The 2026 SVEC Hall of Fame Ceremony and Awards Banquet was held at Delta Hotels in Santa Clara on March 6, its 36th year.     

Hall of Fame Selection Committee judge, Art Zafiropoulo kicked off the Hall of Fame section of the event followed by remarks from the two 2026 inductees. Professor Stephen Chou introduced R. Fabian Pease, PhD, and Professor Subhasish Mitra introduced Andrea J. Goldsmith, PhD.

Andrea J. Goldsmith, PhD is an educator, academic leader and innovator. She began her service as the seventh president of Stony Brook University, SUNY’s flagship and New York State’s number one public university, in August 2025. Prior to Stony Brook she served as Princeton’s dean of engineering for five years and spent 21 years on Stanford’s engineering faculty. As a researcher and entrepreneur, she developed core technology underpinning WiFi and cellular communications, and co-founded two startups based on her academic research. She authored or co-authored four books, hundreds of research papers, and 38 patents, and proudly mentored generations of students and postdocs. 

R. Fabian Pease, PhD started his professional career as a PhD student at Cambridge University by building a better scanning electron microscope which he demonstrated what we would now call nanoscale 3-D printing. His career, at U.C. Berkeley, Bell Labs and Stanford University, centered on making things, primarily silicon chips, denser, faster and more energy efficient. He fashioned new ways for ever smaller structures, but also devised ways of managing the resultant increased power density, and exploiting the third (vertical) dimension. Pease appreciates the gifted people in his Stanford research group, with more than 50 PhDs awarded to these members.

SVEC President, Ceal Craig, PhD, presented a new series of awards: “SVEC Member Organizations Volunteer of the Year”, recognizing outstanding contributions to SVEC from volunteers from member societies.

The awardees included:

• Liana Ye – San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Sybil Cramer – Electric Auto Association of Silicon Valley (EAASV)
• Jack Jew – Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE)
• Jennifer Hoffman, PhD – Society of Plastic Engineers – Golden Gate Section (SPE)
• Jeannie David – Society of Women Engineers, Santa Clara Valley (SWE SCV)

Education Committee Chair, Yanika Schneider, PhD presented STEM Education Grant Awards with inspiration and acknowledged honorable mentions. In addition, Dr. Schneider presented our latest Keeper of the Flame award for their contributions of encouraging young people to pursue math, science, and engineering careers and education. The 2026 Education Grant and Keeper of the Flame awardees are:

2026 Graduate School Awardees
Maulana Adzima – University of California, Berkeley
Diane Richard – Stanford University
Steven Sheemar – San Jose State University

2026 College Awardees
Laura Khuu – University of California, Davis
Miriya Mayenkar – University of California, Berkeley

2026 High School Awardees
Avani Thakur – Palo Alto School
Kiara Yoon – St. Francis High School

2026 Keeper of the Flame Award
Elizabeth Traub – Pittsburg High School

Proclamations from elected officials from the City of Santa Clara and City of San Jose were presented, and our sponsors and volunteers were recognized.

Hall of Fame posters for each of our 98 inductees were on display, as was a looping slide show portraying all Hall of Fame inductees throughout the years. The banquet was preceded by an Inductee Reception that allowed past inductees to get together as a group and share their accomplishments and experiences with SVEC members and banquet attendees.

Sponsorship Opportunities for next year’s event are listed below: