Dr. Seshadri Mohan, chair of the Systems Engineering department in the Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology at UALR, has been honored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as its Outstanding Engineering Educator for Region 5.

The region encompasses Arkansas, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma and parts of Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming. Mohan was on hand to receive the award at the annual IEEE Region 5 meeting April
16 in Baton Rouge, La.

“Dr. Mohan has introduced cutting-edge Systems Engineering courses in wireless technologies at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, pioneering courses in ‘Mobile Multimedia Internet’ and creating what ABET Evaluators called the ‘model’ for senior capstone design courses nationwide,” EIT founding Dean Mary Good said in her nominating letter. “His senior capstone design course is a revolutionary approach to link industry with academia, allowing students to actually form consulting companies to work for the telecom industry while still in college.”

The capstone project success has even resulted in two patent awards to AT&T with his students developing a working prototype of a new wireless service. Another capstone project on engineering a next-generation airport system, which Mohan mentored in partnership with the Little Rock Airport Commission, won third place in the Governor’s Cup business plan competition in 2007.

Mohan joined the Systems Engineering department in 2004, and in six years the enrollment in the program has grown from 35 to 172 in fall 2010. Under his leadership, in 2005 the electrical and mechanical engineering options were added to the program, and graduate certificate and masters programs were added in 2006 and 2008, respectively.

Just last week the Arkansas Department of Higher Education approved a new Ph.D. program: Engineering Science and Systems, which will begin to be offered in August 2011.

In his years at UALR, Mohan also has overseen the development and deployment of new laboratories including a Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) Laboratory, power systems laboratory, and, with $2.5 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, a state-of-the-art anechoic chamber and wireless multimedia laboratory, not only as leading-edge research labs but also as undergraduate labs for laboratory instruction and undergraduate research.

Mohan has forged partnerships with industry to benefit undergraduate research by launching a field trial sponsored by Alltel Wireless – now Verizon Wireless – to implement leading-edge wireless technologies on the UALR campus in partnership with Motorola.

Active in outreach efforts to educate high school students in various disciplines of engineering, Mohan founded in 2008 the Engineering Scholars Program, a two-week, on-campus summer program for top-performing high school students from across Arkansas who receive hands-on education in robotics, electrical engineering, telecommunications, MEMS, and materials testing laboratories.

He has authored or co-authored more than 100 publications – books, patents, and papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings, several of which are extensively cited. He holds 11 patents in the area of wireless location management and authentication strategies as well as in the area of enhanced services for wireless.