Lobaton receives the 2023 William F. Lane Outstanding Teaching Award

By Isabella Mormando
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Edgar Lobaton, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has received the 2023 William F. Lane Outstanding Teaching Award. The William F. Lane Outstanding Teacher Award recognizes excellence in teaching or educational leadership in the ECE Department. The award is presented annually by the department along with a certificate and a $500 cash award.

Lobaton is a talented and dedicated classroom teacher. One evidence of this is the large enrollment in his courses, many of which have enrollments of over 100 students. As an example, his Neural Networks course had an enrollment of 194 in the spring of 2022, which increased to 440 in the spring of 2023! This increase not only reflects the growing interest in machine learning topics but reflects his exceptional teaching style and reputation as well.

Lobaton is a leader in the department regarding the development and coordination of machine-learning topics and courses. He also started a tradition of organizing a poster session where students with machine-learning projects from multiple courses can present their work and learn about the work of others.

He is an advisor for both the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) Chapter at NC State and the Embedded Machine Learning (EML) club at NC State and was instrumental in assisting students found both organizations.

His research focuses on the development of pattern recognition, estimation theory, and statistical and topological-data-analysis tools applied to wearable health monitoring, robotics, and computer vision. He was awarded the NSF CAREER Award in 2016. Prior to joining NC State, he was awarded the 2009 Computer Innovation Fellows post-doctoral fellowship award. He completed his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and electrical engineering at Seattle University in 2004. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer sciences from Berkley in 2009.

Congratulations Dr. Lobaton on receiving the 2023 William F. Lane Outstanding Teaching Award!

This post was originally published in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.