GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE
 Clark School aerospace engineering (AE) students took first,
second, third and sixth place in the Wing Design, Build and Test Competition at Society
for the Advancement of Materials Process Engineering '09. Graduate student Ben Woods took
first place; second place went to Team Winging It – graduate students Woods, Robbie Vocke,
Andrew Becnel, Nikesha Davis, Vince Posbic,
Harinder Singh, and Bart Drake,
and undergraduates Talver Tari and Pathik Shaw; third place went
to Team eXtreme Bengineering – graduate students Ben Berry and Woods;
and in sixth place, Team Sparse Chance – graduate students Ben Berry
and Miguel Polanco, and undergraduates Kevin
Buckley and Tracey Scindian. At the same event, Team Winging It also took second
place in the poster competition while Team eXtreme Bengineering took third place.
 Clark School AE students won in the
undergraduate category and placed second in the graduate category at this year's NASA
Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) student design
competition. The RASC-AL forum provides an opportunity for student design teams to present
revolutionary design projects to peers and representatives from NASA and industry.
The student teams were led by AE Professor Dave Akin.
 A team of Clark School aerospace engineering students (including Kevin Davis, Dru Ellsberry, and Laura Meyer, pictured) has won the 2009 American Astronautical
Society and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics CANSAT competition in only their first
year in the contest, topping a field of 18 schools from around the world. The CANSAT competition
allows students to design, build and test a rocket payload the size of an elongated coke can.
 At the 2009 American Institute of Aeronautics and
Astronautics (AIAA) Mid-Atlantic Regional Student Conference, Clark School AE
students won in four competition categories:
• Team category: Robbie Vocke and Timofey Spirodonov
(et. al.) -"Design and
Construction of All-Composite UAVs Utilizing a Modified VARTM Process" (Advisor:
Darryll Pines);
• Graduate category: Louise A. Ahuré – "Behavior of Magnetorheological Fluid Composites
Employing Carrier Fluids Certified for Landing Gear Use" (Advisor: Norm Wereley);
• Undergraduate category: Michael Gentry – "Fatigue Testing of Pneumatic Artificial
Muscle Actuators" (Advisor: Norm Wereley);
• And the Clark School chapter of AIAA came away with the 2007-2008 Outstanding
Student Branch (Mid-Atlantic Region) Award.
 LEAFHouse, the 800 square-foot solar-powered home designed by the
University of Maryland's 2007 Solar Decathlon team, on which Clark School graduate
and undergraduate students participated, has earned an "Award for Distinctive Residential
Architecture" from the Washingtonian/American Institute of Architects 28th Annual Awards
Program.
 Undergraduate students Kristine Caiafa,
Brennan Keegan, and Esmaeel Paryavi won the 2009 University of
Maryland Vid/Terp Video Competition in the Research/Science/Engineering category with "Building
A Better World – Engineers Without Borders." AE graduate students Fernando Raffan
and Andrew Voegele earned second-place with their video "Film Cooling: It's Not
Brain Surgery, It's Rocket Science!"
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GRADUATE
 Three Clark School graduate students received Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Minority
Ph.D. Program Scholarships from the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. AE graduate
students David B. Mayo, (pictured) and Rochelle Mellish and (ME) Ph.D.
candidate Sophoria Westmoreland were selected to receive the scholarships toward their
Ph.D. studies with the Clark School. The amount of each scholarship is $26,950, which is available to
cover actual costs of tuition, stipend, books, professional travel and/or summer support.
 Parag Banerjee (materials science and engineering [MSE])
has won the 2009 Presidential Student Award from the Microscopy Society of America. He received the
award for his paper, "Crystallization Behavior of HfO2 Nanotubes in Different Environments,"
which describes how nanotubes of amorphous hafnium oxide crystallize when heated under various conditions
of mechanical stress and temperature.
 Supratik Datta, AE doctoral student, received the prestigious
2008-09 AIAA Foundation Orville and Wilbur Wright Graduate Award. The Wright Graduate Awards provide
$10,000 awards bestowed annually to four graduate-level students participating in research endeavors as
part of their engineering/science graduate studies.
Monica Syal, AE doctoral student,
has won the Zonta International Amelia Earhart Fellowship for the 2009–2010 academic year. This $10,000
fellowship is granted annually to women who demonstrate a superior academic record in the field of
aerospace-related sciences, and aerospace-related engineering.
Fischell Department of Bioengineering (BioE) graduate student Trent Bradberry, advised by Associate Professor José Contreras-Vidal (Kinesiology), has been awarded an Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship. The University of Maryland fellowship, created for students who are in the final stages of writing their dissertations, includes a stipend of $10,000, candidacy tuition remission and financial assistance toward the cost of health insurance.
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)'s Stephan Koev, a Ph.D. student of Herbert Rabin Distinguished Associate Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/Institute for Systems Research [ISR]/NanoCenter), has won a university-wide graduate student research contest and is featured in the February 2009 issue of Research@Maryland.
