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Inaugural Professor Cullen Memorial Lecture and Undergraduate Student Awards 2019

21 May 2019

Following the generous gift of alumnus Padman Nagenthiram, former Chief Systems Engineer of Boeing, this year the department launched a new ‘Professor Cullen Memorial Lecture’ in memory of former Head of Department, Professor Alexander Cullen who passed away in 2013.

Prof Cullen’s son Michael with the winner of the Cullen Prize

Author

Tim Bodley-Scott | t.bodley-scott@ucl.ac.uk

The new Lecture will run each year for 5 years with a focus on celebrating the work of our outstanding UG students. The Lecture is combined with a new ‘Professor Cullen Undergraduate Prize’ for the most outstanding outstanding undergraduate poster.

On 13th March, all 3rd year undergraduate students presented posters of their student projects and were assessed by academics. There then followed a drinks reception and an Awards Presentation and Lecture in the Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre. Professor Hugh Griffiths from the department also gave a short tribute about Professor Cullen and his research and legacy as well as introduced this year's Inaugural Lecturer: Professor Kwai-Man Luk from City University Hong Kong, who was a good friend of Professor Alex Cullen. Professor Luk's talk was titled “The Electronic and Electrical Electrical Engineers of the Future" and he shared anecdotes of how Professor Cullen helped him during his career and was a real inspiration to many.

 

The event was very successful with good feedback from academics, students and other distinguished guests in attendance. The faculty particularly enjoyed the poster session, which featured 3rd year undergraduates displaying their final projects as part of their assessment. All of the academics fed back that the quality of the posters was very high across the board, and highlighted the variety and quality of undergraduates’ work. The following three Prizes were awarded for the best posters, and were presented as part of the session:

 

•             1st place: Mr. Alessandro Ottino (Italy) for his project titled "AI/ML for Optical Transceivers Optimization".

•             2nd place: Mr. Duolikun Danier (China) for his presentation titled "Deep Learning of Silicon Retina Camera for Self-Driving Cars".

•             3rd place: Ms. Rim Kalife (Lebanon) for her presentation titled “Transceiver Systems implementation using ADALM-PLUTO SDR“

 

There was also a Cisco Prize for the Most Outstanding Female Engineering Undergraduate Student presented to Arundathi Shaji Shanthini. She has made a great contribution to the department as Fleming Society President, and has been active helping with after-school clubs and as an ambassador for UCL in her current year in industry placement.

Both the department and Professor Cullen’s family are very grateful for the generous gift that has established the program as a tribute to Professor Cullen and his longstanding legacy at UCL EEE.

The new Professor Cullen Memorial Lecture marks a wonderful addition to the academic calendar for the department.