Exceptional leadership, mentorship, service, and undergraduate research are being recognized this year as The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering at UC Santa Barbara announces the recipients of its prestigious Hynes-Wood and Tirrell awards.

Presented annually, the awards recognize graduating seniors who have made lasting contributions to the college community through leadership, mentorship, professional development, and research excellence. The recipients will also be honored during the college’s Commencement, which will take place at 9 AM on Friday, June 12 von Commencement Green.

Hynes-Wood Award: Ava Smith and Nikhil Kapasi
Ava Smith and Nikhil Kapasi are co-recipients of The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering’s Hynes-Wood Award, which recognizes students for outstanding contributions to student activities and helping others with professional growth and development. The award is named for Jacqueline Hynes, the former assistant dean for academic programs in engineering, and the late Roger Wood, a beloved electrical and computer engineering professor and former associate dean for academic affairs.

Smith, a mechanical engineering major from Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, said that the award is especially meaningful because of her commitment to supporting the UCSB engineering community.

“Receiving the Hynes-Wood Award is incredibly meaningful to me because of how deeply I care about this program and the students within it,” Smith said. “I value the strong sense of community at UCSB, and being able to support others as they navigate their career goals and next steps has been one of the most rewarding parts of my experience.” 

In addition to the Hynes-Wood Award, Smith also received a University Service Award in acknowledgement of her broad involvement in several different areas of campus life. 

Throughout her four years at UCSB, Smith served in leadership positions with Engineers Without Borders (EWB); her sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma; and the Student Affairs Student Cabinet, while also working as a campus tour guide. She contributed to EWB’s solar energy projects in Guatemala and fundraised for Mental Health America as philanthropy chair for her sorority. 

Her undergraduate research experiences included working on nickel-titanium biomedical materials research in the lab of mechanical engineering professor Sam Daly through the Material Research Laboratory’s Research Internships in Science and Engineering (RISE) Program. She also participated as an intern in the Cooperative International Science and Engineering Internships (CISEI) program where she completed computational nanoindentation research at Trinity College Dublin. 

“What motivates me most is seeing the positive impact that encouragement and support can have on other students,” Smith said. “Supporting my peers not only helps them grow, but also enriches my own experience and learning.” 

Smith credited Daly and her research advisor, Andrew Christison, for their ongoing support and mentorship throughout her undergraduate experience.

After graduation, Smith will move to Bellingham, Washington to work as a rotating equipment engineer at Phillips 66’s Ferndale Refinery. 

Kapasi, a computer engineering major, said that his UCSB experience reshaped how he viewed engineering and community.

“I came into college unsure if I even wanted to continue on the engineering path,” Kapasi said. “Engineering felt homogenous in a lot of ways, and I wasn’t sure if I could fit in.”

That perspective changed after arriving at UCSB.

“During my first year at UCSB, I met so many passionate students and mentors who helped me see engineering differently,” he said. “They showed me that engineering was really about bringing people together to work on problems and ideas they care deeply about.”

Kapasi said that those experiences inspired him to help create the same welcoming environment for other students.

“What motivates me to improve campus culture is the chance to help create that same feeling for other students, to make engineering feel less isolating and more like a community where people are supported, encouraged, and excited to grow together,” he said.

Kapasi has served as an officer in UCSB IEEE, the student branch of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and co-founded a club supporting Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, a nonprofit that has raised more than $300 million for childhood cancer. He has also worked as an undergraduate learning assistant for ten computer science classes, and conducted undergraduate research for three years in computer hardware with electrical and computer engineering professor and chair
Luke Theogarajan as well as computer science education research with computer science professor and vice chair, Diba Mirza.

Kapasi says that undergraduate research has become one of the defining aspects of his UCSB experience.

“I have been lucky to see students go through the same process I did, starting out a little unsure of themselves and gradually growing into excited, capable, and confident engineers,” Kapasi said. “What I am most proud of is being able to play even a small role in that growth.”

Following graduation, Kapasi will continue at UCSB to pursue master’s degrees in both computer engineering and technology management through the Engineering + Technology Management Fellowship program.

Kapasi credited Theogarajan and MIrza, as well as Yoga Isukapalli, and Forrest Brewer for helping shape his growth as both an engineer and mentor. 

“To me, earning an engineering degree from UCSB means carrying forward the name of a school that taught me how to solve hard problems, work with talented people, and contribute to something bigger than myself,” Kapasi said. 

