Graduate

Institute for Systems Research [ISR]-affiated Electrical and Computer Engineering [ECE] Ph.D. student Nima Ghalichechian is one of the recipients of the 2006 American Vacuum Society's Graduate Research Award, a prestigious nationwide competition. The award recognizes the quality of the body of research of individual graduate students. Ghalichechian is advised by Associate Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR).

Jeremy Shidner, Ph.D. candidate in Aerospace Engineering [AE]/National Institute of Aerospace, and research partner Ben Raiszadeh (NASA), received the NASA 2006 Inventions and Contributions Board Action Award. Their technology, "POST II Trajectory Animation Tool using MATLAB," generates vehicle trajectory videos strictly from scientific measurements and analysis.
Materials science and engineering (MSE) graduate student Mey Saied has won the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Predoctoral Fellowship for Minority Students. This high-profile, competitive, five-year grant is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Jamie Meeroff, AE Ph.D. student, received the National Science Foundation's Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Bridge to the Doctorate Fellowship for the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 academic years. Meeroff's research interests include boundary layer transitions in hypersonics. His faculty advisor is Professor Mark J. Lewis (AE).

Students from the Clark School's Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center captured second place honors in the 23rd annual American Helicopter Society Helicopter Design Competition. The 2006 team members included AE students Peter Copp (team leader), Moble Benedict, Bryant Craig, Brandon Fitchett, Nitin Gupta, Arun Jose, Jishnu Keshavan and Shyam Menon. The team designed a two-seat, single-engine turbine training helicopter.

A paper co-authored by ECE Ph.D. student Aravind Sundaresan and his advisor, ECE Professor Rama Chellappa, was selected for the Best Student Paper Award in the Computer Vision Track of the International Conference on Pattern Recognition. The title of their award-winning paper is "Segmentation and Probabilistic Registration of Articulated Body Models." The paper proposes a bottom-up algorithm to estimate the pose of the human body using single- or multiple-image cameras.

Jignesh D. Maun, M.S. '06, fire protection engineering (FPE), received the 2006 Outstanding Student Presenter Award from the Combustion Institution Central States Section for his presentation, "Thin Filament Pyrometry with a Digital Still Camera." This work stemmed from his M.S. thesis at the Clark School under the direction of FPE Assistant Professor Peter B. Sunderland.

Undergraduate

MSE senior Maeling Tapp has been named a 2006 NASA Motivating Undergraduates in Science and Technology (MUST) Program Scholar. The MUST Program awards scholarships and internships to undergraduate students of science, technology, engineering, and math. Tapp was also recently selected to receive a 2006 ExxonMobil Technical Scholarship. ExxonMobil recognized Tapp for her academic excellence and outstanding performance during her summer internship with the company.

Two ECE undergraduates have been selected as National Consortium for Measurement and Signal Intelligence Research Scholars. Marc Goldman (right), who works in the Computational Sensorimotor Systems Laboratory with Associate Professor Timothy Horiuchi (ECE/ISR), received a $10,000 scholarship, and Eric Ying-Che Chen (left), who works for Assistant Professor Pamela Abshire's (ECE/ISR) Integrated Biomorphic Information Systems Laboratory, received $5,000. Goldman is a senior in electrical engineering, while Chen is a senior with a double major in electrical engineering and computer science. Both students are affiliated with the Institute for Systems Research.

The Clark School's chapter of Tau Beta Pi, the nation's engineering honor society, won the 2005-06 R.C. Matthews Award for Most Outstanding Chapter, beating more than 300 chapters nationwide for the honor. Last year, the chapter sent students to the Gulf states to help with recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina. Ashley Korzun, B.S. '06 AE, served as chapter president during the '05-'06 school year

ECE undergraduate Travis Young along with his advisor, Professor P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR), and mechanical engineering (ME) student Jennifer Thompson with her advisor, ME Professor Greg Jackson, were honored at a ceremony for the Philip Merrill Presidential Scholars Program. Young and Thompson were selected as two of only 25 undergraduates campus-wide to be named 2006-2007 Merrill Presidential Scholars. The Merrill Presidential Scholars Program honors the University of Maryland's most successful seniors and the mentorship provided by their University faculty and K-12 teachers.

ECE students Eric Ying-Che Chen and Harneet Khurana shared first-place honors in the Research Internships in Telecommunications Engineering program at the 2006 Maryland Engineering Research Internship Teams Fair. Their project was titled "Bio Labs-on-a-Chip: Monitoring Cells Using CMOS Biosensors." The pair worked under Professor Pamela Abshire (ECE/ISR), ECE graduate students Nicole Nelson, Alfred Haas, and Somashekar Prakash, and ME graduate student Marc Dandin.

Senior Timothy Lee (AE) received the 2006 Spirit of Maryland Award. Presented at the Homecoming football game, the award recognizes an undergraduate student for outstanding scholarship, leadership, campus involvement, community service, and communication skills.