SEAS Student Research & Development Winners by Year
Click any of the links below to see the winners of that year’s SEAS Student Research & Development Showcase
2016 Winners:
Randolph A. Graves Innovation Awards:
Undergraduate Student Award ($2,500)
Jessica Hinke, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Poster Title: Characterization of blood-analog fluids in a 180-degree curved artery model
Advisor: Michael Plesniak
Graduate Student Award ($2,500)
Angel Moreno, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Poster Title: NADH fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (NADH-FRAP) for in-situ assessment of cardiac TCA cycle enzyme activity
Advisor: Matthew Kay
Entrepreneurship Awards:
1st Place ($2,000)
Krishna Kumar & Mitra Aliabouzar, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Poster Title: Effects of acoustic parameters on nanodroplet vaporization
Advisor: Kausik Sarkar
2nd Place ($500)
Shuai Sun, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Poster Title: Hybrid photonic plasmonic interconnects (HyPPI): a low latency, energy and area efficient on-chip interconnects
Advisor: Volker Sorger
Undergraduate Student Awards:
1st Place ($2,000)
Katherine Stasaski, Elsbeth Turcan & Jennifer Hill, Department of Computer Science
Poster Title: CAPITAL Words: algorithmic generation of reading and spelling exercises for low-literacy users
Advisor: Rahul Simha
2nd Place ($1,000)
Robert Gifford & Lucas Baier, Department of Computer Science
Poster Title: openNetVM: Rethinking embedded system virtualization
Advisor: Gabriel Parmer
Honorable Mention #1 ($500)
Neel Shah, Philip Loprieato & Warren Smith, Department of Computer Science
Poster Title: openNetVM: bringing elasticity to enterprise networks using network function virtualization on commodity hardware
Advisor: Timothy Wood
Honorable Mention #2 ($500)
Lindsay Ryan, Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering
Poster Title: Manufacturing cost analysis of thermoelectric generators
Advisors: Saniya LeBlanc & Stephanie Johnson
Theoretical Research Awards:
1st Place ($3,000)
Sultan Alamro and Maotong Xu, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Poster Title: CRED: cloud right-sizing to meet execution deadlines and data locality
Advisor: Suresh Subramaniam
2nd Place ($1,500)
Jennifer Hill, Department of Computer Science
Poster Title: Automatic generation of context-based fill-in-the-blank exercises using vector space models and Google n-grams
Advisor: Rahul Simha
2nd Place ($1,500)
Shuai Sun, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Poster Title: Hybrid photonic plasmonic interconnects (HyPPI): a low latency, energy and area efficient on-chip interconnects
Advisor: Volker Sorger
Honorable Mention #1 ($750)
Abedeh Abdolghafoorian, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Poster Title: Enhanced estimation of land surface moisture and heat fluxes by coupling water and energy balance models
Advisor: Leila Farhadi
Honorable Mention #2 ($750)
Yuanfei Bi, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Poster Title: Exploring the interplay between surface morphology and hydrophobicity in heterogeneous ice nucleation
Advisor: Tianshu Li
Experimental Research Awards:
1st Place ($3,000)
Michael Button, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Poster Title: Water vapor concentration measurement with TDLAS during VHTR steam ingress
Advisor: Philippe Bardet
1st Place ($3,000)
Shankar Kulumani & Christopher Poole, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Poster Title: Geometric adaptive control of attitude dynamics on SO(3) with state inequality constraints
Advisor: Taeyoung Lee
2nd Place ($2,000)
Kara Garrott, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Poster Title: Shortening of action potential duration with increased work in contracting rabbit hearts
Advisor: Matthew Kay
2nd Place ($2,000)
Ivan Suarez Castellanos, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Poster Title: Ultrasound stimulation of insulin release from pancreatic beta cells
Advisors: Vesna Zderic & Aleksandar Jeremic
Honorable Mention For Continuing Excellence ($500)
