Distinguished alum, graduating seniors honored at Heta Lambda Beta induction ceremony

Congratulations, graduates!

This year, the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is proud to celebrate the induction of more than 125 electrical and computer engineering students into our Heta Lambda Beta Society. We also honored the accomplishments seven of our senior students for leadership, research, and academic achievements. 

Distinguished Heta Lambda Beta Alumni: Scott Acton

Scott Acton is the Lawrence R. Quarles Professor and Chair of the Charles L. Brown Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Virginia, with a joint appointment in Biomedical Engineering. He also serves as an AI Advisor to the Provost at UVA.

Acton is an internationally recognized expert in image and video analysis, with research spanning computer vision, machine learning, and biomedical image processing. He directs the Virginia Image and Video Analysis (VIVA) laboratory, where his team develops advanced algorithms for applications in healthcare, education, and other domains.

He has authored hundreds of publications in the field and is a Fellow of the IEEE, recognized for his contributions to biomedical image analysis. His professional service includes serving as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Image Processing and leadership roles in major international conferences.

Acton earned his B.S. in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining UVA, he held positions in both academia and industry, including roles at Oklahoma State University, AT&T, Motorola, and MITRE.

Outstanding Electrical Engineering Student: Hannah Petersen

Hannah is participating in the Virginia Tech Accelerated Undergraduate/Graduate program. In addition, she is a part of multiple Undergraduate Research projects:

• E2E Sustainable Aerospace Fuels (SAF) Team 
• PEC Resilient Renewable Energy Grid Adaptation Lab (REGAL)
• Hume Center NEEC Antenna Team and IC CAE Scholar Program
• Serves as Team Lead for the SAF Group, guiding the research through multiple national and regional conferences, including the group's research publication at the AIAA Region I Conference in Spring 2026

She has completed two internships with Proctor & Gamble in the Summers of 2024 and 2025 and will intern with Procter & Gamble as the IDEA Lab Robotics Intern for Summer 2026. She has served as a Virginia Tech Residential Well-Being Student Leader since January 2025 and is the President of the ECE Ambassador team. She is a Fralin Undergraduate Research Fellow, College of Engineering Dean's Team Ambassador, and serves as an Associate for The Consulting Group at VT.

After graduation in December 2026, Hannah will continue her education at VT to complete her MS degree. She also plans to eventually earn an MBA.

Outstanding Computer Engineering Student: Youssef Chebil

Youssef participates in multiple student organizations, including 

• VTCRO
• Chief Engineer of CROLABS, leading the Bimodal Hybrid Robotic Systems project
• Software lead for Robot Dog
• Software lead for Autonomous Car for National Robotics Challenge
• Member of the AMP lab. As part of the lab, he built a fully functional 8-bit computer using discrete logic gates and flip-flops, and mentors students working in the AMP lab.

He is the Co-founder of SMART, a Local & Intuitive XR powered SMART Home System with Home Assistant. The project was first initiated in the ID-Pro course and then proposed by the team to be used as a senior design project in the IDC course. He worked with his team to carry a student-led robotics and spatial computing initiative beyond the classroom to real-world impact.

Youssef served as a Technical Implementation Engineer Intern with Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, where he integrated safety and positioning systems design to protect road construction workers.

He received the Best in Class, Integrated Design Project (Home Audio System), Fall 2024 with Dr. Milburn.

Youssef plans to pursue graduate studies in robotics with a focus on human-centered robotics and specifically medical robotics. He will also continue to grow his two businesses: SMART and Barakeat (a startup he founded in Tunisia with the goal of expanding across Africa).

Outstanding Leadership and Service: Timberly Tran

Timberly serves on the support team for CRO Learning, where she hosts weekly workshops teaching students the basics of robotics. She also hosts workshops for elementary school students interested in STEM, including leading a workshop where the students built a simple circuit that included LEDs and a button to play a reaction time game.

She serves as events coordinator for ECE ambassadors, where she organizes and leads a team of ambassadors to hold the ECE Ambassador spring event. This event is for first and second year ECE and GE students to help them learn more about the options within ECE and introduce them to class projects from IDP and Embedded Systems, as well as network with student organizations and design teams.

She serves as Professional Development Chair for Women in ECE. She works with companies who want to collaborate with WECE to develop relationships to help students in the future build their careers. She organizes and hosts WECE midterm review sessions for ECE 1004 and ECE 2024. 

She interned with Summer Consultants Inc, in summer 2025. After graduation, Timberly will return to Summer Consultants, Inc as a full-time employee.

Outstanding Research: Rohit Rangaraj

Rohit is participating in the Virginia Tech Accelerated Undergraduate/Graduate program, working with Dr. Jeff Walling on RF data converters and adaptive signal processing.

He conducts undergraduate research with Wireless @ VT, developing and implementing novel cutting-edge beamforming algorithms with wide-ranging application in communications and sensing. He was recognized internationally for demonstrations of the first ever practical hybrid minimum variance distortionless beamforming, awarded first place at the IEEE AESS RadarConf Radar Challenge 2025. Further development of the work has been accepted for publication at IEEE AESS RadarConf 2026.

He worked as a mmWave RFIC Design Intern with Texas Instruments during the summer 2025 and served as President & Team Captain of GM-SAE AutoDrive Challenge team, August 2022 - June 2025.

After completing an internship with Texas Instruments this summer working on mmWave RFIC design for automotive radar, Rohit will return to Virginia TEch to pursue his MS and PhD under Dr. Jeff Walling working on high speed RF data converters and adaptive signal processing.

Highest GPA for an Electrical Engineering Student: Kyle Walker

Kyle is a Micro/Nano Systems major in the Accelerated UGG program, graduating with a 4.0 GPA. After graduation, Kyle will be returning to Virginia Tech to complete his MS degree in Electrical Engineering. After completing his Masters degree, he hopes to work in industry as an analog design engineer.

Highest GPA for a Computer Engineering Student: Pete Downey

Pete is a double major in Machine Learning and Physics, graduating with 4.0 GPA. He was awarded the Spring 2026 Phi Kappa Phi Medallion Award for the College of Engineering. After graduation, Pete will be attending Duke University to complete a Ph.D. in Physics. Specifically, Pete will be working on building quantum computers (either trapped ion or superconducting).

Highest GPA for a Computer Engineering Student: Christopher Wiencko

Christopher is a double major in Computer Engineering and Mathematics, graduating with 4.0. After graduation, Christopher will start a full-time role as an Embedded Systems Engineer at Perceptive Innovations Inc. in Northern Virginia.