SEAS Celebrates Class of 2014
Members of the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science community celebrated the awarding of 172 Engineering degrees on May 19, 2014, at Yale’s 313th Commencement Ceremony. Yale College students earned 87 Baccalaureate degrees; graduate students earned 85 degrees, including 29 PhDs and 5 terminal master’s degrees.
Bachelor's degrees in Biomedical Engineering were conferred upon 29 members of the class of 2014; in Chemical Engineering, 9 degrees; in Electrical Engineering, 15 degrees; in Environmental Engineering, 8 degrees; and in Mechanical Engineering, 26 degrees.
SEAS undergraduate students, faculty, and family members gathered after Commencement for a convocation program in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall. Dean T. Kyle Vanderlick celebrated the achievements of the engineering undergraduates, commenting not only on their successfully completing one of the most rigorous programs in the University, but also on their wide-reaching contributions to the University’s professional societies, social organizations, athletic teams, and arts groups.
“Engineers use their extensive repertoire of tools to solve problems rooted in the technical domain, to design systems and products that advance society, and to expand what humankind can do through innovation,” Dean Vanderlick said. “Therefore, an engineering education is the quintessential liberal education of the 21st century, and it is an education that empowers you for virtually any career.”
Dean Vanderlick also announced the winner of the prestigious Henry Prentiss Becton Prize for Excellence in Engineering and Applied Science: Jason Allmaras. In addition to earning a 3.96 GPA and ranking as the top Mechanical Engineering student in the class of 2014, Allmaras conducted research on such diverse topics as novel networking systems that increase cell phone bandwidth, a custom vacuum chamber for heating and casting metal alloy sputtering targets, and as his senior project, improving the efficiency of dye-sensitized solar energy cells.
Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science Alessandro Gomez, Allmaras’s senior project advisor, says that only a handful of his students in the past 25 years have performed as well as Allmaras, citing his “focus, dedication, diligence, and commitment” as comparable with the best graduate students he shared lab space with.
Upon graduation, Allmaras will pursue a Ph.D. in Applied Physics at Caltech.
Ten other undergraduate prizes were also announced:
Thomas Alan Sorrentino
Recipient of the D. Allan Bromley Prize in Biomedical Engineering
Katherine Louise Leiby
Recipient of the Department of Biomedical Engineering Prize
Krisha Desai
Recipient of the Charles A. Walker Prize in Chemical Engineering
Lucjan J. Zolnierowski
Recipient of the Harry A. Curtis Prize in Chemical Engineering
Alexandra Marie Noonan
Recipient of the Edward O. Lanphier Memorial Prize in Electrical Engineering
Timothy Perkins Westcott
Recipient of the Franz Tuteur Memorial Prize in Electrical Engineering
Joshua Andrew Curry
Recipient of the D. Allan Bromley Prize in Environmental Engineering
Emily Rebecca Schuckert
Recipient of the Environmental Engineering Prize
Jan Kolmas
Recipient of the L. C. Lichty & E. O. Waters Prize in Mechanical Engineering
Maren Elizabeth Hopkins
Recipient of the Donald Warren McCrosky Memorial Prize in Mechanical Engineering
Congratulations to all!