Washington State University Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture recognized outstanding students at its annual convocation ceremony on April 8. The event was sponsored by the Boeing Company. Honored award winners included:
Outstanding Sophomore: Genevieve Kochel
Kochel was selected as a Software Engineering Fellow by Uber and has started an internship with Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories. She served as an undergraduate TA for an introductory computer science course and is contributing to research projects from two research labs. She is planning for a study abroad semester in Fall 2025 in Sweden. Her nominators think she’s a superstar student, whose leadership abilities are infectious.
Outstanding Junior: Martin Hundrup
Hundrup is a teaching assistant for three courses. He’s also the President of the Game Development Club and has an internship at SEL. He also works as an undergraduate research assistant at WSU’s Software Engineering Lab, where he has worked on a Department of Homeland Security-funded project. His nominators state that he is humble, always enthusiastic, self-motivated, and an outstanding role model and inspiration.
Outstanding Senior: Molly Iverson
A member of the President’s Honor Roll for every semester she has been at WSU, Iverson was also the Outstanding Junior in Computer Science last year. As Vice President of WSU’s Girls Who Code Club, she led and organized events and mentored women in computer science. She is a recipient of the Gary Steele Scholarship, the Frederic P. Emery Endowed Scholarship, and the John W. and Anna M. Scott Scholarship. She served as an undergraduate research assistant and as an undergraduate teaching assistant in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “Molly is a student that we want people to associate with Washington State University,” said one of her nominators. “She is passionate, fearless, an endless learner, and with a positive attitude. We need more future engineers like her!”
Outstanding Teaching Assistant for grading/office hours: Azza Fadhel
This year’s Outstanding Teaching Assistant for Grading & Office Hours received several words of thanks from her students, who speak highly of Fadhel’s well-rounded ability to TA. One said, “One of the things I appreciated most about her responsiveness. She was always responsive to emails and always provided clear, timely, and well thought-out responses.” Another said, “She also went above and beyond her duties, offering additional resources, organizing review sessions, and providing tailored guidance to students who needed extra help.”
Outstanding Teaching Assistant — Teaching/Instruction: Funso Oje
Oje earned an overall score of 4.6 out of 5 and highly positive comments in end-of-semester course evaluations that students completed in both years he served as a TA. One of his students said that he is very good at giving tutorials and his further explanation of the material was much appreciated. Said another: “His tutorials were great! And he left good feedback on assignments and was very helpful.”
Outstanding Research Assistant: Gaurav Narang
Narang has done exciting, novel, and high impact research at the intersection of manycore systems design and machine learning. His nominators believe that he has the potential to be an intellectual leader in computing systems research and has already demonstrated the abilities needed to be a successful postdoc/faculty at a strong research university. Gaurav has published five top-tier journal papers and four top-tier conference papers, including a Best Paper Award. He has helped write several grant proposals including one funded from the National Science Foundation.
Outstanding Dissertation:
Harsh Sharma won a total of three best paper awards at the IEEE/ACM Embedded Systems Week Conference, the top conference in embedded systems. His nominators believe that his work will be adopted by industry leaders, including Intel and AMD.
Jing Shang’s research has focused CdTe semiconductor properties for solar cells. In her work, she led multiple projects that were successfully funded. She published six papers, four of which are as the first author.
