

In 2018, when she was a third-year undergraduate student, Sabrina Helbig was elected as a Beta Delta officer and has “served in about every role since.” After moving into the master’s program and now pursuing her PhD at Pitt, she continued serving as president until stepping down last year.

“It was a great experience for my development as a leader and to learn how to build community,” Helbig said, “but at first, we didn’t have much momentum. It took a few years.”

By helping to recruit other engaged officers, the honor society grew its membership and became increasingly active in the Swanson School and community. Two years ago, Helbig and fellow officers contacted the IEEE-HKN chapters at Carnegie Mellon University (Sigma) and Penn State (Epsilon), and the three organizations met at Carnegie Mellon for an interchapter event, which included a radio-frequency fox hunt. “We had the idea and took the initiative to connect with other chapters. It was the first time that it had happened.”

Last year, Pitt’s chapter continued the outreach, and Penn State’s chapter visited Pitt to tour the school, share a meal, and network with fellow engineers.

Now under the leadership of new president Jacob Jones, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering, Pitt’s Beta Delta has again invited Penn State to visit. “It’s a chance to learn about other programs—the different curriculum and opportunities,” said Jones.

In addition to connecting chapters, Helbig and Jones have helped to increase student engagement in the Swanson School and create opportunities for students beginning in engineering to learn from upper-level and graduate students. “We’ve found,” said Jones, “that through mentorship, the first year and sophomore students have been more comfortable asking upper-level students more open-ended questions that can help them as they’re deciding which field they want to pursue.”

Beta Delta hosts tutoring and study sessions during exam time as well as informal events for students to connect—for example, this month the chapter will host a Python workshop. “We’re also developing a resource repository—a website that students can use to get extra practice in PCB design, getting ahead with simulation work and other aspects that might not be covered in coursework,” Jones said.

“This has traditionally been an undergraduate organization, but recently there has been more active involvement by graduate students,” said Jacobs. “That’s been a great new development. Anytime you can get students helping other students, it makes such a difference.”

Pitt’s Beta Delta chapter was one of only 22 chapters to receive the award. Of this recognition, Helbig said, “It’s a proud moment—it’s the second year in a row that we’ve won this award, and I don’t know if we ever got it before that. This one really shows that we’re staying active, doing something purposeful. It’s been great to watch new officers take the torch and carry it forward.”

Pitt’s Beta Delta chapter will be recognized at the 2025 Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) Annual Conference March 20 – 24, 2025 in Norfolk, VA.