Isukapalli: COE Outstanding CE Faculty

For the fifth year in a row, graduating seniors selected Yogananda Isukapalli for the Outstanding Computer Engineering Faculty Award. Isukapalli joined UCSB’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department as a tenure-track teaching professor in winter 2017, after several years working as a staff scientist in the Wi-Fi division at Broadcom, a semiconductor manufacturing company.

“Receiving the Outstanding Faculty Award from graduating computer engineering seniors, whom I have taught in multiple classes, is a significant recognition for me,” said Isukapalli, who also received the university’s 2020-21 Distinguished Teaching Award from the Academic Senate in recognition of his excellence in teaching and contributing to the teaching mission of the university.

Isukapalli’s primary role is running the undergraduate capstone program for computer engineering, which focuses on developing students into professionals by pairing them with industry or academic experts to create an engineered solution for real problems.

This year, the topics of capstone projects ranged from an anomaly detector for products on a conveyor belt and a system to collect and display live vehicle data on a dashboard, to a system that consolidates sensors on drones.

“I enjoyed seeing them mature as professional engineers,” he said. “It is gratifying to know that they feel I have positively impacted their growth and development as computer engineers. I am honored to have had the opportunity to contribute to their educational experience.”