The honorees were recognized for their outstanding teaching and educational impact in engineering, computing, and liberal arts classes.
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Nine Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) instructors were recognized by the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Office of Academic Effectiveness with Course Instructor Opinion Survey (CIOS) honors for the 2025 fall semester.
Regents Professor John Cressler, Senior Research Engineer Sean Wilson, and Associate Professor Brendan Saltaformaggio each received CIOS Awards.
Cressler and Saltaformaggio each received the award for the second consecutive year.
Additionally, assistant professors Frank Li, Maegan Tucker, and Sara Fridovich-Keil; associate professor Matthew Hale, and professors Ali Adibi and Muhannad Bakir, along with Cressler, Wilson, and Saltaformaggio, were each named to the CIOS Honor Roll.
Georgia Tech Research Institute Research Engineer Benjamin Yang was also named to the CIOS Honor Roll for teaching ECE 3011: ECE Design Fundamentals.
The Annual CIOS Awards are open to full-time Georgia Tech employees who teach credit courses and have a minimum of 85 percent CIOS response rate and are in the top 25 percent of the composite CIOS scores.
The CIOS Honor Roll is open to instructors with exceptional scores and a 70 percent response rate.
Recipients are celebrated by their students for outstanding teaching and educational impact and overwhelmingly praised for their excellent teaching methods and dedication to student success.
Learn more about these exceptional faculty members below:
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Ali Adibi
Professor
CIOS Honor Roll
ECE 3025 – Electromagnetics: Present the laws and applications of electromagnetics.
Ali Adibi is the director for the Center for Advanced Processing-tools for Electromagnetic/acoustics Xtals (APEX) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his B.S.E.E. from Shiraz University (Iran) in 1990, and his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 2000. His Ph.D. research resulted in a breakthrough in persistent holographic storage in photorefractive crystals.
Adibi worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology from 1999 to 2000. In 2000, he joined the faculty of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he is now an associate professor.
Adibi has a wide range of research interests in both theoretical and experimental aspects of photonic devices and materials. His research has resulted in more than 240 journal and more than 600 conference publications, as well as several invention disclosures and patents.
Adibi has received several prestigious awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the White House, CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and Packard Fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Dr. Adibi has been the conference chair for several conferences, including the "Photonic Crystal Materials and Devices" conference in the Photonics West Meeting. He has served as a technical committee member for several conferences organized by IEEE, Optical Society of America (OSA), and The International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE). He is a senior member of IEEE and a member of Sigma Xi, OSA, SPIE, and ASM. He is also the chair of the IEEE LEOS Atlanta Chapter.
Muhannad Bakir
Professor
CIOS Honor Roll
ECE 6776 - Integrated and Low-Cost Microelectronics Systems Packaging: Introduction to cross-disciplinary microelectronic packaging technologies, including electrical design, thermal considerations and technologies, reliability, optoelectronic packaging, and RF-/mm-wave packaging.
Muhannad S. Bakir received the B.E.E. degree from Auburn University, Auburn, AL, in 1999 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2000 and 2003, respectively.
Bakir is currently the Dan Fielder Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the director of 3D Systems Packaging Research Center. He is the recipient of the 2013 Intel Early Career Faculty Honor Award, 2012 DARPA Young Faculty Award, 2011 IEEE CPMT Society Outstanding Young Engineer Award, and was an Invited participant in the 2012 National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Symposium.
In 2015, Bakir was elected by the IEEE CPMT Society to serve as a distinguished lecturer for a four-year term. Bakir and his research group have received more than 25 conference and student paper awards including six from the IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC), four from the IEEE International Interconnect Technology Conference (IITC), and one from the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC). Bakir’s group was awarded the 2014 Best Paper of the IEEE Transactions on Components Packaging and Manufacturing Technology in the area of advanced packaging.
Bakir is an editor of a book entitled Integrated Interconnect Technologies for 3D Nanoelectronic Systems (with James D. Meindl) and is the author/coauthor of more than 180 journal publications and conference proceedings, 12 US patents, and the presenter of multiple international conference tutorials, including an invited tutorial on 3D IC and interconnect technologies at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).
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John Cressler
Regents’ Professor
CIOS Award
IAC 2002 - Science, Engineering, and Religion: An Interfaith Dialogue: This course seeks to prepare students for leadership in a globally-focused, multi-cultural technological world by ensuring their religious literacy and engaging in meaningful dialogue on contemporary topics spanning the boundaries of science, engineering and religion, particularly within the context of multi-faith diversity.
CIOS Honor Roll
COE 3002 - Micro/Nano Revolution: Introduction to microelectronics and nanotechnology: the communications revolution, Moore's law, semiconductors, transistors, MEMS, photonics, analysis of common technological objects, global impact on technology and society.
Cressler grew up in Georgia, and received the B.S. degree in physics from Georgia Tech in 1984. From 1984 until 1992 he was on the research staff at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, working on high-speed Silicon and Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) microelectronic devices and technology. While continuing his full-time research position at IBM, he went back to pursue his graduate studies at Columbia University in 1985, receiving his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in applied physics in 1987 and 1990, respectively.
In 1992, Cressler left IBM Research to pursue his dream of becoming a professor, and joined the faculty at Auburn University, where he served until 2002, when he left to join Georgia Tech. He is presently a Regents Professor and the Schlumberger Chair in Electronics at Georgia Tech.
