Thomas Offenbecher 2022 College of Engineering Outstanding Student

Thomas Offenbecher is an undergraduate electrical engineering student in the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, San Diego State University, Class of 2022. Thomas was awarded the 2022 College of
Engineering Outstanding Student award. Professor Barry Dorr stated, "Thomas was the Outstanding ECE Student this
year. His natural curiosity, technical ability, and genuine concern for fellow humans make us so proud of him. He is
completely bitten by the signal processing bug and plans to develop digital radio after continuing his education at

UCSD. This young man will make us all proud."
The admiration is mutual as Thomas wrote, "Next to me in the photo is the incredible Professor Barry Dorr, whom I have chosen as my Most Influential
Faculty member. He was without a doubt the best part of my entire undergraduate electrical engineering career. I had the privilege of taking four classes
with him (EE310, EE330, EE430L, and senior design). I have never met a professor who is so kind, humble, and down to earth. He consistently goes out of
his way to help students gain a better understanding of not only the material but what it means to be a good engineer. He approaches students as his
friends and respects them. One of his greatest and most unique talents is to take difficult concepts and make them very simple and practical. Whether it
was the transistor’s small-signal model, sketching the magnitude response of a circuit, demystifying the Smith chart, or simply “why on earth is this
capacitor here?”, he filtered out the noise and made concepts click for me. Lectures were so enjoyable, not only because he truly made concepts come
alive, but also because of his great sense of humor and how he pulled from his extensive industry experience. His great enthusiasm for electronics design
helped foster an enthusiasm in me as well and is a contributing factor to my choice to pursue design engineering for wireless/DSP/RF/embedded
electronic systems. As I go forward in my career, I will always carry with me and remember these valuable experiences I had as his student."