Alumnus of the Year Award
Fang Lu
Technical Director and Fellow
Broadcom Inc.
Fang Lu M.S. ’88, Engr. ’89, Ph.D. ’92 is a fellow and longtime technical director at Broadcom Inc., where he designs algorithms and architectures for digital signal processing and high-speed integrated circuits. Lu joined the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering in 1986 as a graduate student, earning his master’s, Engineer and doctoral degrees.
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Before his graduate studies, Lu received his bachelor’s in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University and taught electronics in the Taiwan Army Missile Corps for two years as an Officer of Honor. At UCLA, he was advised by Henry Samueli, a professor who later became his boss at Broadcom. He authored more than 20 papers and received the 1991-1992 Predoctoral Fellowship Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Solid-State Circuits Council.
After UCLA, Lu became one of the first two full-time employees of Broadcom Corporation co-founded by Samueli. Now known as Broadcom Inc., the startup evolved into a global leader in semiconductor and software development. As technical director, Lu has been instrumental to the company’s major scientific achievements. In 1998, he led the team that developed the world’s first single-chip, cable-modem headend receiver, a device that processes TV and internet signals for distribution to subscribers. He also oversaw the development of six generations of cable-modem headend transceiver integrated circuits, now used in most U.S. residential broadband systems.
Lu has been a member of IEEE since 1993 and served on the Technical Program Committee of IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference from 1994 to 1999. He is the inventor or co-inventor of more than 45 issued and pending patents.
Over the years, Lu has continued to support UCLA Samueli, establishing two graduate student fellowships and an optics and quantum electronics research laboratory. He has also endowed a faculty chair and given a gift of $1 million to set up research funds in the Bioengineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering departments.
Professional Achievement Award
Dariush Divsalar
Senior Research Scientist and Fellow
JPL
Dariush Divsalar M.S. ’75, Engr. ’77, Ph.D. ’78, a senior research scientist and fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has been at the forefront of advanced deep-space communications systems and space exploration missions since joining the lab in 1978, the year he earned his doctorate in electrical engineering from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering.
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A triple Bruin, he also received an engineer degree in 1977 and a master’s degree in 1975 in the same field.
At JPL, Divsalar has developed coding and signal modulation techniques that extended the range, capacity and data reliability of space communication systems. Advances from his work have been incorporated into NASA missions and applications ranging from commercial satellite transmissions to modern wireless communications. From 1986 to 1996, Divsalar was a lecturer at UCLA Samueli. Since 2012, he has been an adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering, teaching digital communication systems and serving on Ph.D. dissertation committees. Drawing on his JPL experience, he has introduced students to real-world challenges in digital communication systems, connecting scalable technologies with academic training.
Divsalar has received numerous honors, including the NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the agency’s highest award, in recognition of his contributions to space communications. He has also received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Alexander Graham Bell Medal. In 2024, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest professional honors granted to American engineers. A fellow of IEEE, he holds 30 U.S. patents and has authored more than 300 technical papers. He also co-authored a book and contributed to three others.
Rising Professional Achievement
Capella Kerst
Founder and CEO
geCKo Materials
Capella Kerst M.S. ’14 is the founder and CEO of geCKo Materials, a technology company specializing in bio-inspired adhesives. Inspired by the way geckos cling to walls with microscopic hairs, Kerst developed an adhesive that became the foundation of geCKo Materials.
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She earned a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from UC Berkeley, a master’s degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from UCLA Samueli and a doctorate in mechanical engineering from Stanford.
The ultra-strong adhesive developed by geCKo is designed to be environmentally friendly, reusable, residue-free and functions across extreme temperatures with minimal force required for application or removal. Under Kerst’s leadership, the company has grown rapidly, counting global automakers and national space agencies among its clients. The firm’s adhesive technology has been deployed on the International Space Station and is currently utilized in active Space Force missions. In 2024, geCKo Materials was named Disruptive Startup of the Year by Startup Grind, and Kerst received Startup Grind’s Female Founder of the Year award. That same year, the company was a runner-up at the Startup Battlefield at the TechCrunch Disrupt and earned recognition on UCLA’s Bruin Business 100 list.
As a graduate student at UCLA, Kerst co-founded the student-led hackathon organization LA Hacks. Despite her busy career, she has remained committed to supporting future engineers, including serving as a mentor for LA Hacks and Hacker Fund, a nonprofit organization that grew out of LA Hacks. Since its inception, Hacker Fund has provided mentorship and financial support to more than 60,000 students, helping them develop coding and problem-solving skills.
Alumni Service Award
Yue Du
Director of Digital and Data systems
Caltrol Inc.
