The Eaton Award in Design Excellence

Jim and Shirley Eaton

Summary

This unique award program recognizes outstanding work in the field of design by recent ECE alumni. The program was established with a generous gift from Jim and Shirley Eaton of Palo Alto, California. Jim Eaton earned each of his degrees (BSEE '58, MSEE '63, and PhD '67) from Purdue, and his father was a well- known faculty member in the School from 1942 to 1967.

The first Eaton Award in Design Excellence was won by Daniel Elmhurst in March 2001.

Dr. Eaton's motivation for creating this award comes from his three decades of leading design work during his career at Hewlett Packard. The Eaton award encourages promising young engineers to continue their work in design by recognizing their early achievements in the field.

Eligibility

Any graduate receiving a bachelor's, master's, and/or doctoral degree from the Purdue University School of Electrical and Computer Engineering between May 2019 and May 2024 is eligible for the 2024 award. (For alumni who received more than one ECE degree, eligibility is determined from the date of the most recent degree.)

Award Highlights

The recipient of the award will receive:

  • A specially-designed plaque, presented at a ceremony in Fall 2024.
  • a $500 honorarium and a stipend to cover all travel costs for your trip back to campus.
  • the opportunity to speak with current ECE students to discuss your design work.
  • the opportunity to recognize the ECE professor or staff member who had the greatest impact on your education as the recipient of an accompanying award.

Entry Procedure

The entry consists of a self-nomination form to be completed by the alumnus/a and returned to ECE to be considered. 

Deadline

All nomination materials must be postmarked no later than August 1, 2024.

Past Winners

Year Alumni Award Faculty/Staff Mentor
2001 Daniel Elmhurst John Lindenlaub
2002 Robert Knoth
Louis Litwin		 Raymond de Carlo
Michael Zoltowski
2003 Brett Bymaster William Oakes
2004 Kevin Kirsch Robert Montgomery
2005 Albert Reuther David Meyer
2006 Joseph Richards George Adams
2007 Paul LaTour Barrett Robinson
2008-2009 Caleb Fulton William Chapel
2010 Buyue  Zhang Jan Allebach
2011 Tarkesh Pande
Shuo Yang		 Jim Krogermeier
David Love
Sam Midkiff
2012 Joe Land David Meyer
2013 Alan Barker Jim Krogermeier
2014 Hale Petersen George Lee
2015 Shaun Greene Steven Pekarek
2016 Ishaan Kohli Mike Melloch
2017 Waqas Javed David Ebert
2018 Andrew Metcalf Andrew Weiner
2019 Markell Baldwin Dan Elliott
2020 Everett Berry Yung-Hsiang Lu
2021 Yang Lei Jan Allebach
2022 Harshita Singh Scott Sudhoff
2023 Baibhab Chatterjee Shreyas Sen