CS PhD candidates make up two of the five Johns Hopkins University engineering students who were recently named 2019 Siebel Scholars, an annual award that recognizes nearly 100 of the top graduate students from universities across the nation who are studying in the fields of business, bioengineering, computer science, and energy science.
Siebel Scholars are selected for their outstanding academic performance and demonstrated leadership, and receive a $35,000 award toward their final year of studies. Since its founding in 2000, the Siebel Scholarship has been awarded to 50 Johns Hopkins graduate students.
“Our Siebel Scholars embody the spirit of investigation and leadership that marks a Johns Hopkins University engineering graduate student,” says Ed Schlesinger, Benjamin T. Rome Dean of the Whiting School of Engineering. “They have demonstrated a commitment to science and innovation, and a dedication to instructing and mentoring others. We are proud of their many accomplishments.”
The winners from Johns Hopkins University include:
Ehsan Azimi
Azimi is passionate about the intersection of technology, health care, and surgery. His research focuses on medical robotics and augmented reality. He has developed novel display calibration methods and user interaction modalities for head-mounted displays that improve surgical navigation and have helped to revolutionize medical training. His technology is in the process of being licensed. Azimi has also implemented techniques for robot-assisted cochlear implant placement and needle-steering.
Before joining Johns Hopkins, Azimi worked at Harvard Medical School, where he developed a method to improve the resolution and dynamic range of a medical imaging system. His work has led to more than 15 peer-reviewed articles in top journals and conferences. He holds multiple patents and has received numerous academic and research awards. He supervises undergraduate and graduate students at Johns Hopkins, leads the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics graduate student committee, and volunteers at the Living Legacy Foundation.
Javad Fotouhi
Fotouhi is a PhD candidate whose research focuses on image-guided interventions for health care that are enabled by multimodal augmented reality and artificial intelligence. He has helped lead research at Johns Hopkins that brings physician-centered augmented reality to surgery.
Fotouhi has received numerous academic and research awards, including the Coulter Award and a fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. He has mentored more than 40 students, including 11 visiting scholars from Europe, five master’s students, and an undergraduate who was named the Computer Science Department’s best researcher. Fotouhi has also been active in JHU’s community, supporting international students who have been affected by recent U.S. travel restrictions.