SPRING 2024 AWARDS
>> Most Impactful Student Organization Award
This award recognizes a Jonsson School student organization that made positive and significant impact for UTD-ME undergraduate students. A student organization will be selected and awarded based on their effort, enthusiasm, and activities to promote skill-set development and connections between students and community or industry for ME students.
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Texas at Dallas (AIAA UTD)
The student organization AIAA provides tangible long-term value to the members through technically challenging projects and professional events to assist them in their interests and career goals.
The current projects include: Aerospace Design, Comet Rocketry, DARRT, Design Build Fly.
>> Most Supportive and Engaged Undergraduate Student Award
This award recognizes an UTD-ME undergraduate student who is helpful towards their classmates and fosters an environment of collegiality both inside and outside the classroom. Examples include organizing study sessions or helping with an extracurricular activity.
Ben Jeffrey
“He has been really helpful teaching me concepts ever since I started. He is also really supportive and an overall great guy”
“I would like to nominate Ben because I have been helped by been and I’ve seen Ben help multiple students with concepts learned in class. In addition, Ben prompts many students to join his study sessions which have helped tremendously when it comes to succeeding in the upper level engineering classes.”
“A leader of AIAA, specifically of DBF. He has put literally hundreds of ours of work in this semester alone to the project and we have achieved results far exceeding any expecstions”
>> Best Paper Award
This award recognizes the best paper published by a UTD-ME student (graduate and undergraduate) within the last three years from the award deadline date. The three-year period is considered to allow reasonable time for the article to be cited.
Yaning Liu
21 citations, impact factor 16.6. This paper is a milestone paper that introduces a new direction and technology using plasmonic nano bubbles for biosensing. It also led to startup company Avsana Labs and NIH STTR Phase I funding.
>> Outstanding MS Thesis Award
This award recognizes an outstanding MS thesis written by a UTD-ME student. Only theses submitted during any semester of the previous calendar year (Spring, Summer or Fall) will be considered.
Christopher Paniagua
Autonomous Estimation of Foot Bone Structure Based on Scanned Foot Surface Topography
He developed an autonomous algorithm for the construction of an approximate surface model for a foot that would also generate the corresponding underlying bone structure model through non-invasive means for the purpose of enhancing finite element analysis simulations for functionally personalized footwear.
>> Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award
This award recognizes an outstanding PhD dissertation written by a UTD-ME student. Only dissertations submitted during any semester of the previous calendar year (Spring, Summer or Fall) will be considered.
Siyu Tian
Interface Management for Safe And High-performance
Electrochemical Energy Storage Devices
This dissertation focuses on the interface management for energy storage devices such as batteries. Through a combination of experiments, simulations and characterizations, fundamental mechanisms governing the stability of the interface in batteries have been systematically revealed and investigated. The included research work was published in 8 papers (1 under review) on top journals, including Advanced Energy Materials (IF 27.8), ACS Nano (IF 17.1), Chemical Engineering Journals (IF 15.1), and International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer (IF 5.2). Two patents have been filed based on part of the results in this dissertation. One NSF award (#2324593, nearly 600K dollars) has been funded and another proposal is in working. The research outcome included in this dissertation would help to strengthen the leadership of the newly established BEACONS center at UTDallas and the US in the field of batteries.
>> Broader Impacts Award
This award recognizes the best Broader Impacts-related activity by a UTD-ME faculty member or their group within a year from the award deadline. Based on NSF, broader impact is defined as “the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes.”
Shuang Cui
She has been mentoring 5 undergraduate students working on decarbonization in the manufacturing process of paper products, and energy sustainability. Among the five undergraduate students, two of her undergraduate mentees have progressed to become thesis-based master’s students; one has transitioned into a Ph.D. student since 2022, working with her in her research group. Three of her mentees, including a female student, have received the prestigious awards in recognition of their academic achievements.
Research awards
Visit the Jonsson School research awards webpage for a full list of award recipients.