The EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) in IEEE program, administered by IEEE Educational Activities, has launched the Excellent EPICS in IEEE Contributor Awards. The recognitions honor this system’s excellent college students and college volunteers in Wonderful Group Chief and Wonderful School Advisor classes.
The awards acknowledge people whose management, mentorship, and dedication have meaningfully superior the affect of EPICS projects. Candidates should show clear, measurable contributions that elevate each the scholar expertise and the outcomes delivered to group companions. Reviewers additionally take into account different awards, publications, displays, {and professional} achievements that reinforce the nominee’s credibility and management.
Recipients should show excellent project management and documentation, sturdy mentoring and collaboration, and high-quality outcomes.
Listed here are this yr’s recipients.
Group Chief Award
Surattana Kakay is a computer engineering pupil at Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi (RMUTT), situated in IEEE Area 10 (Asia Pacific). Kakay, an IEEE pupil member, was honored for guiding her workforce within the design, growth, and implementation of the Automatic Water Level Control System project, which aids rice farmers in Thailand.
Because the workforce chief, Kakay performed a pivotal position in reworking the scholar initiative into an operational, group‑centered resolution. Her inspiration was purpose-driven, she says.
“My motivation was to use engineering to actual agricultural challenges, like water scarcity and climate change,” she says. “I wished to bridge superior expertise with the tangible wants of native farmers.”
She managed the venture finish to finish—coordinating workflow, assigning duties based mostly on workforce members’ strengths, and guaranteeing every section of growth aligned with the technical street map she created. She served as the first liaison between the scholar workforce, the Pathum Thani Rice Research Center, and farmers to verify the system was sensible and consumer‑pleasant, and that it addressed group wants.
“Watching college students develop as they design options that enhance lives has been each inspiring and deeply humbling.” —Elizabeth Vidal-Duarte
Beneath her management, the workforce developed a low‑price IoT‑based mostly alternate wetting and drying (AWD) system that lets farmers remotely monitor and management water ranges in rice paddies utilizing smartphones. Kakay oversaw the mixing of noncontact laser time‑of‑flight sensors to face up to harsh subject situations, and she or he championed the usage of long-range expertise linked to a free group Wi‑Fi community to get rid of Internet service charges.
The outcomes have been transformative, Kakay says.
“Our AWD system reduces water consumption by 63 % and methane emissions by 7 % yearly,” she says. “Turning an academic assignment into a real‑world solution that delivers measurable, sustainable outcomes has been extremely significant.”
Her achievements superior sustainability for Thailand’s most water‑intensive crop whereas demonstrating the potential of accessible engineering options.
Past technical innovation, Kakay cultivated a tradition of studying, continuity, and empowerment inside her workforce. She launched a mentorship framework to help future pupil cohorts. She and her workforce produced tutorial papers, visible media, and displays to speak the venture’s worth to scientific audiences in addition to most of the people.
“Surattana Kakay is a pivotal determine in turning innovation into actuality and delivering tangible advantages to the group,” says IEEE Member Thanasin Bunnam, her college advisor and an assistant professor at RMUTT.
Kakay’s management journey turned a private milestone, she says: “Main this venture remodeled me from a pupil right into a workforce chief. As a feminine engineer, it empowered me to advocate for women in engineering and present that gender isn’t any barrier to technical excellence.”
By way of her steering, the AWD venture developed from a classroom task into an answer that illustrates IEEE’s mission of advancing expertise for humanity.
School Advisor Awards
Navid Shaghaghi, a lecturer and researcher at Santa Clara University, in California, was acknowledged for his dedication to integrating service learning into engineering education and fostering pupil innovation that advantages underserved communities in IEEE Region 6 (Western USA).
Throughout his greater than six years of engagement with EPICS in IEEE, Shaghaghi, an IEEE senior member, has demonstrated distinctive management in advancing sustainable, human‑centered engineering via the lengthy‑working Hydration Automation (HA) project and the HiveSpy initiative. They’re a part of Santa Clara College’s Frugal Innovation Hub and EPIC Research Laboratory.
Since 2019, Shaghaghi has served as principal investigator for the HA venture, guiding its evolution from prototype to a sturdy, subject‑examined irrigation automation system that helps small ranches and group farms in California.
The HA venture is a low‑price system that helps cut back water waste by monitoring soil moisture and automating watering. By combining ultrasonic tank sensing, soil sensors, and ongoing technical help, the venture improves effectivity, lowers operational prices, and promotes extra sustainable urban agriculture.
Beneath Shaghaghi’s steering, greater than 30 undergraduate and graduate college students have gained hands-on expertise in IoT growth, subject deployment, testing, and shopper collaboration.
His dedication to frugal innovation and human‑centric design has resulted in options which are minimalist, reasonably priced, sustainable, moveable, and rugged—usually difficult typical approaches to agricultural expertise.
“Turning an educational task into an actual‑world resolution that delivers measurable, sustainable outcomes has been extremely significant.” —Surattana Kakay
The HA venture has produced new analysis publications and earned recognition, together with a third-place end by Shaghaghi’s graduate college students at this yr’s IEEE Rising Stars Project Showcase. Throughout the annual occasion, college students and young professionals current their technical improvements to trade leaders and friends.
