CONGRATULATIONS Graduate Student Scholarships

Congratulations to the graduate students who received scholarships for the Fall 2022 semester. This group of outstanding students are all graduate teaching assistants (TAs) who work really hard on their studies, research, and TA duties. They are pulled in many different directions and do an excellent job setting examples for future students and representing the College and Department. Pictured from left to right are Eben Shelton, Christian Milano, Nicholas Winter, Samuel Murphy, and Wuji Huang.

Eben Shelton received the Venkatachalam Planjery Memorial Scholarship. He will be graduating with his MS degree in fall 2022. He is a U2G (undergraduate to graduate) student and took a semester off to work at Tesla.

Christian Milano is a PhD candidate working with Fred Stern. He received the Sharada Devi Planjery Memorial Scholarship. His research focuses on multi-fidelity multidisciplinary simulation-driven digital design process for a new high-speed small craft.

Nicholas Winter received the Richard B. Stewart Scholarship and is the head TA for ME:3351 Engineering Instrumentation. He has a lot of TA experience and will be the head TA for ME:2300 Manufacturing Processes in the spring 2023 semester before he graduates with his MS degree.

Samuel Murphy received the Rajyalaakshmi and Shankar N. Planjery Scholarships He is a PhD candidate and works with Rachel Vitali on his research which focuses on using Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) to perform gait analysis in unstructured and unconstrained environments.

Wuji Huang received the Ray L. and Edna P. Sweigert Memorial Scholarship. Wuji’s research is on laser materials processing, surface wetting modification, machine learning and 3D metal printing. He has been working with Professor Ding on the development of a quantitative method to study the factors affecting surface wettability.

Professor Phil Deierling

The Office of Strategic Communication asked UI students who their favorite Professor is and why. Over 400 students replied and our own Phillip Deierling received this comment "GOAT of Engineering Professors.” We agree that Professor Deierling is GOAT (Greatest of All Time)! Thanks for all of his work and dedication to student instruction!

Parth Kotak wins the 3-minute-thesis competition

The annual College of Engineering Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition took place late October, featuring graduate student contestants from each department of the college. Students were challenged to articulate their innovative research in three minutes to a non-specialist audience. This year, Parth Kotak, a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, won first place out of 9 contestants. Kotak presented a thesis focused on the phenomenon of marine biofouling. One of his talking points was the fact that Biofouling also leads to a spread of invasive species to ecosystems where they compete with local species and end up destroying entire ecosystems.