Two faculty members in the UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering have received Outstanding Graduate Mentor Awards for 2024-’25 academic year. Computer science professor Christopher Kruegel and electrical and computer engineering professor B. S. Manjunath each received a mentor award, with a third award going to English professor Ben Olguín.

“This is an outstanding recognition for Chris Kruegel and B. S. Manjunath,” said Umesh Mishra, dean of the College of Engineering. “Both of them have guided a large number of students toward their professional goals, demonstrating patience and empathy while challenging them to achieve superior levels of expertise in their fields. Congratulations to them on this well-deserved award.”

Christopher Kruegel
For the past seventeen years, Kruegel, an expert in cybersecurity, has demonstrated exemplary mentoring of an especially large number of students, graduating twenty PhD students and sixteen MS students as department chair or co-chair, with an additional twelve PhD students currently pursuing PhDs in his lab. 

“I am truly honored and very excited to be receiving this award,” Kruegel said. “I am deeply passionate about mentoring students and supporting them in developing their research skills on their paths to becoming independent researchers.” 

Kruegel places special emphasis on providing guidance to students as they look for promising research topics, learn to develop and properly evaluate new ideas and systems, and prepare compelling presentations of scientific results in papers. The evidence of his mentoring success is found in the large number of papers his students have published as lead authors. He has also made it a priority to prepare students for successful careers in academia, with eight of his previous twenty doctoral students now holding faculty positions at universities in the United States and Europe. 

Knowing that excellent students can come from anywhere, Kruegel has developed innovative ways to recruit top talent from around the world, including a research-internship program that has so far allowed more than one hundred senior international undergraduate students to come to UCSB for a period of three to six months. He is also dedicated to supporting diversity and students from varied backgrounds. “Cyber security is a field where out-of-the-box thinking is critical,” he says. “When designing strong defenses, it is important to assume the role of the attacker. What are ways to push a system to its breaking point and beyond? We need diverse and creative ways to come up with attacks to guide the best solutions.”

As part of his approach to mentoring, Kruegel encourages his graduate students to serve as mentors themselves and to collaborate closely with interns on their projects, providing his graduate students with an ideal opportunity for professional growth.  

In a version of what might be termed “the lab that plays together stays together,” Kruegel organizes an annual retreat, during which he and his students spend a few days off-campus engaging in brainstorming sessions, research presentations, and team-building activities. “These offsite meetings have led to new collaborations between students and exciting new research directions,” Kruegel notes, “but they also offer students a great way to get to know each other outside of work, to build trust, and to form lifelong friendships.”

Collaboration is a well-recognized foundation of the UCSB research enterprise, and Kruegel’s cultivation of such efforts results in many papers’ being co-authored by two or more students in the lab. Believing strongly that students should experience multiple environments during their graduate studies, Kruegel leverages his network of industry partners and faculty at other universities to organize summer internships for his students. 

With his exceptional work ethic and his abiding academic integrity serving as a compass, his students look to him not only for information and guidance, but also to serve as a model for professional success and positive influence. Kruegel is more than a mentor; he is a leader who has inspired a generation of graduate students.

B. S. Manjunath
Upon receiving news of his faculty mentoring award, Manjunath said, “To me, mentorship is a lifelong commitment to nurturing curiosity, critical thinking, and resilience in students. My primary goal is to foster an inclusive environment in which students can grow into independent researchers and future leaders. I view mentoring as a partnership — an ongoing dialogue that goes beyond solving technical problems to helping students build confidence, integrity, and a collaborative spirit.

"I’m deeply honored and grateful for this recognition. Mentoring has been one of the most rewarding parts of my career — watching students grow, find their paths, and make a difference in the world is an incredible privilege," added Manjunath, who directs the Vision Research Lab, the Center for Bio-image Informatics, and the Center for Multimodal Big Data Science and Healthcare at UCSB.

Manjunath’s approach to mentoring rests on three core values: individualized support, interdisciplinary exploration, and long-term impact. “Because computer vision now touches nearly every aspect of modern life, from scientific research to consumer applications, it provides an exceptional arena for students of varied backgrounds to collaborate and flourish,” he says. “This inherently interdisciplinary field offers high-impact opportunities in healthcare, environmental sustainability, digital media, and more. By tailoring my guidance to each student’s unique skill set and goals, I try to encourage the development of not only technical expertise, but also creativity, perseverance, and ethical research practices. Recognizing that some students thrive under structured guidance while others excel with greater independence, I adapt my approach to cultivate both autonomy and confidence.”

In the highly supportive environment of the Vision Research Lab, Manjunath guides students as they navigate the full range of academic and professional challenges while supporting them in defining research problems clearly and taking the time to think critically rather than rushing to solutions. 

During his thirty-three years of tenure at UCSB, Manjunath has advised fifty-two PhD students through their dissertations.” Many of those students have everaged computer vision in digital multimedia, biomedical imaging, materials science, neuroscience, and biodiversity, which, Manjunath believes, reflect his “commitment to interdisciplinary learning and the transformative potential of diverse perspectives.” 

Manjunath believes in taking risks, and says that a key aspect of his mentorship lies in “inspiring students to be bold in their research vision and to think ambitiously about the impact they can have,” he says. “By working closely with students to refine proposals, strengthen communication skills, and cultivate forward-thinking mindsets, I strive to guide them toward innovative projects that will have lasting significance.” 

Two of his doctoral students — Satish Kumar and S. Shailja (both PhD ’24) — became finalists for the globally contested Schmidt Science Fellowship, which is awarded to only about forty fellows worldwide across all science and engineering disciplines. Kumar ultimately received the fellowship in 2024 for his work on environmental sustainability, becoming the first PhD student from the College of Engineering to earn that honor, while Shailja received UCSB’s 2024 Lancaster Dissertation Award in Science and Engineering. 

Over the years, Manjunath's mentorship has propelled many students to leadership roles across academia, industry, and entrepreneurship, where they have had profound impacts in their fields. They include: Wei-Ying Ma (PhD ’96), now a Huiyan Chair Professor and Chief Scientist at Tsinghua University in China, who previously founded and led the AI Lab at ByteDance, driving core technologies behind TikTok and other transformative platforms; Marco Zuliani (PhD ’06), who works in advanced computer vision technologies at Apple; and Kaushal Solanki (PhD ’05), who founded EyeNuk, which pioneered AI-powered, FDA approved technology for detecting diabetic retinopathy. Many other of his students have assumed influential roles at Google, Amazon, and Meta, or founded successful startups of their own. For example, Satish Kumar (PhD ’24) and current PhD student Bowen Zhang co-founded EyeClimate, a company leveraging advanced AI and data analytics to develop impactful solutions for climate change. They also led their team to first place at UCSB’s 2024 New Venture Competition.

Manjunath says that he sees mentorship as “a two-way exchange” that benefits him as much as it benefits his students. “Every student I guide broadens my own horizons, whether by questioning established thinking, suggesting novel approaches, or offering fresh insights into our shared research. This reciprocal process continually refines my own mentoring style, keeping me open to new possibilities for student growth and collaboration. 

A willing listener, Manjunath encourages students to contribute their ideas, even those they are unsure of. His ability to listen, which “empowers new students to share their perspective, regardless of any naiveté,” one student said, “remains one of the most powerful lessons anyone can learn. What I enjoy most is that he never states truths; he simply demonstrates them, so that we learn by example.”

“Mentoring remains one of the most fulfilling aspects of my academic career,” Manjunath concludes. “Observing students evolve into confident scholars, creative thinkers, and successful professionals is both humbling and inspiring.”