Class of 2025: Thomas Lu named Outstanding Senior for the Bradley Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Above: Electrical and computer engineering senior Thomas Lu juggles two light-up LED poi balls. Video by Ben Murphy for Virginia Tech.
Name: Thomas Lu
College: College of Engineering
Majors: Electrical and computer engineering, with minors in biomedical engineering, computer science, and math.
Hometown: Burke, Virginia
Plans after graduation: Lu committed to the biomedical engineering Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins University, which was recently named the number one biomedical engineering program in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.
Favorite Virginia Tech memory: Among Lu’s many good memories, his favorite is getting baptized. “I’ve grown a lot as an engineer and researcher,” he said, “but Virginia Tech has also allowed me to grow as a person and in my faith.
Thomas Lu is an expert juggler.
Whether he’s flawlessly balancing his two majors and three minors with his research work at the Vlaisavljevich Research Lab, or participating in the actual juggling club he founded, Lu never lets a ball drop.
Add in his 4.0 grade point average, the 2024 Barry Goldwater Scholarship, and the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and it’s no surprise that he was named the Outstanding Senior for the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).
Homegrown enthusiasm for Virginia Tech and engineering
As a native Virginian, Lu grew up surrounded by the Hokie spirit. Banners and bumper stickers adorned the homes and cars in his hometown in Northern Virginia, and Hokie alumni taught at his highschool. His enthusiasm for engineering came directly from his parents, who worked in semiconductors and software engineering at Texas Instruments.
“Virginia Tech was my first choice; it’s a great environment, a great engineering school,” he said, “but what really got me was the people I met from the university, and hearing how they talked about Virginia Tech. It’s something that spoke to me and I wanted to be a part of it.”
Fulfilling Ut Prosim through cancer research
Since his first year at Virginia Tech, Lu has worked with the Vlaisavljevich Research Lab to further ultrasound research for non-invasive therapies, including histotripsy, an image-guided tumor ablation method pioneered by Eli Vlaisavljevich and his University of Michigan colleagues.
Lu first got connected to the lab during Explore Engineering week, an opening week experience hosted by the College of Engineering.
“I still remember Connor Edsall and Jess Gannon – Vlaisavljevich’s graduate students who both have become great mentors to me – standing by a water tank,” Lu said. “They fired up the transducer and you just started to hear this buzzing sound, and then there was a bubble cloud. It was so memorable.”
He emailed Vlaisavljevich, who invited Lu to join the lab as an undergraduate researcher. Lu has been so influenced by his time at the lab, he even proposed and executed a major design experience project for ECE, “Development of a novel multifrequency focused ultrasound system for the non-invasive, versatile treatment of tumors.” This senior capstone initative, supported by Vlaisavljevich’s lab, expands on the current single frequency use of ultrasound by using high-voltage drivers to create multifrequency histotripsy.
From ECE to biomedical
Lu’s connection to biomedical engineering is rooted in his brother’s DNA.
Gordon, Lu’s older brother, was born with 22q11.2 deletion, also known as DiGeorge Syndrome, a condition that occurs when a small part of chromosome 22 is missing. This missing segment includes an estimated 30 to 40 genes that cause several body systems to develop poorly.
For much of his childhood, Thomas saw how his family was deeply affected by the syndrome, as his brother endured multiple hospital visits and generalized tonic-clonic seizures. It was during one of these particularly difficult seizures that Lu realized his calling: to help people like his brother.
“I’m interested in advancing minimally and non-invasive treatments for people with nervous system disorders,” Lu said. “I believe I’m called to help people with the resources that I’ve been given, and serve as many people as I can. Engineering is all about identifying problems, solving problems with the technology and science that we have.”
