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UK Engineering receives record number of NSF CAREER awards

Six Pigman College of Engineering faculty members received National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards, the Foundation's  prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty, in the 2025 funding cycle.  This year, the Pigman College of Engineering recorded its highest number of NSF CAREER awardees in the 30-year history of the program. In addition, the college boasted a 75% success rate for CAREER awards in the 2025 funding cycle. 

Paterson earns 2 prestigious national awards for research, innovation

Alexandra F. Paterson’s research paves the way for more reliable and innovative technologies that could benefit health care, manufacturing and everyday life. For her work, she has earned two prestigious national awards for early-career faculty: the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award.

Hastings appointed associate dean for research and graduate studies

The University of Kentucky Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering is pleased to announce the appointment of J. Todd Hastings, Ph.D. as associate dean for research and graduate studies, effective July 1, 2025.

Luo wins Best Paper Award for research on Explainable AI in Alzheimer's disease

Tie “Thomas” Luo, Ph.D., associate professor in the University of Kentucky Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has received the Best Paper Award at the Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) 2025 Workshop on Pattern Mining and Machine Learning for Bioinformatics for his recent work titled “Unlocking Neural Transparency: Jacobian Maps for Explainable AI in Alzheimer’s Detection.”

20 Pigman College of Engineering researchers among top 2% of world’s most-cited

The University of Kentucky is well-represented on a list of the most-cited researchers in the world. In a database compiled by Stanford University in a partnership with Elsevier, 136 current UK scientists and scholars appear among the top 2% of the most-cited researchers across 22 disciplines. Of those 136 scientists and scholars, 20 are UK Pigman College of Engineering faculty. 

2 UK grads receive NSF Graduate Research Fellowships

Recent University of Kentucky graduates Lucas Gastineau and Asa O’Neal have been awarded U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. The five-year fellowship provides three years of financial support, including an annual stipend of $37,000. The purpose of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is to help ensure the quality, vitality and strength of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States.

UK IEEE student branch shines at SoutheastCon 2025

Electrical and computer engineering students from the UK IEEE student branch place first, second and third at IEEE SoutheastCon 2025.

IEEE FIRST Robotics Mentors

For the first time, several engineering students from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) student branch at the University of Kentucky came together to coach and mentor a high school FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team. Three UK students mentored about 10 high school students to build a robot from January through the end of March. The team then traveled to the Smoky Mountains Regional Competition in Sevierville, Tenn. from  April 2-5. 

Pigman College of Engineering hosts first ever Capstone Design Showcase

On April 28, the University of Kentucky Pigman College of Engineering hosted its first ever Capstone Design Showcase in the Gatton Student Center.  The event showcased 56 Capstone projects from over 200 students from seven engineering disciplines. Featured disciplines were biomedical engineering, biosystems and agricultural engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, engineering technology and materials engineering.

Electrical and computer engineering students compete in American Society of Naval Engineers competition

Three Capstone Design teams from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering traveled to Virginia Beach, Virginia to present their electric driven remote-controlled boats during the annual American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE) Promoting Electric Propulsion (PEP) Boat competition from April 15-18.