Nathan Castro, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Poster Title: Simulated body fluid nucleation of 3D printed elastomeric scaffolds for bone regeneration
Advisor: Lijie Grace Zhang
Honorable Mention #2 ($1,000)
Mahesh Mohan, Department of Computer Science
Poster Title: A novel sampling algorithm for speeding up the Nystrom approximation
Advisor: Claire Monteleoni
Honorable Mention #3 ($1,000)
Quan Dong, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Poster Title: Vital Ring: a wearable wireless multiple-lead ECG sensor on a finger ring
Advisor: Zhenyu Li
Honorable Mention #4 ($1,000)
Samantha Marquart Brainard, Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering
Poster Title: A novel approach to measuring the time-impact of oversight activities on engineering work
Advisor: Zoe Szajnfarber
Hegarty Undergraduate Prize:
Mr. Aran Hegarty awarded a solar battery charger to Bogdan Balteanu & Tania Singh, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Poster Title: Amperometric detection of ultrasound-induced secretory events in potential treatment of Type 2 diabetes
Advisor: Vesna Zderic
2015 Winners:
THEORETICAL PRIZES
1st Place & $5,000 prize:
Christopher Cox, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Development of a Fast Algorithm for Solving the Unsteady Incompressible Navier-Stokes Equations”
Advisors: Professors Chunlei Liang and Michael Plesniak
2nd Place & $4,000 prize:
Mohamed ElGhoraiby, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Title: “Simulation of Nonlinear Seismic Response of Soft Clays at Medium Strains”
Advisor: Professor Majid Manzari
3rd Place & $3,000 prize shared by:
Zhuojie Zhou, Department of Computer Science
Title: “Leveraging History for Faster Sampling of Online Social Networks”
Advisor: Professor Nan Zhang
&
Nima Mobadersany, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Permeabilization of Cell Membrane in the Presence of Encapsulated Microbubbles for Drug Delivery into Tissue”
Advisor: Professor Kausik Sarkar
Honorable Mention & $500 prize:
Alexander Burg, Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering
Title: “A Modeling Approach to Untangling the Complexity of Space R&D Portfolio Management Decisions”
Advisor: Professor Zoe Szajnfarber
EXPERIMENTAL PRIZES:
1st Place & $4,000 prize shared by:
Allan Guan, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Project: Streamline Based Design Guideline for Deterministic Microfluidic Hydrodynamic Single Cell Traps
Advisor: Professor Zhenyu Li
&
Nathan Castro, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Project: 3D Printing of Bioactive Graded Nanostructured Scaffolds for Osteochondral Regeneration
Advisor: Professor Lijie Grace Zhang
&
Margaret Nowicki, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Project: Three Dimensional Printing of Gradient Scaffolds to Bridge the Gap between Bone and Cartilage for Osteochondral Defect Repair
Advisors: Professors Lijie Grace Zhang and Michael Plesniak
Honorable Mention:
Elizabeth Hubler, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Project: Self-oscillating Vocal Fold Model Mechanics: Healthy, Diseased, and Aging
Advisor: Professor Michael Plesniak
Jie Chen, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Project: CC-Hunter: Uncovering Covert Timing Channels on Shared Processor Hardware
Advisor: Professor Guru Venkataramani
UNDERGRADUATE PRIZE
Best Undergraduate Poster & $2,000 prize:
Akhil Chandra, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Title: “Measuring Physiological Response of Bisphenol-A on Cardiac Excitation-Contraction Coupling”
Advisor: Professor Matthew Kay
Honorable Mention & $500 prize:
Anna Porras, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Title: “Effect of solubility and guest size on hydrate nucleation: Insights from advanced molecular simulations”
Advisor: Professor Tianshu Li
ENTREPRENEURSHIP PRIZES
Entrepreneurship Award & $2,000 prize:
Maryam Yammahi, Department of Computer Science
Title: “An Intelligent Software-Defined Storage”
Advisor: Professor Simon Berkovich
Runner-Up & $500 prize:
Benjamin Holmes, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “3D Printed Bone Scaffolds with Microvascular Network and Nano Hydroxyapatite for Improved hMSC Functions”
Advisors: Professors Kartik Bulusu & Michael Plesniak
