5/16/2025 Rudy San Miguel
The Siebel School of Computing and Data Science hosted a banquet room full of award winners and their supporters at its annual Celebration of Excellence on April 25 at the Illini Union. The evening spotlighted the exceptional talent inside the Siebel School as well as a small sample of its many successful alumni around the world.
Written by Rudy San Miguel
The Siebel School of Computing and Data Science hosted a banquet room full of award winners and their supporters at its annual Celebration of Excellence on April 25 at the Illini Union. The evening spotlighted the exceptional talent inside the Siebel School as well as a small sample of its many successful alumni around the world.
In her opening remarks, Nancy Amato, director of the Siebel School and Abel Bliss professor, noted that in addition to the abundance of awards that the evening’s events would highlight among faculty, staff, students, alumni, and donors, another important milestone was achieved since the previous ceremony: “Last year, we weren’t a school; we were a department,” Amato said, referring to the former Computer Science Department recently receiving official designation as the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science.
The evening began with Amato spotlighting donors who were present, and who had made a couple of the night’s awards possible: Scott Fisher, Scott H. and Bonita J. Fisher Endowment, and Channing Brown, Channing Brown Scholarship.
Amato then presented this year’s alumni award recipients:
- Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award: David Goeckeler and Rob Neely. Goeckler is the chairman of Sandisk Corporation. Neely works for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as the associate director for Weapon Simulation and Computing (WSC) in the Strategic Deterrence (SD) Principal Directorate.
- Distinguished Academic Achievement Alumni Award: Pankaj Jalote and Dongyan Xu. Jalote is a distinguished professor with, and the former founding director of, IIIT-Delhi. Xu is the Samuel Conte Professor of Computer Science and director of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) at Purdue University.
- Early Career Academic Achievement Alumni Awards: Pavithra Prabhakar and Saman Zonouz. Prabhakar is a computer science professor, and the Peggy and Gary Edwards Chair in Engineering at Kansas State University. Zonouz is a professor at Georgia Tech with joint appointments in the School Cybersecurity and Privacy, and School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also directs the Cyber-Physical Systems Track, GTPE.
- Distinguished Alumni Service Award: Bruce Ge. Ge is the founder and chairman of the board of Talroo, Inc. where he also acts as an engineer recruiter and trainer.
- Young Alumni Achievement Award: Spiros Xanthos. Xanthos is the founder and CEO of Resolve AI.
Accepting his award, Jalote said, “All of us, in our lives, have some periods of time which help us broaden and define us…The few years I spent here [at] Illinois are clearly one of those periods which helped me grow tremendously and define me.”
“The CS brand here at Illinois opens doors. This is a place with a fantastic reputation,” Neely said in his speech. He also commended the Siebel School on its CS + X degree programs. “Today’s toughest problems are multidisciplinary, and this is something that this university and this [school] really excels at.”
A new award, the Lenny Pitt Distinguished School Service Award, was presented to its namesake, Lenny Pitt, professor emeritus, for his lifetime of service to the Siebel School and the field of computer science.
Twenty-six Siebel School faculty members were recognized for previous honors by Google, NSF, ACM, IEEE, Big Ten Academic Alliance, ACL, PAKDD, Research.com, CNA, HPCWire, DARPA, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Six staff members received Outstanding Staff Awards for “exemplary service to the faculty, students, and fellow staff, which includes recent service that goes above and beyond, as well as sustained outstanding service.” Two additional staff received recognition for their contribution to student advising at Siebel School.
Fifty-five undergraduate students and 80 graduate students were acknowledged for academic excellence, teaching, service, and research. The CS Student Ambassadors/Research Scholars (CS STARS) were also honored for their undergraduate research, recruiting, mentoring, and leadership.
Amato concluded the evening by thanking those recognized “whose hard work and accomplishments make me proud and remind us of why our school remains a top-ranked program in the country.” Amato added, “There are more great things to come!”