UCLA Samueli Announces 2025 Excellence in Teaching Awards
Each year, the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering honors alumni, faculty and students for outstanding achievements in their fields. The following profiles highlight recipients of the Eon Instrumentation Inc. Excellence in Teaching Award and the Northrop Grumman Excellence in Teaching Award.
Eon Instrumentation Inc. Excellence in Teaching
Sriram Sankararaman
Professor, Computer Science, Human Genetics, Computational Medicine
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.
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
Tyler Clites
Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Bioengineering, Orthopaedic Surgery
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.
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.