Brown seniors Alan Mach and Jason Pien have been awarded scholarships from Tau Beta Pi for their final undergraduate year. The engineering honor society announced the selection of 253 engineering students throughout the country and awarded funds based on the competitive criteria of high scholarship, campus leadership and service, and promise of future contributions to the engineering profession. All scholars are members of the Tau Beta Pi association.
Mach is a senior biomedical engineering student from Virginia Beach, Va. He is interested in the intersection between medical device engineering and neuroscience and has worked in a clinical research setting with Brown Engineering’s Lee Lab at the Rhode Island Hospital. He has also served as a teaching assistant for several engineering and applied math classes, and is a Meiklejohn Peer Advisor for the University. Mach’s award came from the Record Scholarships, established to commemorate Leroy E. Record, whose generous bequest provides earnings to support awards in perpetuity.
As President of Brown’s chapter of the Rhode Island Alpha Chapter of Tau Beta Pi, Pien is a former Breakthrough Lab entrepreneur and the head of technology for the FinTech Club (a campus club that encourages students to learn and interact with applications that combine both finance and technology). He is a senior computer engineering concentrator from New Jersey interested in semiconductor RTL (Register Transfer Level) IP design. Pien’s funding came from a Stabile Scholarship, named for Vincent A. Stabile, whose gifts to the Association have permanently endowed scholarships.
Among the Tau Beta Pi scholarships named for specific members, Brown Professor Linda M. Abriola along with her brother Joseph L. Abriola, Jr., established the Gloria and Joseph L. Abriola Scholarship in memory of their father and honor of their mother. Joseph Sr., Joseph Jr., and Linda were all inducted into Tau Beta Pi as civil engineering students and Joseph Sr. served many years as a volunteer district director in Pennsylvania. He passed away in 2013. The Tau Beta Pi organization was special to him as a first generation college graduate.
Tau Beta Pi is the world’s largest engineering society with 640,000 members and 257 collegiate chapters. It was founded in 1885.