The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Orlando Section held its annual Award Banquet on Tuesday, October 28, 2008.

The banquet honored the recipients of the Outstanding Undergraduate and Graduate Awards, the Orlando Section Scholarships, as well as various volunteers. The Orlando section has been giving the awards for more than 25 years. The Outstanding Undergraduate and Graduate awards were given to students that have achieved excellence in academia as well as community service. The nominees are chosen based on nominations written by peers, professors, or mentors.

This year the winner of the Outstanding Undergraduate Award was Mr. Roberto Miguez, while the Outstanding Graduate Award receiver was Mr. Xiang Liu.

The Orlando Section also established this year for the first time an annual scholarship program designed to promote, recognize and support students who have demonstrated great accomplishments in academia and research and as well as showed promising efforts in the future. The Orlando section is concerned with research and scientific, technical, educational and other activities that contributes to the advancement of science and technology. This scholarship was open to all the IEEE students (graduate and undergraduate) under Orlando section and the Awards committee had to choose from more then 30 applicants.

The Awards committee’s chair Mr. Tom Wandeloski announced the scholarship winners and presented a check of $1000 to all the scholarship recipients at the annual awards banquet. The IEEE Orlando Section Scholarship Award winners were Mr. Vinit Todi (Graduate Student) Mr. Xiang Liu (Graduate Student), Mr. Fei Xie (Graduate Student), Mr. Hao Cheng (Graduate Student) and Mr. Roberto Miguez (Undergraduate Student). This year all the award winners were from University of Central Florida (UCF) which also has a very active IEEE Student branch with more then 300 IEEE members on campus at UCF.

In addition to the above awards, the IEEE Orlando Section recognized the help of its many volunteers that provide their assistance and contributions to the organization.

The Award Banquet was concluded by a presentation given by Ms. Rosa Enciso, a UCF Graduate Student and also the president of IEEE Women In Engineering (WIE) affinity group and she showcased different activities that the group has participated such as the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing held in October 2008, as well other activities that the group plans to organize in future.

On behalf of IEEE Orlando section I would like to congratulate all the award and scholarship winners for their achievements.

Donghui Wu, Ph.D.

Vice Chair, IEEE Orlando Section

Chair, Program Committee

donghui.wu@ieee.org