Cressler is interested in the understanding, development, and application of new types of silicon-based bandgap-engineered microelectronic devices and circuits for high-speed electronics in emerging 21st century communications systems. He and his team have published over 700 technical papers in this field, and he has written five non-fiction books (two for general audiences). He has recently become enamored with writing historical fiction. His novels are interfaith love stories set in medieval Muslim Spain, including: Emeralds of the Alhambra, Shadows in the Shining City, and Fortune’s Lament (with a fourth in the works). His hobbies include wine collecting, cooking, gardening, fly fishing, mushroom foraging, and hiking.
Sara Fridovich-Keil
Assistant Professor
CIOS Honor Roll
ECE 8803 - Special Topics: Foundations of Computational Imaging
Sara Fridovich-Keil is an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and program faculty in machine learning. Before joining Georgia Tech, Fridovich-Keil was a postdoc at Stanford and completed her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in 2023 and her B.S.E. at Princeton in 2018. Her research focuses on foundations and applications of machine learning and signal processing in computational imaging.
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Matthew Hale
Associate Professor
CIOS Honor Roll
ECE 6563 - Networked Control: Covers tools and techniques for networked control systems as well as application domains and promising research directions.
Matthew Hale is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. He received his B.S.E from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012 and received his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in 2017. His research is broadly in the areas of control and optimization, with a strong emphasis on multi-agent systems and applications to robotics. His long-term goal is to develop new theoretical tools that solve fundamental, practical problems in multi-agent systems and to enable safe, reliable, and efficient operation of multi-agent systems across a wide spectrum of applications.
Frank Li
Assistant Professor
CIOS Honor Roll
CS 4262 - Network Security: Fundamental concepts of network information security, including applied cryptography, secure access methods, and vulnerabilities in network protocols and network applications.
Frank Li is an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech with a joint appointment between the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He joined the Georgia Tech faculty in Fall 2020. His research interests span network and software security, Internet measurements, and human factors in security, with a particular focus on improving security operations in practice. This work has led to top-tier conference publications, as well as Best Paper Awards at the ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC’14) and the USENIX Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS’19).
Before joining Georgia Tech, Li was a Visiting Researcher at Facebook. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley (2019) and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT (2013). During his graduate studies, he was supported by NSF GRFP and NDSEG fellowships and received the Berkeley Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award. He hails originally from Minnesota and remains an ardent (yet often disappointed) fan of the Vikings and Timberwolves.
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Brendan Saltaformaggio
Associate Professor
CIOS Award
ECE 4117 - Introduction to Malware Reverse Engineering: This course exposes students to an immersive, hands-on experience in the dissection and analysis of the code, structure, and functionality of malicious software.
CIOS Honor Roll
CS 6747 - ADV Malware Analysis: Covers advanced approaches for detecting the presence of vulnerabilities in binary software, the analysis of malicious software, and explores recent research and unsolved problems in software protection and forensics.
Brendan Saltaformaggio is an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech with a joint appointment between the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the School of Computer Science. His research interests lie in computer systems security, cyber forensics, and the vetting of untrusted software.
Saltaformaggio serves as the Director of the Cyber Forensics Innovation (CyFI) Laboratory. The CyFI Lab's mission is to further the investigation of advanced cyber crimes and the analysis and prevention of next-generation malware attacks, particularly in mobile and IoT environments. This research has led to numerous publications at top cyber security venues, including a Best Paper Award from the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS’15) and a Best Student Paper Award from the 2014 USENIX Security Symposium.
Originally from New Orleans, Saltaformaggio earned his Bachelor of Science with Honors in Computer Science from the University of New Orleans in 2012. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science at Purdue University in 2014 and 2016, respectively, during which Saltaformaggio was honored with the 2017 ACM SIGSAC Doctoral Dissertation Award as well as two fellowships: the 2016 Symantec Research Labs Graduate Fellowship and the inaugural Emil Stefanov Memorial Fellowship in Computer Science.
Maegan Tucker
Assistant Professor
CIOS Honor Roll
ECE 4560 - Introduction to Automation and Robotics: Fundamental disciplines of modern robotics: mechanics, control, and computing. Analysis, design, and control of mobile robots and manipulators.
Maegan Tucker received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (ME) from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in May 2023. Prior, she also received an M.S. in ME from Caltech in 2019 and a B.S. in ME from Georgia Tech in 2017. After graduating with her PhD, Maegan conducted a brief postdoc at Caltech (May - August 2023), followed by a brief research position at Disney Research (September - December 2023).
Generally speaking, her research interests lie at the intersection of control theory and human-robot interaction, with specific applications towards lower-limb assistive devices. Much of her research is centered around the question: “What is the right way to walk?”. In her free time, Maegan enjoys puzzles, playing video games, and the piano.
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Sean Wilson
Senior Research Engineer
CIOS Award and CIOS Honor Roll
CS 7785 - Intro Robotics Research (CIOS Award and Honor Roll): Familiarizes students with the core areas of robotics: mechanics, control, perception, AI, and autonomy. Provides an introduction to the mathematical tools required in robotics research.
Sean Wilson is a Senior Research Engineer serving as the Collaborative Autonomy Branch Chief for the Aerospace, Transportation & Advanced Systems Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). Additionally, he serves as the Director of the Robotarium Lab at Georgia Tech, which enables people around the world to deploy robotic algorithms onto robotic hardware free of charge.
He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from Arizona State University in 2017 and a B.A. degree in physics and mathematics from the State University of New York at Geneseo in 2012. He previously served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Wilson’s research interests include remotely-accessible robotic hardware, collaborative autonomy, as well as the control of multi-agent and swarm robotic systems.
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