Five College of Engineering students — Niko Banks (mechanical engineering), Tessa Gallagher (environmental engineering), Roxanne Miller (computer science and software engineering), Kai Quizon (mechanical engineering) and Alexander Silva (biomedical engineering) — have been nominated for the 2022 Outstanding Graduate Student Award.
Open to master’s degree candidates who have received degrees or who are receiving degrees between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022, the students nominated for the award were evaluated on criteria that included Academic Achievement, Creative Achievement, Scholarly/Professional Potential and Service to the Community.
The winner will be celebrated at Spring Commencement on June 11.
The nominated students were:
Niko Banks (ME) —Banks was nominated for solving one of the most complex and difficult problems at the Cal Poly Wind Power Research Center. Professor Patrick Lemieux praised Banks’ dedication to developing an accurate analytical model that would lead to better controllers, and his ability to help other graduate students. “Niko applied basic principles that he learned throughout the entire ME curriculum — including dynamics, controls, machine design, mechatronics, systems dynamics and fluid mechanics — and complemented those with his own research,” Lemieux said. “He showed grace and confidence whenever a bump threatened to derail the project, and he also found the time to assist his fellow grad students.”
Tessa Gallagher (ENVE) — While serving as a Cal Poly Society of Environmental Engineers officer for four years, Gallagher worked to promote environmental justice as one of the leaders of the ‘Salad Bowl Committee,’ a student organization which motivated the department to examine their inclusion, or lack thereof, of social and environmental justice topics in the civil and environmental curriculum. In her nomination papers, Professor Rebekah Oulton said, “Tessa models an Outstanding Graduate Student in every way.”
Roxanne Miller (CSSE) — An animal science graduate who went on to pursue an MS degree in computer science, Miller’s thesis involves analyzing video taken during human subject studies of physical activity of humans to determine several items of interest for kinesiologists, including posture, activity type, and activity intensity. Professor John Bellardo, who is working with Miller on the project, said “Roxanne built several neural network architectures for both recognition of human physical activity from still images and short video fragments, incorporating several technologies into her solutions. The results of her work were instrumental in securing an NIH (National Institute of Health) contract to continue this work.”
Kai Quizon (ME) — It has been quite a ride for Quizon, who served as president of the Cal Poly Amusement Park Engineers & Designers club, which took third in the nation at the 2022 Ride Engineering Competition. Professor Melinda Keller, adviser to the club, said Quizon has completely changed the “flow” of the club. “He developed a meeting and organizational structure to network, educate, and entertain students who desired to learn about the amusement park industry,” she said. “Kai is a great leader showing high technical, leadership, research, and outreach skills.”
Alexander Silva (BMED) — Silva is currently completing a project for culminating experience at the Cherqui Lab at UC San Diego. In his nominating submission, Professor Trevor Cardinal said Silva “Always strives to build an inclusive community, in serious ways, such as developing materials to discuss racial disparities in medicine, and in playful ways, such as when he was a student assistant in BEMD 561, when he prepared certificates of accomplishments in learning microsurgery for all of the students in the class that he and I signed.”