Yue Du ’10 is the director of digital and data systems at Caltrol Inc., an industrial automation and process control company. In this role, Du supports manufacturing across a wide range of industries, including pharmaceuticals, utilities, oil and gas, and food and beverage.
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He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from UCLA Samueli in 2010. As a student, he was actively involved in the school community — a commitment he has continued as an alum.
Since 2016, Du has served on the governing board of the Engineering Alumni Association (EAA) of UCLA Samueli. For the past eight years, he has chaired the association’s Student Projects Committee, directing alumni support for high-quality student projects. Under his leadership, the committee improved the transparency of the review process, broadened alumni participation in numbers and geographic reach, and significantly expanded student access to alumni mentorship and funding. These efforts strengthened connections between students and alumni while ensuring fairness in funding decisions, ultimately doubling both the number of projects supported and the total amount of alumni funding distributed.
Du’s contributions extend well beyond the EAA. He has mentored chemical and biomolecular engineering students, given guest lectures, and led résumé review and career fair preparation workshops. For more than five years, he has also served as a campus recruiter liaison, helping UCLA students secure internships and full-time roles at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, where he previously managed IT operations. His support reaches across UCLA Samueli, including the Biomedical Engineering Society, the Women in Engineering program and the Engineering Society of the University of California.
Eon Instrumentation, Inc. Excellence in Teaching Award
Sriram Sankararaman
Professor
Computer Science, UCLA Samueli
Sriram Sankararaman is a professor of computer science at UCLA Samueli. He also holds joint appointments as a professor of human genetics and of computational medicine in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is a member of the Bioinformatics Interdepartmental Graduate Program.
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Sankararaman teaches upper-division and graduate courses that are in high demand, and has played a key role in curriculum development. As co-director of the bioinformatics minor, he has continually strengthened the program. His courses on machine learning and its applications are well regarded by students across UCLA.
In addition to teaching, Sankararaman leads the Machine Learning and Genomics Lab, which develops and applies highly scalable statistical tools from computer science to analyze multidimensional human genome data. His research has identified disease-associated genes in humans, revealed interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals, and developed guidelines for sharing genetic data without compromising privacy.
His work has been featured in major media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and the BBC. Sankararaman has received numerous awards for his discoveries, including a National Science Foundation CAREER award, a National Institutes of Health Outstanding Investigator Award, and fellowships from Microsoft Research, the Sloan Foundation, the Okawa Foundation and the UCLA Society of Hellman Fellows. He previously received the Northrop Grumman Excellence in Teaching Award, which is reserved for junior faculty at UCLA Samueli. He earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and his doctorate in computer science from UC Berkeley, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School.
Northrop Grumman Excellence in Teaching Award
Tyler Clites
Assistant Professor
Bioengineering, UCLA Samueli
Tyler Clites is an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and bioengineering at UCLA Samueli, with a joint appointment in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine.
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Clites teaches classes in mechanical and bionic systems engineering across undergraduate and graduate levels, emphasizing real-world engineering and problem-solving. His revamping of MAE 82, Mathematics of Engineering, significantly improved students’ mastery of the material with hands-on assignments that push students to solve real problems in robotics. His two-quarter senior capstone design course pairs mechanical engineering students with clinicians from the medical school to tackle current health care challenges.
Since joining UCLA in 2020, Clites’ classes have consistently received some of the highest student evaluation scores. At UCLA, Clites leads the Anatomical Engineering Group, exploring the integration of body and machine to achieve synergistic bionic performance. His research group has developed a new class of orthopaedic implants with the potential to last a lifetime within the body, as well as new technologies to improve the connection between people with amputated limbs and their prosthetic devices
His work has been featured at TED, in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and on CBS and CNN. Among the honors Clites has received are a National Institutes of Health New Innovator Award and recognition as a 2018 STAT Wunderkind and a member of Forbes’ 2018 30 Under 30 list. Clites earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering sciences from Harvard University and a doctorate from the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan.
Edward K. Rice Outstanding Doctoral Student Award
Jaime De Anda ’15, Ph.D. ’24
Doctoral Student
Jaime de Anda earned his bachelor’s degree in bioengineering in 2015 after transferring to UCLA from Hartnell College, a community college in Salinas, California. He continued his education at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering as a member of bioengineering professor Gerard Wong’s research group, earning his Ph.D. in bioengineering in 2024.
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De Anda’s interdisciplinary research combines biochemistry, soft-matter physics and computational modeling to study microbiology and immunology for a diverse range of applications, such as plant-microbe biology and gastroenterology. He has published 24 papers in several top journals, including three articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. De Anda has presented his research at leading national and international conferences, including the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit, the Gordon Conference on Image Science and the Conference of Ford Fellows. He was also invited to deliver a lecture at the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering.
