Congratulations to the three valedictorians of the Class of 2014 of the School of Engineering & Applied Science:
Caleb Ford, Biomedical Engineering. Ford is an excellent example of a scholar-athlete at Washington University. Since January 2013, he has done research in the lab of Stavros Thomopoulos, PhD, studying developmental hip disorders related to muscular loading. He also worked for two summers in labs at Saint Louis University. In addition, he was lab manager for a team that won a gold medal at the International Genetically Engineering Machines (iGEM) competition in 2012. Ford, a native of St. Louis, also is a varsity athlete in track-and-field and cross-country running. While a student, he worked as a supervisor and assistant the Washington University Athletic Complex and also was a teaching assistant. He has received a variety of awards, including the Outstanding Senior and Junior Awards in Biomedical Engineering, the Antoinette Frances Dames Award and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute research fellowship for the summer of 2012. In addition, he was vice president of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, a member of the Alpha Eta Mu Beta Biomedical Engineering Honor Society, on the Dean’s List all semesters and was a Clifford W. and Armarie B. Murphy Scholar. He is an author of a paper published in the journal Endocrinology in January 2013. He will pursue an MD/PhD in the fall.
Kevin Kieselbach, Computer Science and Economics. Simi Valley, Calif.-native Kieselbach has completed the BS/MS program in his four years at Washington University in St. Louis. As an undergraduate, he worked in the lab of Caitlin Kelleher, PhD, designing and coding sound-based games for a novel application in hearing therapy and implemented a system to measure and record how people perform on the games. For his master’s project in computer science, he worked in the lab of Chris Gill, PhD, implementing a parallel real-time computing runtime platform and a thread-safe cyber-physical control system. He also wrote a report and co-wrote a research paper explaining the theory, implementation and experimental results. Kieselbach worked for Microsoft Corp. for two summers working on its OneDrive cloud storage and Skype products and will join the company full-time in July as a software development engineer working on the Windows operating system. He has won numerous awards and honors while at Washington University, including the Antoinette Frances Dames Award in Engineering in 2012; the Computer Science Outstanding Student Award in 2012 and 2013; was on the Dean’s List every semester and is a Washington University Lien Scholar. He is a member of Upsilon Pi Epsilon Computer Science Honor Society, Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society and Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society.
Kranti Peddada, Biomedical Engineering, with minors in Public Health and Electrical Engineering. During his four years at WUSTL, Peddada has gotten considerable experience working in research. He worked in the lab of Deepta Bhattacharya, PhD, in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at the School of Medicine for nearly two years working to engineer human induced pluripotent stem cells to generate antibody-mediated immunity. During the summer of 2011, he travelled to India to work with local ophthalmologists to deliver free eye health care and to perform public health research he later presented at two symposia. In addition, he has been a peer counselor in Uncle Joe’s Organization for three years and served on its outreach committee, was a problem-solving team leader for the Introduction to Biomedical Engineering class and has been a resident adviser for two years. The Cupertino, Calif.-native Peddada has received the Outstanding Senior and Junior Academic Achievement Awards from the Department of Biomedical Engineering, a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, the Antoinette Frances Dames Award and the Robert N. Varney Prize from the Department of Physics. In addition, he is a member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, the Alpha Eta Mu Beta Biomedical Engineering Honor Society and the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society. He will attend Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the fall.