“We are here today to honor the best of the College of Computing in 2016-17,” said Zvi Galil, John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing, in calling the event order. “This is also the event where I get to talk to the friends and family of our computing community about all the great things that happened during the year.”

Taking home the top honors among the faculty this year were professors Tom Conte and Irfan Essa, of the schools of Computer Science and Interactive Computing, respectively, who each received the Dean’s Award for launching new research centers. Conte now directs the Center for Research into Novel Computing Hierarchies (CRNCH), while Essa is the founding director of the Center for Machine Learning at Georgia Tech (ML@GT).

Following is a list of all 2017 winners by category.

Undergraduate Students

• Outstanding Freshman: Clifford Panos
• Outstanding Sophomore: Marc Marone
• Outstanding Junior/EDS Rising Senior: Aditya Vishwanath & Sean Flanagan
• Outstanding Senior: Jessica Rosenfield & Chelsi Cocking
• Outstanding Undergraduate Research: Angela Vujic
• Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Assistant: Saurabh Kumar

Graduate Students

• Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant: Will Johnson
• Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant: Xin Zhang
• MS Research Award: Richard Li
• CS 7001 Research Project Award: Si Chen & David Heath
• Donald V. Jackson Fellowship: Akhilesh Srikanth, Laurane Saliou, Devavret Makkar
• Marshall D. Williamson Fellowship: Varun Agrawal, Samyukta Sherugar, Rachel LeRoy

Faculty

• Outstanding Instructor: David Joyner
• Outstanding Post-Doctoral Research: Anup Rao
• Outstanding Research Scientist: Barbara Ericson, Jason Riedy
• Outstanding Research Faculty: Rosa Arriaga
• Outstanding Junior Faculty Research: Hadi Esmaeilzadeh
• Outstanding Senior Faculty Research: Gregory Abowd
• Outstanding Faculty Mentor: Dana Randall
• William A. “gus” Baird Teaching Award: Ashok Goel
• Lockheed Excellence in Teaching Award: Taesoo Kim
• Lockheed Inspirational Young Faculty Award: Neha Kumar
• James C. Edenfield Faculty Fellowship: Bistra Dilkina
• James D. Lester III Family Award: Taesoo Kim
• Dean’s Award: Tom Conte & Irfan Essa

Staff

• Outstanding Non-Supervisory Staff & Service Award: Kenya Payton
• Outstanding Supervisory Staff & Service Award: Ashtria Jordan
• Outstanding Staff for Community Leadership: Kyla Reese

Click here for a comprehensive list of previous years’ award winners.