Among the many accolades De Anda has earned are the UCLA Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship, the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. A first-generation college student, de Anda also served as a mentor to graduate students in the lab and undergraduate students through programs such as the Cross-disciplinary Scholars in Science and Technology Summer Program at UCLA and the UCLA-Santa Monica College Summer Scholars Research Program.
De Anda is currently a postdoctoral associate at the Jill Roberts Institute for Research in Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, where he is studying gastroenterology, neuroimmunology and the gut microbiome.
Edward K. Rice Outstanding Master’s Student Award
Katherine Stone ’24, M.S. ’25
Master’s Student
Katherine Stone graduated magna cum laude from UCLA Samueli in 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering. She was admitted to the school’s Exceptional Student Admission Program to pursue her master’s in the same field.
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During her time at UCLA, she worked as an undergraduate researcher, studying antibiofouling superhydrophobic surfaces at the Micro and Nano Manufacturing Lab led by mechanical and aerospace engineering professor CJ Kim. She also investigated autoimmune biomarkers in a longitudinal clinical study at the Rao Lab in the UCLA Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, where she now works as a study coordinator. In 2023, Stone was named as one of four national Ted Mullin Scholars. The program supported her summer research at the University of Chicago Medicine, where she conducted pediatric cancer immunotherapy studies, working on a project to improve lymphodepletion methods for anti-tumor adoptive T-cell therapy.
Stone served as a teaching assistant for lower- and upper-division bioengineering courses at UCLA. She was a mentorship family head for the UCLA chapter of Biomedical Engineering Society and a graduate-undergraduate liaison of the Bioengineering Graduate Association. Outside the classroom, she competed with the UCLA Club Swim Team at the College Club Swimming Nationals in 2022 and 2023.
As a member of the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi, Stone served as a tutor for lower division engineering classes. Her contributions earned her an Engineering Achievement Award in Student Welfare. Volunteering as a vaccination specialist amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Stone has also worked part time as an emergency medical technician for the past four years.
Edward K. Rice Outstanding Bachelor’s Student Award
Ava Asmani ’24
Bachelor’s Student
Ava Asmani graduated in 2024 from UCLA Samueli with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a minor in public affairs. She was a member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department’s highly selective Fast Track to Success honors program and served in leadership roles at various student-organized clubs.
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She was the internal vice president of the UCLA chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Women in Engineering. She also served as president of the Association for Computing Machinery at UCLA.
As an AI outreach coordinator for the Computer Science Department, Asmani developed and taught machine learning and artificial intelligence courses to all-girls and Title I high schools. She served as a student mentor for UCLA’s Engineering 96, now E1, Internet of Things course sequence and was active in outreach and undergraduate research initiatives across the school.
In 2023, Asmani was one of 500 students awarded a travel grant to attend the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists hosted by the American Society for Microbiology, where she earned a Best Presenter Award. In 2024, she won a Dean’s Prize for Excellence in Research at UCLA, the Russell R. O’Neill Distinguished Service Award and the Harry M. Showman Prize. She was also chosen as a Clare Boothe Luce scholar at UCLA.
She is currently a graduate student in electrical engineering at UCLA Samueli. Following a master’s degree, which she anticipates completing in 2026, Asmani will continue to pursue a Ph.D. She is a member of the Communications Systems Laboratory and advised by professor Richard Wesel. Her research, which is supported by a Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship, includes exploring methods to improve modern decoders used in digital communication channels.
Edward K. Rice Outstanding Bachelor’s Student Award
Jacklyn Zhu ’24
Bachelor’s Student
Jacklyn Zhu graduated magna cum laude in 2024 with a bachelor of science in materials engineering and cum laude with a bachelor of arts in European languages and transcultural studies. She completed dual capstone projects, one for each major, as part of her studies.
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During her time at UCLA Samueli, Zhu was involved in research at the Center for Heterogeneous Integration and Performance Scaling, where she worked on the characterization of charge-trap transistors for analog compute-in-memory. She was named an Undergraduate Research Program Scholar by the Semiconductor Research Corporation, one of only 32 students nationwide selected each year. She is a co-inventor on a pending patent application. As an intern at Sandia National Laboratories, she contributed to the first proof-of-concept of a novel analog memory device prototype that led to further research in the field.
Zhu also led the Materials Research Society at UCLA, first as external vice president and then as president, organizing career fairs and more than 40 other events in one academic year. She also created a corporate sponsorship program, raising nearly $10,000 to enable expanded student mentorship and social initiatives. Under her leadership, the club was awarded the 2024 Bruin Development Award for providing excellent professional, academic and social support to its members.
Outside of academics, Zhu was vice president and competition team member of the UCLA Figure Skating club. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Columbia University, where she received the university’s Presidential Fellowship and a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship in support of her studies.