UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Swaroop Ghosh, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and engineering, was awarded the 2023-24 Geoffrey Marshall Mentoring Award by the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools (NAGS).
NAGS, founded in 1975, is one of four regional affiliates of the Council of Graduate Schools. The Geoffrey Marshall Mentoring Award, named in honor of a former president of the organization, is given to an individual who has demonstrated “outstanding support of a graduate student or graduate students from course completion through research and placement,” according the NAGS website. One mentorship award is granted per year based on nominations from member institutions.
“Dr. Ghosh takes the successes and failures from the students as his own successes and failures,” said Junde Li, a former doctoral student of Ghosh’s. Li, now a lead software engineer at Cadence Design Systems, graduated from Penn State in December 2022. “He tries his best to help his students succeed in every aspect of academic life.”
Ghosh has advised or co-advised about 30 graduate students and mentored roughly an additional 30 graduate students in his academic career, he said.
“More than a decade back, I shifted from industry to academia to work on next-generation problems,” Ghosh said. “Looking back, working with the students and watching them grow and succeed in their career goals has become one of the most rewarding aspects of the profession. To me, mentoring is a joint journey with the mentee where you get to know about their interests, aspirations and strengths. My objective is to amplify those strengths and interests and support them achieve their goals.”
Ghosh added that creating a healthy workplace culture is key to guiding the students, and the research group as a whole, to success.
“Over the years, I have strived to create a support structure within my group to assimilate the newcomers and make them feel at home,” he said. “Mentoring is also an opportunity for me to get enriched by the knowledge and fantastic ideas of my students.”
Ghosh, whose research focuses on solving top global challenges through novel computing and storage technologies, has received more than 20 awards for excellence in research, teaching and advising. His most notable awards include the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA) Outstanding New Faculty Award for excellence in research and advising in design automation area, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Technical Community on Very Large Scale Integration Mid-Career Award for paradigm shifting research and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Young Faculty award and subsequent Director’s Fellowship. He has also received Best Paper Awards in ACM Great Lakes Symposium on Very Large Scale Integration, Annual American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) conference and Mid-Atlantic ASEE conference. At Penn State, he received the Penn State Engineering Alumni Society Outstanding Advising Award and the Outstanding Research Award as well as the Lutron Ruth Spira Teaching Excellence Award for excellence in teaching and inspiring students.
“Dr. Swaroop Ghosh's dedication and excellent guidance have deeply impacted countless graduate students, making him a truly worthy recipient of the Geoffrey Marshal Mentoring Award from the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools,” said Levon T. Esters, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the graduate school at Penn State, who was one of Ghosh’s nominators for the award.