2015 Issue

15 Congratulations to the UEC’S 2015 Winners! 2015 UEC ENGINEER OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNER IEEE: DR. DAVID WILLIS Company Employed: Cirque Corporation, Salt Lake City, Ut. BS, Electrical Engineering, Utah State University, Logan, Ut. MS, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona Ph.D, Electrical Engineering, Utah State Univer- sity, Logan, Ut. David has been an active volunteer of the IEEE Utah Section the past several years. He has helped the local Utah section as a volunteer to help create a new IEEE technical society, the Solid State Circuits So- ciety. He is also an active participant in the planning and execution of the IEEE sponsored Boy Scout Technical Merit Badge Pow-Wow STEM outreach program that has been done several times thanks to volun- teers like him. He has been a teacher to students, a working student, and patent awardee who is involved with highly technical electrical en- gineering design work at Cirque corporation. He continues to pursue legislative initiatives such as HB125 just passing the legislative body and now just needing a governors’ signature that he helped with. He is currently working a software tool to test an ASIC his company just finished. The tool is written in C# and includes a script reader, a DLL that is callable by other functions, and defining the interface routines between a microcontroller and the ASIC. He is writing the spec and overseeing the implementation as well as writing some of the code. 2015 UEC FRESH FACE IN ENGINEERING AWARD WINNER ASME: PRASAD WEERAKOON Company Employed: Merit Medical Systems, Inc., South Jordan, UT BS, Mechanical Engineering, BYU, Provo, Ut. MS, Mechanical Engineering, BYU, Provo, Ut. Mr. Weerakoon is originally from Sri Lanka and came to the US in 2005 to begin his studies at BYU. He completed his BS in 2009 and his MS in 2012. He created the world’s first Multi-User Finite Element Analysis Pre-Processor using Sandia Labs’ CUBIT, where multiple people can remotely log on to the same model and create/ manipulate geometry and prepare the model/assembly for finite element analysis. He started working as a Project Engineer at Merity Medical in 2012. While at Merity, he headed compliance, material change and quality improvement projects. He successfully made Merit’s products comply with Europe’s RoHS. He redesigned a digital inflation device. This project will improve quality and manufacturabil- ity, double the manufacturing capacity and will decrease the cost per unit by about 20%. 2015 UEC ENGINEERING EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR ASCE: DR. KEVIN FRANKE, PH.D., P.E. Educational Institution: Associate Professor of Electronics Engineering, Brigham Young University, Ut. BS, Civil Engineering, Utah State University, Logan, Ut. MS, Civil Engineering, University of Washing- ton, Seattle, Washington PhD, Civil Engineering, BYU, Provo, Ut. Kevin has studied and researched alongside some of the most notable names in the fields of Civil and Earthquake Engineering and provides this strong background as a tremendous resource to the Utah engineering community. His research on the application of probabilistic analysis in the fields of liquefaction and seismic design are helping to develop more applicable earthquake designs on a national scale. Kevin’s career experience as a practitioner in consult- ing has helped him take cutting edge theory and turn it into practical research. Kevin has been recognized for his impactful teaching and investment in his student’s through research and early career mentor- ing. Professor Franke was recently nominated to be an ASCE: Geo- Institute Cross-Country Lecturer to further share his valuable research and unique ability to provide insightful presentations on how his efforts are changing the State of the Practice. 2015 MESA TEACHER OF THE YEAR AWARD JORGE IBANEZ WEST JORDAN MIDDLE SCHOOL Ibanez, who is in his seventh year of teach- ing, moved to the United States in 1992. He worked and attended Utah Valley University, where he completed a Bachelor of Science. He received his post baccalaureate teaching certificate from Brigham Young University. He plans to go back to school for his master’s in education.