MSU’s Carpenter receives Simrall Award for Engineering Excellence
Contact: Aspen Harris
STARKVILLE, Miss.—A spring Mississippi State biomedical engineering graduate is a recent selection for the Harry Charles Simrall Award for Engineering Excellence.
Haley Carpenter of Brentwood, Tennessee, received the annual honor from MSU’s Association of Retired Faculty that recognizes an engineering student who epitomizes the former James Worth Bagley College of Engineering dean. Students are selected based on academic performance, professional leadership and service efforts at home and abroad.
“These are all things I really stand for, especially community service,” said Carpenter, who graduated summa cum laude. “I was very honored to receive this. I wasn’t expecting it, but it was a huge deal for me.”
From 2024 to 2025, Carpenter served as president of MSU’s Theta Tau Professional Engineering Fraternity chapter. She brought together all 12 Southeastern chapters as director of the national fraternity’s 2025 Southeast Regional Conference, hosted at MSU.
Organizing the conference, Carpenter said, tested her professionalism but helped her realize she was capable of more than she originally thought.
“It pushed me to be the best version of myself because I had to reevaluate how to manage several things and how to communicate with people,” she said. “I got closer with the people around me as well because it gave me an environment to support them and myself.”
Carpenter, a member of MSU’s Delta Delta Delta sorority chapter, raised more than $170,000 for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as the philanthropy director from 2023 to 2024. The MSU chapter was subsequently named Top Fundraising Chapter in the national division.
She also served as a research assistant at MSU’s Neural Engineering Research Division, a lab dedicated to developing neural solutions and advancing neuroscience.
Carpenter has conducted electroencephalography-based research on anxiety and depression in youth under her mentor David Van den Heever, an MSU associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering and Neural Engineering Research Division lab director.
A multigenerational Bulldog, Carpenter said MSU provided many opportunities that shaped her as a student. She plans to continue pushing herself academically and professionally and aspires to attend medical school.
“I feel like the opportunities MSU provides both academically and within social environments are the best. I’ve been able to join a Greek sorority, an engineering fraternity and other on-campus organizations. It’s kept me well-rounded and pushed me academically,” she said.
The Harry Charles Simrall Award for Engineering Excellence was established in 1999 to honor Simrall. During his 44-year career, the award’s namesake served as an electrical engineering professor, dean of engineering, president of the National Society of Professional Engineers and, following his 1978 retirement, a charter member of the Association of Retired Faculty.
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