2014 Winners:
1st Place & $5,000 prize:
Bhaven Mehta, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: “Highly Sensitive Gas Sensor Using Plasmonic Antennas”
Advisor: Professor Mona Zaghloul
2nd Place & $4,000 prize:
Christopher Blower, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “A Three-Dimensional Iterative Panel Method and Boundary Layer Model for Bioinspired Multi-body Wings”
Advisor: Professor Adam Wickenheiser
3rd Place & $3,000 prize:
Hasan Goktas, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: “The Novel Resonator Cell (RC) for Both Portable Biosensor and High Quality Filter for Cell Phones”
Advisor: Professor Mona Zaghloul
Best Undergraduate Poster & $2,000 prize:
Elizabeth Hubler, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Evaluation of Synthetic Self-Oscillating Models of the Vocal Folds”
Advisor: Professor Michael Plesniak
Entrepreneurship Award & $2,000 prize:
Benjamin Holmes, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Development of Biomimetic 3D Bioprinted Scaffolds for Osteochondral Regeneration” Advisor: Professor Lijie Grace Zhang
Graduate Runner-Up $500 prize split between:
Morteza Rahimi Abkenar, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Seismic Analysis and Design of a Scaled Nuclear Fuel Assembly”
Advisor: Professor Majid Manzari
&
Noah Weichselbaum, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Model and Instrumentation of Development for Nuclear Fuel Assembly Response to Seismic Loads”
Advisor: Professor Philippe Bardet
Undergraduate Runner-Up $500 prize:
Sarah Pickus, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: “Electro-Optical Plasmon Modulators: Breaking Photonic Limits”
Advisors: Professors Volker Sorger and Jason Zara
Entrepreneurship Runner-Up $500 prize:
Nima Mobadersany & Krishna Kumar, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Non-Invasive Local Fluid Pressure Estimation Using Subharmonic Response from Contrast Microbubbles”
Advisor: Professor Kausik Sarkar
2013 Winners:
1st Place & $5,000 prize:
Jiaoyan Li, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “The foundation of nanoscience: multiple length/time scale modeling of multi-physics for nano/micro material systems”
Advisor: Professor James Lee
2nd Place & $4,000 prize:
Mohammadreza Ghahremani & Hatem ElBidweihy, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: “Exploration of energy efficient and environmentally friendly magnetic refrigeration systems”
Advisors: Professors Edward Della Torre and Lawrence Bennett
3rd Place & $3,000 prize:
Anastasia Wengrowski, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: “Changes in cardiac function upon light-activated release of norepinephrine from sympathetic neurons expressing channelrhodopsin”
Advisor: Professor Matthew Kay
Entrepreneurship Award & $2,000 prize:
Yash Jain & William Murphy, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Propagation of a cold atmospheric plasma jet through an endoscopic tube”
Advisor: Professor Michael Keidar
Best Undergraduate Poster & $2,000 prize:
Elizabeth Hubler, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Evaluation of synthetic self-oscillating models of the vocal folds”
Advisor: Professor Michael Plesniak
Runner-Up Prizes ($500 each):
Matthieu Andre, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Experimental study of surface dynamics of a liquid jet”
Advisor: Professor Philippe Bardet
Benjamin Holmes, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “3D Fabrication of biomimetic nanocomposite scaffolds for tissue interface engineering and regenerative medicine”
Advisor: Professor Grace Zhang
Marjan Nabili, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: “Ultrasound-enhanced delivery of antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs into the eye”
Advisor: Professor Vesna Zderic
Undergraduate Runner-Up ($500):
Christopher O'Brien, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “The Effect of BMP-2 Loaded PDO Nanospheres and Nano Hydroxyapatite in PCL Scaffolds for Bone Regeneration”
Advisor: Professor Grace Zhang
2012 Winners:
1st Place & $5,000 prize:
Anastasia Wengrowski & Rafael Jaimes III, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: “Metabolic Demand of Fast Rhythms in Isolated Working Hearts and Langendorff Perfused Hearts”
