Purdue Engineering Fellows alumni share experiences, encourage nominations
Dedicated, passionate, persevering, and cutting-edge.
The Purdue Engineering Fellows, selected annually by nominations from peers, faculty and staff, are all of the above and more. Leaders and earth-shakers at Purdue University, the Fellows are recognized as a part of a new legacy — established in 202 by Robert H. Buckman (BSChE ’59) and wife Joyce A. Mollerup — with a celebration, a plaque, and $25,000 received after graduation.
The nomination window for the Class of 2027 Purdue Engineering Fellows is open until July 3, 2026. Nominations should be submitted as packets, including a resume for the nominated student alongside written nominations from faculty and staff.
Candidates for the Engineering Fellows are considered outstanding academically, professionally and socially. The criteria include creativity, problem-solving and respect of their peers. Nomination letters should address these criteria with specific, concrete examples that demonstrate how the student stands apart from other high-achieving peers rather than general descriptions of excellence.
The honor of a Fellows nomination and selection is considered a “cherry on top” of the Purdue Engineering experience for many. But what do Fellows do after graduation? How do they continue to make an impact and expound upon all they’ve learned and achieved at Purdue?
And, of course, what do they decide to do with the awarded money?
The Fellows
Brandon Mar’s early Purdue experience was rough.
He called that first year “a circus” and “tumultuous” when reflecting after being awarded as a Fellow in September 2024. While he wasn’t sure he’d pass first-year engineering (FYE), Mar ultimately did and made it to graduation, leaving a positive impact in his wake.
His “caring, passionate, energetic and positive” personality has been an asset to his current lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he pursues a doctorate in pharmaceutical sciences.
Mar (BSABE ’25) wouldn’t be in the lab now without his Purdue experiences in Clase and Low Labs, he said.
“Cell therapy is something I’ve never explicitly worked on before,” Mar said. “However, a lot of the pieces of my research story have given me the training and framework to approach this problem. Cancer is still cancer.”
Mar also created a business while home in New York. The steady cash supply from the business cushions the graduate stipend he earns, which allows him to save and invest more of the Engineering Fellows award money he received. He had planned to use the funds for grad school.
For students who may be asking faculty, staff or peers to nominate them, Mar recommends starting with a story in mind.
“Your nomination is about building a story: ‘How do we (in a nomination packet) convey clearly the story of my time here?’ I asked very different parts of my campus experience to really show where I started and where I was before senior year,” Mar said. “Reach out to that first person you think can really vouch for you and build from there.”
The year prior to Mar, another Engineering Fellow had built a story of connection and positive, lasting impact. Whenever Griffin Laihinen (BSEEE ’24) comes up in conversation, at least one face lights up. More if the group contains many members of the Purdue Student Engineering Foundation (PSED), in which Laihinen served as president in 2023. In the two years since he crossed the stage at Elliott Hall of Music, his impact continues at Purdue — both in those who knew him as a student and those who know him now as an alum, PSEF resume reviewer and guest speaker from Rosemount, Minnesota.
Laihinen wasn’t sure how he was going to succeed after Purdue. Especially in creating — and maintaining — a community after PSEF.
“After leaving the tight-knit community I found at Purdue, I have struggled to adjust to life not surrounded by people undergoing many of the same life experiences as myself,” said Laihinen, nominated as an Engineering Fellow by his Purdue community in 2023. “As I learn how to navigate a new community at work and in my adult life, I have struggled to be satisfied with my efforts to leave a positive mark. Knowing that my impact at Purdue has lasted through today gives me hope … to know that actions can create waves of impact years after the actions are actually taken, and I hope that is the case for the work and community involvement I do now.”
Professional engineering is a much larger form of the ENGR 13300 (Transforming Ideas to Innovation, EPICS/VIP) group project, Laihinen noted. Except instead of a grade hinging on everyone’s participation, the timelines of hundreds of people and a multitude of companies are impacted by the work of one person.
“Communication remains one of the most important aspects of professional life as an engineer, similar to my perspective on it as an engineering student.”
Laihinen split the Engineering Fellows funds he received between setting up a debt-free adult life and enjoying an incredible adventure.
“I paid off over $16,000 worth of student loan debt in one fell swoop,” Laihinen said. “Graduating without debt allowed me to feel the freedom to have some excess money after each paycheck that I feel comfortable supporting causes that I am passionate about.”
The rest of the money was Laihinen’s ticket to rural Finland, where he spent a month as a gardener. In exchange for meals and a bed, he weeded, planted and harvested for an elderly woman who owned a gargantuan, fairytale-esque garden property.
“I had the time of my life when I was in Finland: proper wood-burning saunas, fresh fish and vegetables and enriching labor outdoors,” Laihinen said. “For the (second half in) Europe, I backpacked and stayed in hostels in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Poland, Sweden and the UK.”
