FPE Ph.D. Candidate Wins 2017 Outstanding Graduate Assistant Award

Akshit Markan, a Ph.D. Student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, focusing in Fire Protection Engineering (FPE), has been awarded a 2017 UMD Graduate School’s Outstanding Graduate Assistant Award. Approximately 4,000 UMD graduate students serve the campus as administrative, research or teaching assistants. The Graduate School has established this award to recognize the outstanding contributions that Graduate Assistants provide to the University. The award conveys the honor of being named among the top 2% of campus Graduate Assistants in a given year.

Markan completed his Undergraduate and Master's degree at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in Mumbai, India. In 2015, he joined the UMD Ph.D. program and started working on the Burning Rate Emulator (BRE) project in the FPE Department.

"My research focuses on the development and theoretical analysis of a gaseous fuel burner which could emulate the burning conditions of condensed fuels in microgravity," Markan said. "This work could provide a cost-effective technique to study fire safety in space. The research is funded by NASA’s International Space Station Research Program."

Markan is advised by FPE Professor Peter Sunderland, FPE Professor Emeritus James Quintiere, and Dr. John de Ris (retired, FM Global). He is on track to complete his Ph.D. in 2018.

Congratulations, Akshit!

Published May 4, 2017