Four Students Selected as Chancellor’s Award of Distinction Recipients

Clockwise from top left: Gabrielle Cobos, Ahmed Farhat, Katherine Tran and Katherine Lai will be honored with a special shoulder cord at commencement and a certificate of recognition signed by the UCI Chancellor.

May 26, 2016 - The UC Irvine Alumni Association has selected four graduating engineering students for the Chancellor’s Award of Distinction. This annual award acknowledges UCI’s most outstanding graduating seniors: students who represent exceptional academic achievement and a commitment to cutting-edge research, leadership and service to UCI. Award recipients will wear blue and gold shoulder cords with their commencement regalia at the 2016 Commencement Ceremony, June 12. A total of 34 UCI students were chosen for this award. Here are the four engineering students and their plans for their future:

Gabrielle Cobos, mechanical engineering, will intern with Stone Edge Farm and Vineyards in Sonoma, Calif., where she will work on a microgrid project. The farm’s goal is to renewably provide its own energy and allow the system to interactively run with the larger electric grid through several shared connection points.

Ahmed Farhat, premed/biomedical engineering, will attend the UCI School of Medicine to pursue a career in emergency medicine. He plans to focus on global medicine and extending care to  underserved and overlooked populations.

Katherine Lai, chemical engineering, has a job lined up at an Irvine environmental consulting company, where she will work to help companies across the United States meet different environmental regulations. After graduating, she will spend a month with family in Hong Kong and Taiwan celebrating her grandmother’s 90^th birthday.

Katherine Tran, computer science engineering, is already working as an intern systems engineer at Boeing, where she will continue after graduation.