For students who are interested in building strong Fellows nomination packets, Laihinen recommends something he strongly embodied: connection.
“The value of positive peer relations is one that really stood out to me as something that differentiates the typical Purdue Engineering student who can think critically and solve problems creatively. If students can identify others that would vouch for their ability to have positive and constructive relationships with their peers, then they would be a great person to write a recommendation for that student.”
Authenticity in professional and peer relationships proved crucial to the Purdue Engineering experience of Denae Galloway (BSECE ’23), who came into FYE knowing that engineering had … something to do with putting things together. And that she wanted to pursue it as a career. But what was she going to do? Galloway wasn’t sure where to start.
Enter ENGR 13100 (Transforming Ideas into Innovation I). Electrical engineering caught Galloway’s attention — because power electronics were fascinating, and that her mother pursued the discipline — and she transitioned to the Elmore School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). Within the four years before she was honored as a Fellow in 2022, Galloway became an ECE ambassador and a member (and eventually president) of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Student Society (ECESS).
Galloway’s intentional involvement within her discipline is what she recommends to students who may be asking faculty and staff for nominations: “There’s endless opportunities that can come from your network and you’ll never know where it can lead until you put yourself out there.”
As an ambassador, alums, students and peers shared stories with Galloway — excitement about Purdue, inspiration to pursue engineering or support for a child interested in the discipline. The experiences also worked well with her minor in organizational leadership and her presidency in ECESS in the 2022-23 academic year.
“Purdue taught me to have a strong appreciation for diverse perspectives and to strive for a certain level of grit and determination in everything I do,” said Galloway, from Orland Park, Illinois. “I use this every day in my professional life. My current role is highly cross-functional and working in manufacturing is a fast-paced environment where I am constantly problem solving and collaborating with a variety of people.”
Galloway hopes to connect with Purdue as a mentor or a leader, able to offer advice and insights into the professional world to students who are wondering what exactly engineers do, just like she did.
For now, she offers wisdom: “Remain authentic to yourselves. You don’t want to put on an act and be someone you’re not. Being true to yourself will always go far.”
But what might authenticity look like? That varies from student to student, which would have been nightmarish for Matthew Boyle (BSIE ’22) when he first came to Purdue.
Open-ended questions haunted him. And the Purdue Engineering education was full of them.
At first, engineering’s open-ended questions were difficult. But then, as Boyle embraced all that industrial engineering (IE) had to offer, the threat of vagueness morphed into an invitation for creativity.
“Almost immediately after I started my career, it became clear that ambiguity and being comfortable within it was actually a vital skill that the Purdue IE curriculum taught me,” said Boyle, a first-generation student from Greenfield, Indiana. “I was comfortable being uncomfortable, knew how to ask questions and where to look for resources. … My favorite projects are those vague problems that require deep problem solving to get an answer.”
Boyle was honored in the third cohort of Engineering Fellows, representing the 2021-22 “best of the best of Purdue Engineering.” While Boyle was going into a career that was filled with uncertainties and open-ended possibilities, one thing he knew for sure: He was using the award money to get a jump-start.
He took a trip to Europe after graduation, reconnecting with a German exchange student his family had hosted in high school. The trip included an intimate tour of everyday life in Munich, leaving a lasting impact on Boyle as he learned more about and from his friend. When he returned, he moved from Indiana to Minneapolis. Every expense, from rent to a U-Haul, was covered by the Fellows award.
Boyle was also quick to become student loan-free.
“I cannot thank Bob and Joyce enough,” Boyle said. “Submitting that last payment lifted a weight that has allowed me to focus on saving for my future big life events, like my engagement, upcoming wedding and a house one day.”
Boyle returned to West Lafayette in September 2025 to celebrate 40 years of the Purdue Engineering Student Council (PESC), in which Boyle served as treasurer. Boyle also keeps in touch with friends he’d made or mentored as a College of Engineering ambassador, a student worker of sports analytics, a Cummins Inc. intern, an engineering mentor corps captain, a Rising Professional host and a member of the Data Mine Learning Community.
While an undergrad, Boyle also created and led the PESC Mental Health Committee (now the well-being committee), advocating for student mental health resources and an increase of counseling and psychological services (CAPS) liaisons with a dedication to engineering students — a precursor to Community, Assistance and Resources for Engineering Students (CARES). He facilitated the creation of a central hub site of resources and a well-being survey distributed to the entire engineering student body for insights on future initiatives.
“I encourage students to find and get involved in something they are passionate about, no matter what it is,” said Boyle about becoming a good candidate for the Engineering Fellows. “All of the Fellows during my year had unique stories and backgrounds, but the one consistent thing is that we loved and believe in the clubs and work we were involved in.”