Here at the Fowler School of Engineering (FSE), graduate students are empowered to tackle practical challenges and adopt an entrepreneurial mindset as they pursue their advanced education. The Nachman Family Innovation Challenge offers vital resources to make this happen. Thanks to the support of the Nachman family and the Beckman Foundation, the program provides research funding and technological resources which serve as a catalyst for innovation, enabling Master’s in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (MS EECS) students on the thesis track to explore bold ideas and drive creative solutions.

This semester, we congratulate the two MS EECS students who were selected for this prestigious award to fund their groundbreaking research: Tiffany Le and Brandon Lee.

Le and her lab partner, Mason Li (Computer Science and Broadcast Journalism, ’25), presented their research orally at the Spring 2025 Student Scholar Symposium.

The primary aims of the Nachman Family Innovation Challenge are to support FSE students’ originality, ingenuity, and a deep commitment to advancing research. Modeled after “Shark Tank,” the format invited MS EECS students to compose detailed project proposals, then deliver ten-minute pitches to a review panel—outlining their projects’ innovative elements, current progress, and vision for the future. A five- to ten-minute Q&A session followed, in which the committee asked questions, offered feedback, and shared insights. 

The committee then selected Le and Lee as its winners, providing them with essential financial support—courtesy of the Nachman family—to make their research in engineering and computer science a reality. 

“The Nachman Family Innovation Challenge provided a valuable opportunity to bring a meaningful research idea to life through the support of the faculty and the generous funding provided by the Nachman Family,” shared Le.

For Le, the award-winning research she presented to the committee is a culmination of her extensive time spent in Dr. Yuxin Wen’s research lab, exploring her interest in machine learning prognosis for chronic health disease. Throughout the past year, Le has worked to develop a model which incorporates multi-modal inputs (such as patient demographics) to improve Alzheimer’s disease recognition.

Le (above, left) will be serving as a Data Science Intern at Panasonic Avionics Corporation over the summer.

“While a sensitive topic, I believe that there is a lot of merit and good that comes from doing research in prognosis and classification. This research aims to achieve accurate & dynamic disease prediction for early intervention and personalized treatment,” said Le.

As a recipient of the Nachman Family Innovation Challenge, the funds generously awarded by the Nachman Family will vitally support a portion of Le’s thesis project and master’s degree.

“I am so excited to take the next steps in my thesis (research) projects and incorporate the advice of the committee in improving my project,” expressed Le. “I found that the application process was quite humbling in the ways it makes me be productively critical of my research. This award means the world to me, and I believe it represents the potential of innovation in the engineering industry. In a more tangible sense, I hope to achieve a publication of this research paper and share the project with others for further growth.”

Brendan Lee

Throughout Lee’s time at Fowler, he has served as a research student alongside Chapman Engineering faculty Dr. Tom Springer. Their latest project (depicted above), “EcoDrone: Autonomous Environmental Monitoring,” was presented at the Spring 2025 Student Scholar Symposium.

For Brandon Lee, his interest in the Nachman Challenge stemmed from the opportunity to pursue freedom and funding for his early-stage, experimental research project: to create low-level software to support new compute-in-memory computer architecture. This research intends to reduce energy consumption and performance bottlenecks in machine learning hardware.

“I wanted to explore the question: How do we bridge the architectural gap between traditional computing models and next-gen memory-centric computing, without starting from scratch? This challenge gave me a way to explore that deeply and efficiently,” shared Lee.

For Lee, his selection for this distinguished award not only offers more tangible benefits—including but not limited to financial support and access to cutting-edge resources—but also demonstrates an investment in his work and the impact these future endeavors will have across the computing world.

“Being selected for the Nachman Challenge was a huge vote of confidence—not just in the research idea, but in my ability to carry it forward,” said Lee. “Practically, this award not only supports my research directly, it also gives me the financial flexibility to fully focus on it. Rather than needing to take on other work to cover expenses, I’m able to treat this project as my primary job. That freedom means I can dedicate my time and energy to pushing the research forward in a meaningful way. Tangibly, this award gives me a launching pad to prototype my ideas, gather data, and eventually hopefully publish or open-source my extensions for the broader computer architecture and machine learning communities. Long-term, I want this project to help shape how we think about sustainable, scalable computing architectures.”

Lee additionally spoke to the collaborative, interdisciplinary nature of his research journey at FSE. “This project touches everything from systems architectural modeling to AI hardware to instruction set tooling, and being part of the Nachman Challenge has helped me connect with faculty and peers who bring unique expertise and perspectives,” said Lee. “Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation, and I’m incredibly grateful to be in an environment that recognizes and supports that.”

The Fowler School of Engineering wishes to thank the Nachman family and the Beckman Foundation for their continued generosity and extend our congratulations to Tiffany Le and Brandon Lee, the 2025 Nachman Family Innovation Challenge winners.

For those interested in learning more about the Nachman Family Innovation Challenge, we encourage you to visit our website.