UCLA Samueli Announces 2026 Excellence in Teaching Awards
Each year, the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering honors alumni, faculty, students and other engineering leaders for outstanding achievements in their fields.
The following profiles highlight recipients of the Eon Instrumentation Inc. Excellence in Teaching Award, the Robin B. Joshi Excellence in Teaching Award and the Boeing Excellence in Teaching Award.
Eon Instrumentation Inc. Excellence in Teaching Award
Lara Dolecek
Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mathematics
Lara Dolecek is a professor of electrical and computer engineering. She joined UCLA Samueli in 2009 and has taught thousands of students in undergraduate and graduate courses, including large-enrollment classes and specialized courses for Ph.D. students.
She has led schoolwide efforts to introduce and develop key courses in data science, machine learning and robust data storage systems. Many undergraduate students credit her courses with building their confidence in the field, while graduate students say her ability to connect theory with contemporary practice has had a lasting impact on their careers.
Dolecek has also participated in UCLA teaching programs and the National Effective Teaching Institute, through which she developed a framework for effective teaching centered on organization, varied content and flexibility.
For the past three years, Dolecek has served as director of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department’s Fast Track to Success Program for highly motivated undergraduates. She is also an instructor with UCLA COSMOS — a pre-college academic summer program for California high school students interested in STEM — and a volunteer with various K-12 educational initiatives across Los Angeles.
Dolecek, who also holds a faculty appointment in the Mathematics Department, focuses her research on exploring mathematical foundations of robust information systems. Her many honors include research awards from the National Science Foundation, IBM, Intel and the Okawa Foundation. She previously received UCLA Samueli’s Northrop Grumman Excellence in Teaching Award as an assistant professor.
She received her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science and an M.A. in statistics from UC Berkeley.
Robin B. Joshi Excellence in Teaching Award
Sanjay Mohanty
Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Sanjay Mohanty is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. He joined UCLA Samueli in 2016 and teaches undergraduate courses on environmental engineering, green infrastructure and sustainable waste management.
He has redesigned these courses to focus on interdisciplinary and societally relevant challenges in environmental engineering and sustainability, with frequent field trips and hands-on activities that allow students to assess pollutant exposure in communities. His classes are in high demand, attracting more than 300 students from more than 20 departments across UCLA each year.
Mohanty has also participated in training programs to refine his instructional style and course planning. He has mentored more than 60 undergraduate students in research and professional development, with nearly 40 of them publishing as co-authors on peer-reviewed publications. Seven of his undergraduate students also received highly competitive National Science Foundation research fellowships.
He examines how extreme weather events, such as wildfires and flooding, affect the transport of pollutants. His research group designs climate-resilient green infrastructure to increase water availability and reduce exposure to pollutants. Following the Palisades and Eaton fires in January 2025, his students have been testing soil samples for toxic substances.
Mohanty’s honors include a Distinguished Service Award from the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors and UCLA Samueli’s Excellence in Graduate Mentoring Award.
He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from Utkal University in India, an M.S. in environmental engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Boeing Excellence in Teaching Award
Daniel Schwalbe-Koda
Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
Daniel Schwalbe-Koda is an assistant professor of materials science and engineering. He joined UCLA Samueli in 2024 and teaches undergraduate courses in general materials science and physics of materials, and a graduate class in machine learning for predictive materials science. His research group develops computational models for materials synthesis and autonomous characterization.
As a teacher, Schwalbe-Koda takes an “intuition-first” approach, incorporating experimental demonstrations, interactive visualizations, simulations or case studies into his lectures — including an online game he programmed as a review of electrostatics.
He has consistently received top scores in student evaluations, including the highest rating from every respondent in his graduate course. Several students shared that they incorporated the machine learning concepts he taught into their thesis research.
Schwalbe-Koda routinely updates his courses to reflect developments in rapidly evolving fields, often incorporating relevant research published just days before a lecture. He devotes time to improving his teaching and sharing best practices with colleagues across UCLA Samueli. With support from a UCLA Teaching and Learning Center grant, Schwalbe-Koda has also been exploring new ways to teach artificial intelligence to non-computer science students.
His honors include a Department of Energy Early Career Award, recognition on the 2023 Forbes 30 Under 30 Science list, a fellowship from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a merit award from the Brazilian Ministry of Defense.
Schwalbe-Koda received his bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering and master’s degree in physics from the Aeronautics Institute of Technology in Brazil, and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.