Graduate Program in Bioengineering student Deborah Sweet (B.S. '06, chemical engineering) has been named the 2009 recipient of the Fischell Fellowship in Biomedical Engineering. The fellowship is a unique opportunity for talented and innovative graduate students interested in applied research and product design in the biomedical industry. Sweet's winning proposal, "Anionic PAMAM Dendrimers for Oral Delivery of 5-Fluorouracil," describes how her proposed startup company, DendriPharm Systems, would develop an oral drug delivery system for chemotherapy drugs that are traditionally administered intravenously.
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) graduate student Aaron Fisher, advised by BioE's Professor Peter Kofinas, has been named a John and Maureen Hendricks Energy Research Fellow. Fisher's fellowship will support research that he and Kofinas have proposed on nanostructured polymer electrolytes.
Prof. John Baras (ECE/ ISR) and co-authors Vahid Tabatabaee, an assistant research scientist at UM, ECE graduate student George Papageorgiou, and alumnus Nicolas Rentz (M.S. '07, electrical engineering), received the Best Paper Award for Wireless Networks at the 2008 Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers Global Communications Conference for their paper, "Performance Metric Sensitivity Computation for Optimization and Trade-off Analysis in Wireless Networks."
Nathan Siwak, a graduate student advised by Herbert Rabin Distinguished Associate Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR/NanoCenter), has won a 2009 Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Fellowship. The ARCS fellowship offers student recipients a renewable award of $15K per year. The award is sponsored by the Metropolitan Washington Chapter of the ARCS Foundation, Inc.
Avinash Varna, an ECE Ph.D. student advised by Prof. Min Wu, won the Clark School Litton Industries Fellowship. The award, worth $11,075, was established by Litton Industries to support outstanding full-time graduate students in pursuit of a doctorate degree in either electrical or mechanical engineering who are committed to a teaching career in engineering education.
Graduate Student Gabriela Nino de Guzman (civil and environmental engineering [CEE]) received an award for $850 from the American Chemical Society (ACS) to present her work on the impact of agricultural pharmaceuticals and nutrients on microbial community diversity and structure at the 238th ACS National Meeting.
A paper by Konstantinos Gerasopoulos, Matthew McCarthy, Elizabeth Royston, James N. Culver and Associate Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR/NanoCenter) has been selected to be part of "Highlights of 2008" by the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering (JMM). "Highlights" is a selection of articles chosen by the JMM's editorial board and publishing team that best represent the high quality and breadth of the contributions published in the journal in the past year.
Shenqiang Ren (MSE) advised by Prof. Manfred Wuttig, won first place in the new Dean's Doctoral Student Research Awards for his dissertation topic, "Bottom-up Multiferroic Nanostructures."
Bradley Johnson (AE) advised by Prof. J. Gordon Leishman, won first place in the new Dean's Master's Student Research Awards for his thesis, "Mechanisms of Sediment Entrainment and Transport in Rotorcraft Brownout."
The University of Maryland Center for Teaching Excellence honored seven ECE graduate teaching assistants. Ravi Garg, Shalabh Jain, Aparna Kotha, Woo Myoung Park, Padraig O’Sullivan, Saeed Esmaili Sardari, and John Shiu were awarded Distinguished Teaching Assistant Certificates.
ECE graduate student Biniyam Taddese won first place in the Focusing Research on Entrepreneurial Empowerment poster competition sponsored by the University of Maryland Black Graduate Student Association and Black Engineers Society.
Telecommunications Students and Alumni Network (TSAN) won all three awards presented at the 4th annual University of Maryland Student Organization Reception and Employer Networking Dinner. The awards received include Outstanding Student Organization of the Year, Outstanding Professional Development Program of the Year (in reference to TSAN's work on the Telecommunica Symposium) and TSAN President Karthick A. Kasiviswanathan won Outstanding Student Leader of the Year, Runner Up.
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UNDERGRADUATE
 BioE sophomore Zachary Russ was awarded a 2009-2010
Goldwater Scholarship, the premier national award granted to undergraduate
students majoring in mathematics, natural sciences and engineering who are interested
in research careers.
For the second year in a row,
BioE undergraduates, including three freshmen, beat out a national field of 184
other entrants to earn four of the five top spots in the Institute of Biological
Engineering's annual bioethics essay contest. Sophomore Zachary Russ won for a second
year in a row, while freshman Victoria Stephanelli placed second and freshmen Chris
Dupuis and Laith Abu-Taleb were first and second runners-up,
respectively. The students'
essays explored subjects such as safety, regulation, civil liberties, and benefits
vs. costs in the context of bioengineering research.
 The National Society for Black Engineers has named the
Clark School's Black Engineers Society chapter the 2008-2009 National Distinguished
Chapter of the Year.
 Tenaya Prince, a mechanical
engineering senior, was the Region 2 First Place Winner among undergraduate students
in the Technical Research Regional Showcase sponsored by the National Society of
Black Engineers for her research on embedded resistors and her paper, “Trimming of
Embedded Resistors: 3 D Electrical Modeling.”
Clark School students were awarded
23 of 150 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURFs) offered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology this year. Students from elsewhere at the University of Maryland took another nine slots, meaning that the university represents 20 percent of all awards (the most from any one university).
