Six Alumni Inducted into 2026 Hall of Fame

The 2026 Engineering and ICS Alumni Hall of Fame at the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art in Costa Mesa combined beautiful weather and an art-filled venue with a celebration of alumni success.

Three engineering and three information and computer sciences outstanding alumni were inducted this year for making a significant impact in their profession, or in other ways bringing distinction to their alma mater. Around 170 faculty, alumni, students, friends and family attended the 11th annual event and were able to enjoy the museum galleries and then network and visit during cocktail hour on the second floor patio before the program began.

UC Irvine ICS alumnus Tim Kashani ’86 welcomed the crowd and served as master of ceremonies introducing each school’s dean – Marios Papaefthymiou, ICS, and Faryar Jabbari, engineering. Following the presentations, each inductee spoke, all fondly remembering their time at UC Irvine and many calling out supportive former faculty and their families. After the program, attendees enjoyed a lovely outdoor buffet dinner as the sun was setting.

Here are the 2026 Hall of Fame inductees.

ICS Inductees

Deborah Dubrow M.S. 1995, B.S. 1993 — Information and Computer Science

Dubrow is a product leader with broad experience at Fortune 500 companies including NVIDIA, Microsoft, Zillow and Apple. For over three decades, she has helped bring groundbreaking products to market across consumer and enterprise settings used by hundreds of millions of people. She brings a holistic perspective to the product lifecycle, with a particular focus on customer experience, end-user needs, and building the cross-functional clarity teams need to deliver well. She is also a co-inventor on several early patents related to video conferencing and application streaming. She is currently a program management leader at NVIDIA, where she is responsible for DGX Spark and NemoClaw.

Outside of technology, Dubrow is a longtime travel enthusiast and advocate for families exploring the world together. She created DeliciousBaby, a successful family travel website that The New York Times described as “one of the top family travel sites.” Her advocacy reflects the same user-centered perspective she brings to product leadership: practical, empathetic, and focused on making complex experiences easier for real people.

Hakan Hacigumus M.S. 2001, Ph.D. 2003 — Information and Computer Science

Hacigumus began his career at IBM Research, Almaden, where, alongside his Ph.D. work in Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine, he co-pioneered the concept of database-as-a-service, a contribution later recognized with the ACM SIGMOD Test-of-Time Award. He went on to serve as Head of Data Management Research at NEC Labs, before joining Google, where he led teams building the data analytics infrastructure behind some of the company’s most critical businesses. He then joined Meta as head of Analytics in Data Infrastructure, overseeing a broad portfolio of data analytics infrastructure products and services, and later served at Confluent with responsibility for its full suite of cloud applications. He currently serves as the CTO of RelationalAI, an AI company whose mission is to power every decision with intelligence.

David Hilbert M.S. 1996, Ph.D. 1999 — Information and Computer Science

Hilbert is director of Product Management at Samsung Research America’s Enterprise & Security Innovation Lab, where he leads next-generation Samsung mobile solutions for enterprise. His career spans a broad arc — from software engineer to industrial researcher to product leader — across Samsung, Fuji Xerox, NASA, and Microsoft. Hilbert began his career as a software engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working on the Galileo mission and Deep Space Network automation research. His doctoral research focused on large-scale collection of application usage data to inform software design, principles he applied firsthand as a product manager intern at Microsoft during his studies. Beyond his technical career, Hilbert holds a B.A. in philosophy from Tufts University, where he won the Tufts Philosophy Department Prize and participated in a graduate seminar with Daniel Dennett reviewing the manuscript for Consciousness Explained, his landmark 1991 work in philosophy of mind.

Engineering Inductees

Afshin Mohebbi B.S. 1983 – Electrical Engineering

Mohebbi is an investor and a senior advisor with TPG Capital since 2003, focusing on technology and telecommunications investments worldwide. Mohebbi is currently a board member of Digital Realty Trust, a Fortune 500 company where he is Chairman of the Audit Committee. Other board memberships include DirecTV, Climavision, Miratech, and Newfold Digital. Previous board memberships include, KPMG/ BearingPoint, Dish Networks, Astound Broadband, Windriver, Alltel Wireless, Apollo Towers, Wharf Telecom, and Hanaro Telecom.

Ramin Mousavi B.S. 2008 – Electrical Engineering

Mousavi is a dynamic and seasoned healthcare executive, currently serving as the president, CEO, and a member of the Board of Directors at CathWorks, a digital health company revolutionizing the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease through advanced computational science and artificial intelligence. He has an outstanding history of building high-performing organizations and achieving exceptional results in the medical device and high-tech industries — from early development to global commercialization of breakthrough and transformational innovations. Prior to his tenure at CathWorks, he led the patient monitoring and digital health portfolio at Baxter International. He also held significant positions at Edwards Lifesciences, Panasonic Avionics, and Rockwell Collins.

Jonathan Posner Ph.D. 2001, B.S. 1995 – Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Jonathan Posner is The Richard and Victoria Harrington Professor for Engineering Innovation in Health and a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington. He is also adjunct in the Department of Family Medicine. Posner’s research is primarily focused on the development point-of-care diagnostics for infectious diseases (HIV, HCV) for use in low- and middle-income countries, precision medicine drug level measurements, and a wide range of medical devices. His previous areas of eclectic research include combustion diagnostics, electrokinetic fluid transport in microdevices, artificial nanomotors, the transport and toxicity of synthetic nanoparticles, fluidic fuel cells, and development of tactile skin for robotics.

– Lori Brandt, UC Irvine Engineering

See the original article on UC Irvine Engineering

2026 Hall of Fame video on YouTube (Audio Descriptive version)