CLEMSON – Please join us in recognizing this spring’s recipients of the 2021 Harris Awards, department-wide awards which have been given annually for more than 35 years in recognition of outstanding accomplishment in the preceding year by a current Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate student in the areas of laboratory teaching and research.
Md Saiful Islam is the recipient of the Harris Award for the Outstanding Graduate Laboratory Teaching Assistant in 2021 based on evaluations by undergraduates enrolled in ECE laboratory courses and assessment by the faculty supervisors of the laboratories. Saiful joined Clemson in 2014, and is currently pursuing the PhD degree in electrical engineering under the direction of Dr. Pingshan Wang.
Saiful has been the Teaching Assistant for many of the department’s circuits labs as well as the Microcontroller Interfacing lab. In these positions, he has consistently received positive feedback from both students and faculty, and is known for his knowledge, versatility, and hard work. Students’ evaluations of his lab sections remark on his teaching skills as well as his ability to help students succeed.
This has been especially important as laboratory instructors have had to adjust to COVID-19 protocols. “Saiful was very helpful when it came to adapting labs so that they could be done at home and did a very good job at explaining what needed to be done differently in order to achieve the results,” said one student evaluation. “He truly wanted you to understand what was going on and did everything in his power to help the students learn,”
Moazzam Nazir is the recipient of the Harris Award for the Outstanding Graduate Researcher in 2021 based on the recommendation of a faculty member and evaluation by a committee of ECE faculty, which found his record of research productivity and scholarship outstanding.
Moazzam is a PhD student in Electrical Engineering focusing on development of a hybrid power electronic module for enhancing regular transmission and distribution transformers. Moazzam holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan. Moazzam has been a research assistant under the direction of his advisor, Prof. Johan Enslin, since enrolling at Clemson in 2018.
While a graduate student at Clemson, Moazzam has published more than fifteen research articles in renowned IEEE journals and conference proceedings including the IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, the IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, and the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics. In collaboration with the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), he has also filed a patent with the United States patent office that is under review.
Moazzam can be recognized for a number of accomplishments during his time at Clemson. He won the Clemson University three-minute thesis presentation award in 2020, and also serves as a Clemson University global student ambassador. His research contributions have been recognized by IEEE through the 2020 IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS) Electrical Safety Prevention Through Design Student Engineering Initiative Award. This prestigious honor is granted to only six students across the globe each year.
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Since their inception, the Harris Awards have been accompanied by a monetary stipend, which is provided by the generosity of Harris Corp. The Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering appreciates the support and encouragement that Harris and its employees provide to our department and our students.
