Imperial News

Exceptional Students celebrated at 2017 Prize-giving

by Emma Rainbow

Exceptional Students celebrated at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering's 2017 Prize-giving.

Our graduating class of 2017 received their degrees at Imperial College’s Commemoration Day ceremonies at the Royal Albert Hall last Wednesday. 

Families, new graduates, continuing students, and staff also celebrated the achievements of our outstandingly bright cohort with our own Departmental Prize-giving ceremony. Professor Eric Yeatman - Head of Department, Dr Kristel Fobelets - Director of Undergraduate Studies and Dr David Thomas - Course Director of Electronic and Information Engineering, presented 21 prizes to graduates and 10 prizes to continuing undergraduates. Prizes are awarded annually for exceptional academic achievements, excellent project work and outstanding contributions to the student community and experience.

Jia Choo

Jia Choo collecting the Igniting Sparks Award on behalf of Ms Hong

This year, a new prize has been introduced. The Igniting Sparks Award has been created to celebrate and encourage secondary school teachers who have particularly inspired female students to pursue university education and careers in engineering. The first recipient of the new prize is Ms Jasline Hong, who teaches Physics at Raffles Institution Junior College, Singapore. Ms Hong was nominated for the award by Jia Choo. Jia studied MEng Electrical and Electronic Engineering and was one of our graduating cohort this week.

 The Head of Department’s Prize for Outstanding Contribution to the Department was presented to Bethany Hall (main picture). Bethany has worked extremely hard to reinstate yearbooks for the graduating class of 2017, a tradition that had been neglected for several years. The yearbook includes messages from staff, student profiles, and it is greatly appreciated by staff and students alike.

Prizes were also presented for brilliant projects: Mihnea Rusu won the Sir Bruce White Prize for his final year project ‘Tactile transducer for embedded Braille applications.’  Using an app on a smartphone, a text message is transmitted to a watch and converted into Braille letter by letter. Mihnea wore the watch to the ceremony and demonstrated it for the audience.

Julia Booth won the Head of Department’s Prize for the best EIE project – ‘The Sixth Sense – Electronically Augmented Perception.’ Julia’s project allows pedestrians and cyclists to discover a new ‘sixth sense’ through a wearable device that warns the user to turn in a particular direction or to beware of junctions. She has successfully demonstrated the device to many members of the public at the Imperial College Festival.  

 lifelarmWe also celebrated the exceptional achievements of our continuing students, including prizes for top undergraduates in each year of of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) and Electronic and Information Engineering (EIE), as well as excellent project work. The prize for best second year EEE group project was won by Jonathan Ong; Sheheryar Salman, Min Kang, Rebecca Elkington, Koraly Horvath, Paul Streli, Nunzio Pucci and Vasil Zlatanov. Their project ‘Lifelarm’ is a personal emergency device with a GPS receiver that can send pre-set text messages to listed contacts, and automatically starts an audio recording when activated.


Congratulations to all our graduates and prize-winners.

Full list of Prizewinners.