ChBE sophomore Emily Lin was awarded a 2009 American Society of Plant Biologists Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. The fellowship will support her research this summer in the Metabolic Engineering Laboratory, directed by her advisor, Assistant Professor Ganesh Sriram.
BioE junior Omar Ayyub co-wrote a paper with MSE graduate student and Fischell Fellow Dan Janiak, and BioE's Professor Peter Kofinas. The paper, titled "Effects of Charge Density on the Recognition Properties of Molecularly Imprinted Polymeric Hydrogels," is being published by Macromolecules, the highest cited journal in the field of polymer science.
BioE senior Jenna Aidikoff received the Maryland Daily Record's 2009 Circle of Excellence Scholarship, part of the Maryland's Top 100 Women awards program. Aidikoff was selected for her exceptional scholarship in engineering, education, and the work she performed at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, where she conducted research on Down Syndrome.
BioE undergraduates Anik Duttaroy, Andrew Paek, and Bobak Shirmohammadi presented a research paper, titled "High-Resolution Optical Coherence Tomography Imaging of Human Kidney Ex Vivo," at the 2009 Northeast Biological Engineering Conference (NEBEC). The group first submitted the research as a poster, but the NEBEC review committee invited them to do an oral presentation instead.
At the University of Maryland spring commencement, Phillip Hannam, a graduating ME senior, was named the 2009 University Medalist for his extraordinary achievements and contributions to the university and greater community. Hannam also received the A. James Clark School of Engineering International Student Award. He studied abroad in Germany, was the student representative to the committee reviewing the Office of International Programs and a key member of the Clark School chapter of Engineers Without Borders. Hannam and David Green were on a team that won the University of Maryland Gemstone Program's Outstanding Thesis Award. Their team, Renewables at UMD, identified the best sites in Western Maryland for developing a university wind farm.
AE senior Ryan Lebois was named the University of Maryland’s Undergraduate Student Researcher of the Year by the Dean of Undergraduate Studies for his project, “Study of the Feasibility of Drag Flaps for Satellite Constellation Station Keeping,” which was his culminating work in the AE honors program. The paper also won the University Honors Best Paper/Project Award.
ChBE junior Adam Behrens, advised by BioE's Professor Peter Kofinas, was the recipient of the 2009 Clark School of Engineering Outstanding ASPIRE Student Research Award for his work on polymer hemostatic hydrogels. ASPIRE, A Scholars Program for Industry-Oriented Research in Engineering, run by the Clark School, offers students the opportunity to move beyond the classroom by working with engineering faculty or staff on real-world engineering projects. Together with BioE graduate student Brendan Casey, Behrens has developed a synthetic hemostatic material capable of simultaneously inducing blood clotting and delivering drugs. This project also won the life sciences division of the University of Maryland $75K Business Plan Competition (see Technology Entrepreneurship).
The Clark School's second annual John D. Anderson Scholarship in Aerospace Engineering has been awarded to AE seniors Breanne McNerney and Nicholas Woodside. McNerney won for her poster presentation on "Smart Glove Development: Using Strain Sensors to Determine Hand Joint Angles." Woodside won for his poster, "Rotor Tip Vortices at Low Vortex Reynolds Numbers."
Seven CEE undergraduate students were recently awarded scholarships by Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC)'s Washington Metro Chapter. The Clark School's ABC student chapter's President Brian Smith and Vice President Ianina Jmourko each received cash awards of $4,000, and five other students received scholarships ranging from $1,500 to $2,500: Semme Yilma, Benson Maloba, Alyssa Apolonio, James Mace and Theodore Tan.
Allon Meizlik (BioE junior) received the Clark School's Dinah Berman Memorial Award in recognition of academic excellence combined with leadership or service to the college. Meizlik is a Clark School Ambassador, promoting the Clark School to prospective students. He is also a member of the Inventis Academy of Engineering Leadership, the University Honors Program and a recipient of the Benjamin T. Rome Scholarship. Meizlik's minor is in engineering leadership development.
Tracey Epstein (BioE senior) received the A. James Clark School of Engineering Leadership Award, which recognizes outstanding leadership. Epstein participated in the QUEST program, in addition to the University Honors Program, Primannum Honor Society and Phi Kappa Phi. She is active with the Biological Resources Engineering Society and Alpha Omega Epsilon International Engineering Sorority. Epstein is also a member of the Clark School Ambassadors, winning the Top Ambassador award last year.
Ianina (Yana) Jmourko (CEE senior) received the Clark School's Kim A. Borsavage and Pamela J. Stone Student Award for Outstanding Service. Jmourko is an active member of Alpha Omega Epsilon, the QUEST program and the Clark School Ambassadors program. Over the last two years, she has served in a leadership role as an Ambassador coordinator, planning meetings, educating her peers and developing new workshops for high school students.
Alyson Blair (fire protection engineering senior) received the A. James Clark School of Engineering Dean's Award. Blair is a member of the University Honors Program, the Primannum Honor Society and the National Society of Collegiate Scholars. She is a member of the Women in Engineering Program, for which she mentored freshman female engineering students and assisted with major events.
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