I3@USD-Fall 2025

Tom Lupfer, MA, professor of practice and member of USD’s Board of Trustees, was selected as an honoree for the 2025 San Diego Business Journal Nonprofit Board Leaders of Influence. He was also awarded his 12th patent — U.S. Patent Number 12,195,253, entitled “Smart Hydration System.” Nadieh Moghadam, PhD, assistant professor of electrical engineering, presented peer-reviewed conference papers: “Enhancing Neural Network Performance for Medical Data Analysis through Feature Engineering;” “Blockchain Sharding in IEEE 802.11ax Networks;” and “Wireless Multicast in Fading Channels: Detecting and Counteracting Adversaries.” Additionally, she secured a $15,000 research award from the California Space Grant Consortium for her project, “Wearable AI for Astronaut Stress Monitoring: A Predictive and Adaptive Approach.” Nikhil Yadav, PhD, associate professor of computer science, was promoted to chair in Spring 2025 and assumed the role of faculty lead for the Engineering Entrepreneurship program. A paper he co-authored with Jack Conley ’28 (CS) and Penelope Yanez ’28 (CS), “Edge-X: Cost Factor Evaluation Workflow for Model Deployment on Edge AI Devices,” was presented at the IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

professional, visited Kim in Spring 2025. In previous years, Kim traveled to Saudi Arabia to conduct course reviews with AlShareef for the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam. Sophia Krause-Levy, PhD, assistant professor of computer science, recently led a Birds of a Feather session at the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education conference and co-chaired the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges: Southwestern Region. Her recent publications explore tutor perceptions and the impact of metacognition-promoting tools on student performance. She has two upcoming publications on the impostor phenomenon and recently contributed to an Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education working group on research knowledge development. Susan M. Lord, PhD, professor and chair of integrated engineering, co-authored a chapter on “Ethical Issues in Electrical and Electronic Engineering” in The Routledge International Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education with John Mitchell, PhD, at University College London. She gave the keynote address at the 2025 IEEE Global Conference on Engineering Education in London, entitled “Real World Engineering: Integrating Ethics into Electrical Engineering Education.”

T he Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering mourns the loss of Chuck Bane, who passed away on March 13, 2025. Bane joined the University of San Diego in 2018 as a professor of practice, where he redesigned the Master of Science in Cyber Security Engineering (MS-CSE) curriculum for the school. In 2020, he became academic director of the MS-CSE program and director of the Center for Cyber Security Engineering and Technology. His leadership was instrumental in USD earning the designation as a Center for Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity. Bane’s natural curiosity fueled a lifetime of service and innovation. He served 25 years in the U.S. Navy, retiring as a lieutenant commander. He later enjoyed a successful second career in IT management before answering the call to teach. A visionary in the field, he left a lasting impact on the cybersecurity industry and the lives of countless students. Bane retired from USD in 2024. He is deeply missed. In Memoriam Chuck Bane:

SOPHIA KRAUSE-LEVY, PHD

NIKHIL YADAV, PHD (RIGHT)

19 IMAGINE•INNOVATE•INSPIRE