Advisor: Professor Matthew Kay
2nd Place & $4,000 prize:
Ritu Bajpai, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: “UV-Assisted Alcohol Sensors Using GaN Nanowires Functionalized with ZnO and SnO2”
Advisor: Professor Mona Zaghloul
3rd Place & $3,000 prize:
Paul Moubarak, Zhou Ma, and Eric Alvarez, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “The Tri-State Active Docking Interface of STORM: Self-configurable and Transformable Omni-directional Robotic Modules”
Advisor: Professor Pinhas Ben-Tzvi
Best Undergraduate Poster & $2,000 prize:
Nathaniel Diskint (CCAS) & Caitlin Keating, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Fluid Flow Trends and Regulation in Syringes”
Advisors: Professors Kartik Bulusu and Michael Plesniak
2011 Winners:
1st Place & $5,000 prize:
Can Kirmizibayrak & Mike Wakid, Department of Computer Science
Title: “3D Image Fusion and Visualization for Surgical Applications”
Advisor: Professor James Hahn
2nd Place & $4,000 prize:
Taisen Zhuang, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Magnetically-Enhanced Vacuum Arc Microthruster for Small Satellite Control”
Advisor: Professor Michael Keidar
3rd Place & $3,000 prize:
Chia-Pin Chang, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: “Compact Optical Microfluidic Uric Acid Analysis System”
Advisors: Professors David Nagel & Mona Zaghloul
Best Undergraduate Poster & $2,000 prize:
Hannah Stuart, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Development of a Method for Optical Measurement of Water Droplet Formation in the Cathode Flow Channel of a PEM Fuel Cell.”
Advisor: Professor Michael Plesniak
2010 Winners:
1st Place & $5,000 prize:
Taisen Zhuang, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Micro Vacuum Arc Thruster Propulsion System”
Advisor: Professor Michael Keidar
2nd Place & $1,200 prize:
Huda Asfour, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: “Motion Reduction Algorithm Applied to Fluorescent Signals from Rat Hearts Using Multi-level Wavelet Analysis”
Advisors: Professors Milos Doroslovacki & Matthew Kay
3rd Place & $800 prize:
Autumn Glenn, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Secondary Flow Measurements in Models of Curved Arteries”
Advisor: Professor Michael Plesniak
2009 Winners:
1st Place & $5,000 prize:
Taisen Zhuang, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Micro Vacuum Arc Thruster Propulsion System”
Advisor: Professor Michael Keidar
2nd Place & $600 prize:
Mike Wakid & Can Kirmizibayrak, Department of Computer Science
Title: “Interactive Visualization Tools for Image-Guided Medialization Laryngoplasty”
Advisor: James Hahn
3rd Place & $400 prize:
Mazdak Taghioskoui, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: “A Novel Method of Chemical Analysis on Mars Using Carbon Dioxide Inductively Coupled Micro Plasmas”
Advisor: Mona Zaghloul
2008 Winners:
1st Place & $500 prize:
Mike Wakid, Department of Computer Science
Title: “Image Guided Surgery for Medialization Laryngoplasty”
Advisor: Professor James Hahn
2nd Place & $300 prize:
Christian Salmon, Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering
Title: “Modeling Aviation Accident Relative Frequency near Non-Towered Airports as a Spatially Probability Distributed”
Advisor: Professor Jack Harrald
3rd Place & $200 prize:
Darren Broemmer, Department of Computer Science
Title: “Controlled Language Programming – Using Domain Specific Languages to Create More Natural Programming Languages”
Advisor: Professor Matthew Burke
2007 Winners:
1st Place & $500 prize:
Marija Peric and Dilli Neupane, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Title: “A Novel Test for Total Phosphorus Removal Optimization in Primary Clarifiers"
Advisor: Professor Rumana Riffat
2nd Place & $300 prize:
Anis Norden, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: “Surface Acoustic Wave Resonators in CMOS Technology for RF Oscillators”
Advisor: Professor Mona Zaghloul
3rd Place & $200 prize:
Ashish Bhargava, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Title: “Finite-Element Analysis of Fatigue Prone Details of the Tuttle Creek Bridge”
Advisor: Professor Kim Roddis