The School of Engineering at the University of Alabama at Birmingham has named its Outstanding Student Engineers for 2011. Amanda Haglund, from the Department of Materials Sciences and Engineering and a Birmingham native, was named the Outstanding Undergraduate Student Engineer. Donald Burke, a doctoral candidate from the Interdisciplinary Engineering program and native of Trussville, was named the Outstanding Graduate Student Engineer. The two were selected from a group of 10 finalists comprising the top undergraduate and graduate performers from the school’s departments and programs. Haglund and Burke were recognized at an annual banquet for the Engineering Council of Birmingham on Feb. 17. A committee of three, including two professional engineers not affiliated with UAB, selected the outstanding students.
The finalists for the outstanding student awards were undergraduate student Jose Roman of Madison and graduate student Bonnie Culpepper, of Yazoo City, Miss., Biomedical Engineering; undergraduate student Jessica Thompson of Birmingham and graduate student Sally Palmer of Tyler, Texas, Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering; undergraduate student Truong Nguyen of Hoover and graduate student David Robbins of Columbiana, Electrical and Computer Engineering; undergraduate student Kathleen Blair Farley of Homewood, Mechanical Engineering; and graduate student Eric Kerr-Anderson of Birmingham, Materials Science and Engineering.