Sakkaff selected as Milton Mohr Graduate Fellowship recipient

May 01, 2018      By Victoria Grdina

Lily Wang, Zahmeeth Sayed Sakkaff, and Max Pierobon.
Lily Wang, Zahmeeth Sayed Sakkaff, and Max Pierobon.

Grad student Zahmeeth Sayed Sakkaff was recently selected as a recipient of a 2017-18 Milton Mohr Graduate Fellowship. 

She was awarded the fellowship at the College of Engineering Graduate Student Recognition Event on Friday, April 27.

The Milton E. Mohr Awards Program recognizes outstanding students in the sciences of biotechnology and engineering based on their academic performance and potential for accomplishments in their specific field. The scholarships and fellowships are made possible through an endowment to the University Foundation.

Sakkaff’s advisor, assistant professor Massimiliano Pierobon, nominated her for the award.

“I have been working with and mentoring Zahmeeth in the past four years, including the preparation of her master’s thesis, and I have been very impressed not only by the quality and degree of innovation of her work, but also by her dedication and resilient attitude,” Pierobon said. 

Sakkaff’s interdisciplinary research focuses on biology and communication theory. Her research was published in the Proceedings of the 17th IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC 2016). It was also published in the Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Nanoscale Computing and Communication and earned the 2017 ACM NanoCom Best Paper Award. 

Sakkaff was also the recipient of the 2017-2018 CSE Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award, and the 2016-2017 CSE Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award. She is continuing her research and will pursue a Ph.D. under Pierobon’s supervision. In particular, is focusing on the topic of biological cell computing and communications through metabolic data simulation and analysis. 

Congratulations to Zahmeeth on this great achievement!