Student leader receives College's Culumber Award

As an international student, Yik Tung Tracy Ling believed the best way to overcome cultural barriers was through involvement in student activities. It was through those involvements that Ling emerged as a leader on campus.

Those involvements began with the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). Through SWE, she has served on the Professional Liaison Committee and as the Co-Director of the Team Tech Committee. Her Tech Team project earned second place in the Boeing Team Tech Competition and first place in Interdisplinary Collaboration award during Engineering Open House.

A James Scholar, Ling has served on the Dean’s Student Advisory Committee through Engineering Council and as secretary for the Hong Kong Student Association. Ling currently works as a Residential Advisor in Illinois Street Resident Hall and an Engineering Lab Consultant in computer labs.

A mechanical engineering major with an electrical engineering minor, Ling’s career goals center on the medical field, where she plans to study medical engineering and design clinical or diagnostic devices. She is pursing that goal as an undergraduate researcher in Professor Michael Insana’s Ultrasonic Imaging lab and as a member of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES).

Through BMES, Ling led an energy harvesting biomechanical shoe project, which successfully used piezo-electric energy. The technology will be beneficial for keeping a constant battery supply for portable medical devices such as hearing aids and pacemakers. Ling has made significant contributions in internships with Greenlee, Textron in Rockford, Ill., and with Mott Macdonald Engineering Consultancy Limited in Hong Kong.  She recently earned the John C. & Elizabeth J. Chato Award in Bioengineering and Wu, Horace International Undergraduate Scholarship.

The award will be presented at the college’s award ceremony on April 18.