GRADUATE
 Fischell Department of Bioengineering (BioE) graduate student Rohan
Fernandes, advised by BioE Professor and Chair William Bentley, won the American
Chemical Society's (ACS) Peterson Award. The award is given to the student who delivers the best oral
presentation among the Biochemical Technology Division speakers at ACS's annual meeting. Fernandes won
for his talk, "Nanofactories for Synthesis and Delivery of Signaling Molecules: A Tool for Engineering
Metabolism."
 Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CHE) graduate student Stefanie
Brady, advised by Associate Professor Nam Sun Wang, has been named chair of
the Advisory Board of the Virginia Tech Department of Biological Systems Engineering.
 Stephan Koev, a Ph.D. student advised by Herbert
Rabin Distinguished Associate Professor Reza Ghodssi (electrical and computer
engineering [ECE]/Institute for Systems
Research [ISR]), won the Best Student Poster Award at the 2008 MEMS Alliance Symposium. The poster
described Koev’s research on optical microcantilever sensors for liquid samples, conducted in the Clark
School's MEMS Sensors and Actuators Laboratory and the Center for Biosystems Research at the University
of Maryland Biotechnology Institute.
CHE graduate student Daphne Fuentevilla, advised by Professor Mikhail
Anisimov, won the International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam Student
Award for an outstanding presentation at the 15th International Conference on the Properties of Water and
Steam. Her presentation was titled "Thermodynamics of the critical behavior of supercooled water."
CHE graduate student Joyce Breger, co-advised by Professor Nam Sun Wang
and Dan Lyle (Food and Drug Administration), was awarded the Diabetes Technology Peterson
Student Research Bronze Prize for her abstract titled "Investigation of Inflammatory Potential of Biomaterials
Intended for Cell Encapsulation or Device Coating."
Kevin Galloway (ECE), Anshu Rastogi (BioE) and Steven Tjoa
(ECE) were awarded Graduate Student Summer Research Fellowships by the University of Maryland Graduate School.
The fellowships enable doctoral students to devote a summer of focused work to preparing for or completing
a benchmark in their program's requirements.
Graham Alldredge, Kapil Anand, N. Prasanth Anthapadmanabhan,
Domenic Forte, Anna Pantelidou, John Shiu, Chris
Stanford, and Shilin Zhu, ECE graduate teaching assistants, were selected as
2007-2008 Distinguished Teaching Assistants by the University of Maryland's Center for Teaching Excellence.
Graduate students Parag Banerjee (materials science and engineering [MSE]) and Aaron
Fisher (CHE) have been named John and Maureen Hendricks Energy Research Fellows. Banerjee, advised by MSE Professor and NanoCenter Director
Gary Rubloff, was also selected to attend the 2008 International Center for Materials Research
Winter School at the Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India.
The competitive fellowship includes a full travel grant and expenses for the weeklong program.
ECE Ph.D. student Pavan Turaga, advised by Prof. Rama Chellappa
(ECE/University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies/computer science), was chosen to participate
in the 4th annual IBM Watson Emerging Leaders in Multimedia Workshop at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center.
MSE graduate student Sang Hak Shin, advised by MSE Professor and Chair Robert M.
Briber, was selected to attend the National School on Neutron and X-ray Scattering. The competitive,
all-expenses-paid, two-week program was held at Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National
Laboratory.
MSE graduate student Bobby Bruce, advised by Professor Gottlieb Oehrlein,
attended the Fostering U.S.-Australian Research Collaborations in Materials Program held in Sydney, Australia.
The program was part of the 2008 International Conference on Electronic Materials.
ECE graduate student Biniyam Taddese won first place in the Focusing Research on Entrepreneurial Empowerment poster competition. Taddese's work
was done with his advisor, Steven Anlage, a Physics and ECE affiliate professor, and
Professors Thomas Antonsen (ECE/Physics/Institute for Research in Engineering and Applied
Physics [IREAP]) and Edward Ott (ECE/Physics), along with graduate student James Hart
(IREAP).
Top of Page
UNDERGRADUATE
 Brandon Hall, an aerospace engineering senior, received a Goddard
Space Flight Center (GSFC) NASA Academy Research Award, which goes to a project that made a significant contribution
to GSFC research. The project, "A Dust Mitigation Vehicle," is a prototype paving system for the moon
that utilizes only resources available in-situ. Hall has been working with Goddard
engineer Eric Cardiff.
 Aerospace engineering senior Pratik
Dave was named one of five recipients for the first John Mather Nobel
Scholarship by The Henry Foundation, Inc. Dave performed an internship at NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center, where John Mather is a senior astrophysicist.
 Matthew Bishop, an aerospace undergraduate student, has received a
scholarship from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the AIAA
Foundation.
Fischell Department of Bioengineering (BioE)
junior John Lin has been named the first-place winner of the Golden Key Engineering and
Technology Scholarship from the Golden Key International Honour Society. Lin was recognized for the research
he carried out in the Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials Laboratory (directed by his academic advisor,
BioE Associate Professor John Fisher) as a 2007-2008 fellow with A Scholars Program for
Industry-Oriented Research in Engineering.
CHE junior Joseph Lim won the Best Poster Award in the Biochemistry/Biophysics Division
at the 2008 Bioscience Research and Technology Review Day. Lim presented some of the research he conducted
in the Laboratory of Molecular and Thermodynamic Modeling, directed by his advisor, CHE assistant professor
Jeffery Klauda. Lim's poster was titled "The Application of Molecular Dynamics Simulations
to Sterols and Lipid Bilayers."
A seven-member team including two civil engineering students—Jenny Lees and Mike
Couture—won the first ever Games for Health Game Jam held at the University of Baltimore. The 24-hour
coding marathon challenged the teams of designers, programmers and artists to work round-the-clock to create
small, playable games related to health that demonstrate innovative ideas in short amounts of time. The team
also included Phillip Weisberg, faculty research assistant, Center for Advanced Transportation Technology Laboratory.
BioE rising senior Anthony Awojoodu and fire protection engineering student Alyson
Blair have been named 2008 Merill Presidential Scholars. The program honors the University of
Maryland's most successful rising seniors and their mentors from both the university faculty and their K-12
education.
MSE undergraduate student Maeling Tapp and BioE student James
Abshire shared the Most Outstanding Research Award from the Engineering Honors Program. The title
of Tapp's research project was "Characterization of Magnetic Thin Films for the Measurement of Magnetic
Phase Contrast" (advisor: Professor Kris Rosfjord [ECE]). The title of Abshire's project
was "Production of Neisserial Opa Membrane Protein in the Baculovirus Expression Vector System" (advisor:
Robert E. Fischell Distinguished Professor and BioE Chair Bill Bentley).
Top of Page
|
