Alumni Medal Award

Presented to an alumnus/alumna who has attained extraordinary achievement in their field and brought distinction to Michigan Engineering. It is the highest accolade awarded by the Michigan Engineering Alumni Board. 
Submit your nominations for the Alumni Medal Award HERE.

Distinguished Alumni Service Award

Presented to an alumnus/alumna who has generously volunteered service to further College projects and activities. 
Submit your nominations for the Distinguished Alumni Service Award HERE.

Outstanding Recent Alumni Award

Presented to an alumnus/alumna who has contributed substantially to their field in their early career years. Recipients have either graduated from Michigan Engineering within the last ten years or are no more than 35 years old. 
Submit your nominations for the Outstanding Recent Alumni Award HERE.

Department Merit Awards

Recognizing distinction at the academic department level, one award is presented from each.  Contact a Department Chair to recommend an alum for consideration.

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Alumni Award, honorees

2022 Alumni Medal: Daniel Siewiorek

BSE EE ’68

Buhl University Professor, Emeritus, Electrical, and Computer
Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction Institute,
Computer Science Department Carnegie Mellon University

For his innovation and contributions to the field of engineering, Dan Siewiorek
has earned the 2022 Alumni Medal.

Pioneering the idea of wearable computing Siewiorek produced hardware and
software for more than 20 generations of highly functional computers that
could be worn like glasses. And they caught on in a way that Google Glass
never could, contributing to dramatic efficiency gains in industrial applications
like military maintenance and aircraft construction.

Wearables are just one of the many innovations that Siewiorek has pioneered
during his more than four decades as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
In the 1970s, he developed parallel processor systems that led to performance
gains at Digital Equipment Corporation and IBM. And the roots of the highly
reliable computer systems in today’s aircraft trace back to Siewiorek’s 1980s
innovations in fault-tolerant computing.

Siewiorek has authored eight books and published hundreds of academic
papers. He was recognized by the IEEE Computer Society 2018 Taylor L.
Booth Education Award and he continues to mentor and inspire students in his
role as Buhl University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at
Carnegie Mellon University

View the list of former Alumni Medal Award recipients.

2022 Distinguished Alumni Service Award:

Mitchell Rohde

BSE EE ’94, MS EESYS ’96, ME
BME ’97, PHD ’00

For longstanding dedication as a mentor to Michigan Engineering students, active advisory
member in the Electrical Engineering department, and supporter of the College of
Engineering, Mitchell Rohde has been awarded the 2022 Distinguished Alumni Service
Award.

Mitch was one of the first members of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Council,
which has worked to determine ECE’s goals and developed new initiatives to further those
goals. Rohde is also active with ECE alumni, helping to establish new relationships,
fostering a collaborative alumni network, and finding new ways for ECE alumni to connect
with the department and tap into its educational and professional resources.

Mitch is the founder of Quantum Signal, a company that has brought advanced signal
and image processing technologies out of academic research labs and into real-world
applications. He credits his entrepreneurial spark to his days as an ECE undergrad when
he founded the IEEE bagel stand that would eventually become the enormously popular dB Café.

View the list of former Distinguished Alumni Service Award recipients.

2022 Outstanding Recent Alumni Award:

Astin & Aftin Ross

MSE BME ’09, PHD ’14 | MSE BME ’09, PHD ’12

For their outstanding efforts and contributions throughout the pandemic, Aftin and Astin
Ross (yes, they’re twins) received Michigan Engineering’s 2022 Outstanding Recent Alumni
Award.

In the early, frenzied days of the pandemic, knowledge about the new virus and the
equipment to fight it were both in short supply. At their posts in the FDA, they both worked tirelessly to get supplies to patients who needed them and help the agency handle its exploding workload more efficiently.

When the pandemic broke out, Aftin, as a Senior Special Advisor for Emerging Initiatives, tackled the country’s shortage of personal protective gear, becoming a spokesperson for the FDA and developing new initiatives to help the agency handle the rapidly evolving situation more efficiently. She also worked with a variety of federal agencies, including the White House, to make more protective gear available to hospitals that needed it.

Astin, in her role as an FDA Medical Device Program Staff Fellow, contributed to the
pandemic effort by streamlining the emergency authorization process and helping to find
new supplies of essential medical devices, like test kits and respirators, that were in short
supply during the pandemic.

View previous Outstanding Recent Alumni Award recipients.

2022 Dptmt. Merit Award Recipients

The Department Merit Awards were established to honor alumni who personify the College’s tradition of excellence and who have achieved significant accomplishments in their professional lives. The awards are given each year to graduates from each
academic department.