UH Manoa graduate is nation's top electrical engineering student

Blaine Murakami is winner of 2005 Alton B. Zerby and Carl T. Koerner Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineering Student Award

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Contact:
Wayne Shiroma, (808) 956-7218
Department of Electrical Engineering
Posted: May 16, 2005

HONOLULU — Blaine T. Murakami, an engineering student who graduated this past semester from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, has been named the winner of the 2005 Alton B. Zerby and Carl T. Koerner Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineering Student Award. The award, which is presented by the national electrical engineering society, Eta Kappa Nu, recognizes the most outstanding electrical engineering student in the nation.

Murakami is the third UH Mānoa student to win the award in the past five years. Previous UH Mānoa awardees are Kendall Ching (2001) and Aaron Ohta (2003).

Murakami has a long list of achievements as a UH Mānoa undergraduate. He co-authored one book chapter and 13 conference papers, is a co-inventor on a pending patent, and co-wrote a research proposal that was subsequently funded with a $100,000 award. He also led a multidisciplinary team of 30 electrical and mechanical engineering undergraduate students to design, build, and test two nanosatellites for launch into low Earth orbit.

As a junior, Murakami co-founded a local high-technology company, Pipeline Communications and Technology, Inc., whose business plan took first place in the 2004 UH Business Plan Competition. The company recently won a contract of over $250,000 to develop the self-steering antenna technology of which Murakami is a co-inventor.

Murakami‘s other awards include the UH Regents Scholarship, 2005 Student Engineer of the Year Award from the Hawaiʻi Society of Professional Engineers, Hawaiʻi Space Grant Consortium Undergraduate Fellowship, IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society Scholarship, and IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Scholarship.