Each year Tau Beta Pi, a prestigious honor society for engineering, recognizes academic excellence across the country through fellowships and scholarships.
Two seniors from the College of Engineering were recognized for their outstanding undergraduate efforts for the 2024-2024 academic year. Tau Beta Pi awarded former outstanding engineering juniors, Nuha Akhtar from the Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, and Sarah Cole from the Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering, with financial scholarships to aid their final year of academic and scholarly research activities.
Tau Beta Pi was founded at Lehigh University in 1885. Today, with 251 collegiate chapters and 47 active alumni chapters, it has initiated nearly 624,000 members in its 137-year history and is the world’s largest engineering society.
Sarah Cole, a senior in materials science and engineering, plans to pursue a doctoral degree in materials science and engineering for a career in energy policy. At Boise State, Cole researches nuclear fuels in the Advanced Materials Laboratory. She is passionate about nuclear energy policy and has participated in the Washington Internships for Students of Engineering program, Nuclear Engineering Student Delegation and the American Nuclear Society Capitol Hill Day in Washington, D.C. She has also researched materials for energy storage at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University.
Nuha Akhtar, a senior in mechanical engineering, plans to pursue a doctoral degree in engineering for a career in space applications combining her passions for mechanical engineering, materials science and physics. At Boise State, Akhtar is a student supervisor in the Engineering Innovation Studio, chair for the Mechanical Engineering Student Advisory Board, and an undergraduate researcher in the Plasma and Vacuum Electron Devices Laboratory. Nuha’s creativity and passion for innovation led her previous projects with the NASA Science Activation Program (AstroTAC) and NASA Micro-g Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Teams (Micro-g NExT). She has also researched in the Quantum Engineering Lab at CalTech and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratories as a mechanical engineering intern.