The HiveSpy venture is a low‑price, body‑degree IoT monitoring system that helps beekeepers automate labor‑intensive duties and forestall hive swarming by monitoring manufacturing yield in actual time. By gathering body‑weight information and producing optimized harvest schedules, the system reduces handbook workload whereas bettering the hive’s well being and boosting honey output.
Shaghaghi says his mentorship has been formed by the realities of pupil turnover, a problem he embraces with optimism and flexibility.
“The transient nature of pupil groups is a problem however one you need to embrace, bear‑hug model,” he says. “By energizing your pupil group and welcoming new contributors, you’ll be amazed by the good options they create.”
His philosophy has allowed him to domesticate a thriving pipeline of pupil innovators, he says, and he has strengthened his personal skilled follow as effectively.
“I’ve been mentoring EPICS in IEEE college students since 2019,” he says. “It has taught me resilience and tips on how to function on a good funds whereas nonetheless delivering actual‑world outcomes.”
Past the technical achievements, Shaghaghi’s work displays a dedication to humanitarian expertise and repair studying. Because the founder and director of the EPIC (Moral, Pragmatic, and Clever Laptop) lab, he has constructed a various, interdisciplinary group devoted to innovation for the good thing about humanity.
For him, he says, the EPICS in IEEE award carries profound that means: “Receiving this award validates my deepest conviction in humanitarian technology analysis and strengthens my dedication to service‑studying training.”
His college students echo these sentiments. One workforce member mentioned “Professor Shaghaghi is an engine of progress who retains forging forward.”
By way of his management, Shaghaghi has created an everlasting mannequin of mentorship, innovation, and group partnership that’s serving to to form the following era of socially accountable engineers.
Elizabeth Vidal-Duarte is well known for her impactful mentorship and management in increasing EPICS in IEEE engagement throughout Peru and IEEE Area 9 (Latin America and Caribbean). Vidal-Duarte, a analysis professor at San Agustin National University Arequipa, in Peru, is a school advisor and technical mentor for 2 EPICS in IEEE tasks. She inspired college students to use to the EPICS program, helped them determine group wants, and supported them in crafting proposals grounded in service‑studying ideas.
Beneath her management, the scholars developed a useful soft robotic glove used at Clínica San Juan de Dios to assist sufferers enhance their fine-motor abilities. The clinic’s therapists use the system to measure the vary of movement of joints at the start and finish of every affected person’s therapy session to enhance their assessments. In contrast with conventional handbook measurements utilizing a goniometer, the glove considerably reduces analysis time and allows digitally recorded information, bettering medical effectivity and decision-making.
The second venture is an emotion‑recognition system for individuals with visible impairment. The AI‑powered wearable helps acknowledge an individual’s feelings via actual‑time facial‑expression detection and haptic feedback.
The venture has resulted within the “Emotion-Conscious Assistive System With Wearable Haptic Suggestions for Visible Impairment” analysis paper, which is to be offered on the IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems, to be held from 3 to five June in Limassol, Cyprus.
Vidal-Duarte’s mentorship extends past the classroom. She visits rehabilitation facilities and clinics to seek out individuals with visible impairments to make sure that the applied sciences she helps to develop meet their wants.
“EPICS in IEEE has moved me past educating ideas to actually residing engineering as a device for human affect,” Vidal-Duarte says. “Watching college students develop as they design options that enhance lives has been each inspiring and deeply humbling.”
All through the event of each tasks, Vidal-Duarte supplied sustained technical and organizational steering, serving to college students outline necessities, construction work plans, and overcome challenges in prototyping, testing, and validation.
Reflecting on the broader affect of EPICS, she says this system has given her “greater than methodologies and instruments—it has given me perspective, function, and a world group that consistently challenges me to develop as a mentor and as a human being.”
Her mentorship fostered not solely technical excellence but additionally empathy, moral consciousness, {and professional} maturity amongst her college students, she says. She guided them in getting ready articles for submission to IEEE conferences, interdisciplinary collaboration, and hands-on fieldwork that bridged idea and actual‑world constraints.
“Her fixed help, her perception in every pupil’s potential, and her dedication to growing leaders who make a distinction outline [her] as a school advisor,” says Valentina Chabilla, an EPICS in IEEE pupil workforce member.
The EPICS recognition displays her ardour for educating, her dedication to the group, and her affect on tasks and college students. Her dedication to accessible, sustainable innovation strengthened partnerships between the college and group teams, benefiting underserved populations.
“Receiving this award is each an honor and a accountability,” she says. “It jogs my memory of the actual affect engineering can have on individuals’s lives and strengthens my dedication to guiding college students in creating significant change.”
Her management continues to encourage college students to view engineering not simply as a self-discipline but additionally as a strong drive for inclusion, dignity, and social affect.
Advancing the mission
The Wonderful Contributor Award recipients exemplify one of the best of EPICS in IEEE. By way of their management, they’ve strengthened the bridge between engineering training and group service, inspiring college students to make use of their abilities to create sustainable, actual‑world impacts.
As EPICS continues to increase its world attain, the contributions of Kakay, Shaghaghi, and Vidal-Duarte function highly effective reminders of what’s attainable when educators, volunteers, and college students work collectively to enhance the lives of others via engineering.
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