Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Matthew Johnston’s interest in multidisciplinary science and entrepreneurship is reflected in his career as an electrical engineer who specializes in developing electronic platforms that have applications in fields like chemistry, biology and medicine. More...

Education is very important in South Korea where Jinsub Kim grew up, but he feels his parents, and especially his mother, were perhaps even more enthusiastic than most. For Kim that meant many extracurricular activities that included sports and music. More...

Egypt, Germany, Taiwan, Burma — Ben Lee traveled the world as the son of a Korean diplomat. He lived in seven different countries growing up including the US where he finished high school. More...

“It was not expected I would go on to college,” Huaping Liu says. Even though he was top in his class, he came from a rural area in southeastern China where he knew of no one else that went to college. More...

One of Mario Magaña’s fondest memories from growing up on his grandparents’ farm in El Salvador was when his uncles would come to visit on the weekends. More...

V John Mathews began his path to becoming head of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State as early as grade school. That’s when he first became interested in electronics, although he cannot remember where the idea came from. More...

Karti Mayaram admits he wasn’t all that interested in coming to the US for graduate school when it was first suggested to him by a college math professor in India — even though many of his fellow students were excited about the idea. More...

One of the first things people may notice upon meeting Kevin McGrath is that he is not from around here. The bow tie and suspenders usually give it away. More...

Growing up in Alaska, Un-Ku Moon had some tough summer jobs starting at the age of 16 — from working at a salmon cannery and on a fishing (tender) boat to landscaping he put in 12 to 16 hour days. More...

It is ironic that Arun Natarajan had limited access to technology growing up in India — getting his first email account when he was an undergraduate — since he is now working on the cutting edge of integrated circuits and systems for high-speed wireless communications and imaging. More...

Amir Nayyeri is passionate about two things — geometry and soccer — both of which were fostered growing up in Tehran, Iran. He and his friends would challenge each other with hard math problems, and after school they headed to the soccer fields. More...

Thinh Nguyen’s escape to the US began with a solo swim to a small boat in the South China Sea. Born in Vietnam, his family chose to flee the communist regime which had blacklisted them because his father was a colonel for the fallen South Vietnam army. More...

“My blood is orange,” Linda O’Hara says, but it’s hardly worth mentioning if you see her on the Friday before a home football game. Dressed in all orange and black, from her earrings down to her shoes — it’s obvious she is a huge Beaver fan. More...

It is hard to imagine what computer engineering and anthropology might have in common. And even for Cherri Pancake who had separate careers in both areas, it was not immediately apparent. More...

Jennifer Parham-Mocello was certain at the young age of 5-years old that she wanted to be a math teacher just like her aunt. She would line her stuffed animals up on her bed and use the blackboard in her room to teach them addition and subtraction. More...

An early introduction to electronics was nearly a shocking experience for Raviv Raich. His uncle brought a calculator home to Israel from a trip to the U.S., and his dad replaced the power connector so that it would work with the local wiring. More...

Stephen Ramsey initially pursued a career in astrophysics. Serendipity intervened to set him on a new career path in computational systems biology, and eventually landed him at Oregon State with a split appointment in computer science and biomedical sciences. More...

Computer science grabbed Mike Rosulek’s imagination early on, and at the age of 7 years he was already writing a UFO adventure game. Growing up in a technical household, his family home was connected to the internet before there was a World Wide Web. More...

Christopher Scaffidi was in second grade when he figured out that Oregon is where he wanted to live. “I decided I liked the woods, so I studied where the woods were and I found they were in Oregon and Maine,” he says. More...

Where Matt Shuman is today has a lot to with his family — most of them attended Oregon State University, and they have also influenced the direction of his career. More...

“As someone who did not even dream of coming to the U.S., let alone be a professor here, I appreciate the transformational power of universities, and how they can improve the lives of people all over the world,” Prasad Tadepalli says. More...

There is no doubt that Gabor Temes feels fortunate to be where he is at. He was 15 years old when World War II came to where he was living in Budapest, Hungary. More...

Sinisa Todorovic admits that on the surface his two careers — ballet and artificial intelligence — seem unrelated. “I sometimes wonder why I trained for hours!” he jokes of his ballet career that began when he was just 10 years old. More...

Roger Traylor was not a stellar student in high school. Not even close. He was having too much fun in the small rural community in East Tennessee where he grew up — riding motorcycles, hunting, fishing, rock climbing, caving — anything outdoors, including growing an organic garden. More...

You might expect a college kid from California would not appreciate the small town of Corvallis. But it wasn’t so for John Wager who came here to get his undergraduate degree in engineering physics. More...

Alan Wang got a double-dose of good luck in 2011, the year he came to OSU. Not only was it the year he started on his academic career, but it was also the year his son was born. More...

Andreas Weisshaar has always been up for a bit of an adventure or new experience. As a boy he explored his world by taking it apart, especially anything electrical such as tape recorders, radios and telephones. Fortunately, he was equally good at putting things together. More...

Although Tom Weller’s degrees are all in electrical engineering, he was not one of those kids who grew up taking apart electronics. More...

Although Weng-Keen Wong was born in Malaysia and has lived in the US since he moved here for graduate school, he will always be a hockey-loving Canadian. His parents moved from Malaysia to Canada when he was seven, hoping for better opportunities for their children. More...

After growing up in Beijing, China, surrounded by tall buildings, Eugene Zhang appreciates living in a small town. More...