Engineering grad students earn Presidential Fellowships

Posted: 

Meggie Bliss | College of Engineering Communications | January 6, 2023 |

Seven Buckeye engineers have been named Presidential Fellows—the highest honor given by The Ohio State University Graduate School.

The award recognizes the outstanding scholarly accomplishments and potential of graduate students entering the final phase of their dissertation research or terminal degree project. Awarded competitively, Presidential Fellowships provide one year of full-time financial support so students can complete their dissertations or terminal degree projects unimpeded by other responsibilities.

The College of Engineering’s 2022-23 Presidential Fellows are A F M Anhar Uddin Bhuiyan, Linda Capito Ruiz, Guillermo Castillo Martinez, Xiang Deng, Thomas DePalma, Jiayuwen Qi and Saba Zakeri Shahvari.

A F M Anhar Uddin Bhuiyan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, advised by Professor Hongping Zhao. His dissertation research involves synthesis and characterization of the fundamental properties of wide and ultrawide bandgap semiconductor materials to improve the performance and reliability of high-power electronic devices. His research will contribute to next-generation energy efficient power electronics for achieving the 21st century climatic goals towards a sustainable zero carbon emission society.

Linda Capito Ruiz is a PhD candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Advised by Research Associate Professor Keith Redmill, her research focuses on evaluating safety of autonomous vehicles. Her specific dissertation work includes developing risk assessment techniques for automated-driving assistance systems (ADAS) to discover system and environmental configurations that may lead to collisions and other vehicular hazards. This research will help mitigate possible failure modes of ADAS.

Guillermo Castillo Martinez is an electrical and computer engineering doctoral candidate, advised by Assistant Professor Ayonga Hereid. His research focuses on the development of learning-based frameworks for the design of feedback controllers for legged locomotion. In particular, his dissertation addresses the intersection of model-free and model-based methods to create simple, interpretable and efficient reinforcement learning-based frameworks that realize robust and safe bipedal locomotion with successful implementation in real robots.

Xiang Deng is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Advised by Associate Professor Huan Sun, his research focuses on natural language processing and data mining, with emphasis on knowledge discovery and utilization from heterogeneous sources. The aim is to build AI-powered data systems that can assist with information acquisition and decision making for regular users as well as domain experts in the digital era.

Thomas DePalma is a biomedical engineering PhD candidate, advised by Assistant Professor Aleksander Skardal. His project is focused on engineered biomaterials and microfluidics to model the blood brain barrier. These models are being used to study how the vessels in our brain change in diseases such as glioblastoma, a form of primary brain cancer, and to test various treatments.

Yuwen Qi

Jiayuwen Qi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Advised by Professor Wolfgang Windl, her research focuses on the forward modeling of atom probe tomography (APT), a material characterization technique that can resolve identities and positions of atoms in three dimensions. Her newly developed TAPSim-MD method takes the atomistic simulation of APT to the next level, which allows the study of the fundamental physics of APT, understanding of artifacts in APT data, and improvement of the quantification ability of this technique.

Saba Zakeri Shahvari is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering. Advised by Assistant Professor Jordan Clark, her research explores how metal organic framework sorbent materials can be used for highly energy-efficient solar air conditioning. This study will pave the way for displacing peak electricity load attributable to air conditioning, about 40% of the electrical grid peak. 

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