Matthew Tirrell Award: Sammy Lesner
Sammy Lesner received the college’s 2026 Tirrell Award for Distinction in Undergraduate Research. Named in honor of former College of Engineering dean Matthew Tirrell, the award recognizes a graduating senior who demonstrates exceptional promise and excellence in undergraduate research. 

A computer science (CS) major, Lesner conducted undergraduate research with computer science faculty members Tao Yang and Maryam Majedi while also serving as co-president of the Women in Computer Science (WiCS) Club and as a four-time undergraduate learning assistant. 

“I’m extremely honored to receive this very prestigious award,” Lesner said. “I’m planning to pursue a PhD, so I’m glad that my mentors, who supported me through my early development as a researcher, see a promising researcher in me.”
Lesner said that her research journey began through UCSB’s Early Research Scholars Program, where she joined Yang’s lab and explored machine learning techniques for query-based hybrid retrieval systems. Through that experience, she said that she gained a deeper understanding of both the challenges and rewards of research.

“There are no guarantees that you will get to publish,” Lesner said. “You can spend many hours in installation or theorizing, but at the end of the day you need to make progress. We had to learn to redefine success as hard work and the experience we gained rather than resume items.”

In Yang’s group, Lesner later extended a graduate course project on scalable document partitioning for learned sparse-retrieval models, co-developing a faster K-means guided method that uses balanced recursive partitioning to address scalability limitations in large vector datasets. Her evaluation showed that the method was two orders of magnitude faster on the team’s test datasets than the classical approach, and the results were accepted for publication at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (ACM SIGIR) 2026, the premier international conference on information retrieval, with Lesner listed as a co-first author.

“This achievement is truly remarkable for an undergraduate and highlights her unique combination of innovative thinking, diligence, and meticulous attention to detail,” Yang said.

“There were moments in the process when I made mistakes and even doubted whether the work would come together,” Lesner said. “I’m deeply grateful to Professor Yang for trusting me through those moments. His belief in me was one of the reasons I could persevere in moments of struggle.”

Lesner also credited her graduate-student mentor Parker Carlson, a PhD candidate in Yang’s research group, for helping shape the direction of her future goals. She mentions that his encouragement, perspective on the current research landscape, and lived experiences as a graduate student were critical to her being able to envision, in concrete terms, herself as a PhD student one day. 

“Between Parker’s day-to-day guidance and Professor Yang’s broader perspective, I’ve come to see the work and impact I want to make going forward,” she said.

Under the supervision of Majedi at the Embedded Ethics lab, Lesner conducted research in the computer science education area where her work resulted in a publication in SIGCSE 2026, one of the leading conferences in computer science education. 

This project addresses a critical and often overlooked issue: how search-engine design contributes to the spread of misinformation. While students are typically taught how search engines function, they are rarely guided to analyze their broader societal impact. Lesner addressed this gap by designing an integrated educational module that teaches both the technical foundations of search engines and their ethical implications. 

“Thanks to Professor Majedi’s consistent support over the past two years, what began as a basic idea for a search-engine coding project became an opportunity to start thought-provoking conversations with my peers and engage with the pedagogy behind designing computing courses for social good,” Lesner said. 

Lesner was also grateful to Majedi for helping her become a more confidence and polished presenter. Through regular practice presenting in the lab, she said that she gained the confidence to present the project at SIGCSE 2026 and engage in conversations with researchers, educators, and students in the computer science education community on topics ranging from psychometrics to connecting courses to careers. 

“Sammy’s work exemplifies the mission of the Embedded Ethics Lab: helping students connect technical concepts with their broader ethical and societal consequences,” said Majedi. “I am incredibly proud of the researcher, scholar, and leader she has become.”

Together, Lesner said that these research experiences helped to clarify the kinds of questions she hopes to pursue next: how large-scale information systems should be designed, and how they can better serve the people who rely on them. 

“Computer systems, from network protocol design and distributed systems to parallel computing, all tell a story built out of one smart innovation after another,” she said. “It characterizes why research excites me, because not only is it a creative and iterative process, it’s also work that is defined by hard work and the need to be inherently hopefuly in the case of unknowns.”

Her nominators also emphasized that Lesner’s impact extends beyond her own research, noting that she has helped peers refine their projects, inspired upperclassmen to get involved in research, and fostered confidence and belonging through her leadership in WiCS.

Following graduation, Lesner will remain at UCSB to pursue a master’s degree in computer science before applying to PhD programs focused on the intersection of information retrieval and systems architecture.
“Research was an unexpected joy of my undergraduate experience, one that welcomed into a world of the most wonderful and patient mentorship, gave me the freedom to follow my intellectual curiosities as they come to me, and has shaped the future that I dream of.”