Computer engineering student earns statewide award

Kevin Cho, a University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa computer engineering senior, has been honored with the 2018 Student Engineer of the Year Award by the Hawaiʻi Council of Engineering Societies. This annual award is presented to a single undergraduate from among all engineering majors throughout the state.

Cho is in his final semester at UH Mānoa with a 3.94 grade point average. He has been active in a variety of projects in the Department of Electrical Engineering, initially serving as a member of the UH Drone Technologies team, followed by research experience investigating reconfigurable liquid-metal devices, and finally working on data visualization and augmented reality applications for smart campuses.

During his senior year, Cho helped Assistant Professor Darren Carlson establish the Ambient Computing Lab where Cho is investigating the possibilities of energy efficient augmented and virtual reality. Cho is also the lead architect for a data visualization dashboard for the Smart Campus Energy Lab.

“Kevin is one of the most well-rounded students in our college, with a wide-ranging breadth of experience that spans project experience, research experience, job/intern experience, teaching assistant experience, extracurricular leadership responsibilities and event coordination,” said UH Mānoa Electrical Engineering Professor and Chair Wayne Shiroma. “The Student Engineer of the Year Award not only speaks to Kevin’s caliber, but also about what a UH Mānoa College of Engineering graduate is capable of, and it is an achievement we should all celebrate.”

Cho will be recognized at the Engineers Week Banquet at the Koʻolau Ballrooms and Conference Center on February 24.

More on Kevin Cho

Cho is the president of the UH Mānoa chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE–HKN), the international electrical engineering honor society. He has been active in IEEE and the Electrical Engineering Student Advisory Board holding officer positions in both. He had also served as a teaching assistant for a sophomore-level hardware and software class.

He has had an internship every summer: as a research assistant at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology during his freshman year, a microelectronics intern at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California during his sophomore year, and a software development engineering intern at Amazon in Seattle, Washington during his junior year. His latest internship involved working on Amazon’s first social media application, Amazon Spark.